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The Role of the Einsatzgruppen

Overview of the Einsatzgruppen

The Context

The Einsatzgruppen were units of the SS who were responsible with the murders of 1.4 million civilians in the Soviet Union. Consisting of about 3,000 men, their role was to eliminate Soviet officials, Roma and Jews. When the Nazi invaded Soviet Russia in 1941, these mobile killing units immediately followed the German army to secure newly seized territory and carry out their tasks. With aid from Wehrmacht who provided logistical support, and local antisemites who helped identify Jews, the Einsatzgruppen were able to conduct large-scale murder operations through systematic killings which progressively intensified until it reached peak escalation in summer of 1941. These massacres that followed would become the first step of the “Final Solution”, a Nazi plan to murder all European Jews. It is estimated that around 1.2 or more than 2 million people were killed at the hands of the Einsatzgruppen.

Structure of the Einsatzgruppen

Structure

Organisation of the Einsatzgruppen

The Einsatzgruppen was established in 1939 by the chief of the SS, Heinrich Himmler who later appointed command of the unit to Reinhard Heydrich. The 3,000 strong army was split into four battalions that were deployed across the Eastern Front to suppress resistance and perform their duties under the Third Reich.

Organisation

Heinz Jost

(Commander of A)

Arthur Nebe

(Commander of B)

Dr. Otto Rasch

(Commander of C)

Rank

Prof. Otto Ohlendorf

(Commander of D)

Reinhard Heydrich

Chief lieutenant of the SS

Gas vans used by the Einsatzgruppen (1941)

The Einsatzgruppen Throughout WW2

The Einsatzgruppen was originally formed by Himmler in 1939 to kill Polish Intelligence agents and delay the formation of a response to the German invasion of Poland. In June of 1941, on the onset of Operation Barbarossa, the Einsatzgruppen was assigned the role as executioners of the Third Reich. Initially, the mobile killing units only killed Jewish men until late late summer of 1941, after the Wannsee Conference when it was made clear that all European Jews were to be exterminated.

After entering a newly conquered town, identified Jews were forcefully marched to a mass collection point where they would be forced to dig large trenches. The victims would then be stripped off their possessions and be shot.

In early 1942, a cheap method of killing was devised in response to the psychological toll of constantly killing women and children. The Nazis began using mobile gas chambers which were modified vans that injected its exhaust fumes into the sealed passenger compartments, ultimately asphyxiating its victims during the journey towards the mass graves. This method however is slow and so mass shootings continued to be the preferred way of killing.

Throughout World War 2

The Einsatzgruppen, by yadvashem.org

Einsatzgruppen Timeline

Einsatzgruppen Exhibition

World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted

Exhibits

The Babi Yar Massacre

Babi Yar

When the Wehrmacht entered the Ukraine capital of Kyiv on the 19th of June 1941, 100,000 of the 160,000 Jews had already fled the city in fear of persecution. Those who chose to remain were mostly unable or unwilling to escape. This included women, children, the elderly and the ill.

Between 20 and 28 of September, two large explosions from Soviet mine traps inflicted significant casualties to German official and soldiers. The Germans then used this event to justify a "retaliation".

What occurred in the following days was the attempt to exterminate all Jews in Kyiv. 34,000 Jewish children, men and women were marched into the Babi Yar ravine where they sorted into small groups and stripped before being gunned down by Nazi machine guns. This all happened in just two days. This mass murder of Jews was carried out largely by Ensatzgruppen C who were assisted by detachments from the Wehrmacht.

Life in Kyiv, 1941

From the Memoir of Raisa Dashkevich, a survivor

Witness Account

Explanation

"In September 29, 1941 all the Jews of Kiev were ordered to come to the corner of the Melnikov and Degtyaryov Streets and to bring with them their money and valuables. Failure to comply with the order would be punished by shooting.

A large column gathered, which included my family the Koguts, including 6 children and 7 grandchildren.

I stood at my father’s side and held my three-year old little brother Petenka in my arms. We were shot right at the precipice of Babi Yar.

People fell like small stones thrown by some hand.

I regained consciousness at night in the ravine. There were dead bodies all around.

I was only wounded and started to climb from under the pile of bodies, which surrounded me on all sides.

Several times I lost consciousness, but revived and crawled forward again until I saw lights from some house. After I knocked, an old woman opened the door and I passed out."

This exhibit is a written and verbal account of the Babi Yar massacre from a survivor. In her memoir, Raya Dashekevich describes the senseless process which saw one of the largest massacre of Jews in WW2, a system optimized specifically to kill as many people as humanely possible. It is unfathomable that a small group of people are capable of coordinating killings to the extent of what happened in Babi Yar.

Einsatzgruppen on Trial

Einsatzgruppen trial

After the Nuremberg trials, the US held additional trials for the next leading members of German leadership, these trials collectively are known as the Nuremberg Military Tribunals. It consisted of 12 trials between December 1946 and April 1949, and the ninth trial is known today as the Einsatzgruppen Case.

This case tried 22 of the leading members of the Einsatzgruppen for their role in the murder of over a million people behind the Eastern Front. Some of the defendants admitted to commanding units of the Einsatzgruppen, but all chose to plead not guilty, arguing that they were compelled to under superior orders. The trial ran from September 29, 1947, to February 12, 1948. All defendants were found guilty and fourteen were sentenced to death, however only four were carried out.

Chief Prosecutor at the Einsatsgruppen Trials

Left: Otto Ohlendorf

Right: Heinz Jost

A page belonging to Chief Prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz

Explanation

Trial Summary

This document provides a basic overview of each defendant in the Einsatzgruppen Case. Many of the defendant's defenses were that they were forced to commit these crimes under orders of their superiors, a very weak defense considering the fact that the Einsatzgruppen unit were made up mostly of volunteers from Germany.

This exhibit thus indicates that they acknowledge that their crimes are so deplorable that no excuse can aid in their case.

Hermann Friedrich Graebe

Hermann Friedrich Graebe

Eye witness Account

Mr Graebe was a German-born contruction boss who witnessed the atrocities perpetrated by the Einsatzgruppen against the local Jewish population. Disgusted by what he saw, he felt compelled to use his position of power to save as many Jews as he could. Mr Graebe hired Jewish employees and went to great measures in order to protect them.

After the War, he voluntarily testified at the International Military Tribunal and the Einsatzgruppen Case where he gave crucial evidence which aided in the prosecution process. He recounted an incident on the 5th of October, 1942, at a mass killing site near Dubno where he saw the killings of 5,000 Jews by the Einsatzgruppen and the Ukrainians auxiliary. Unfortunately, he was seen as a traitor in his homeland, and after receiving death threats, Mr Graebe moved to America where he continued to bring justice against German war criminals.

Explanation

This exhibit explores the mass murder of Jews at Dubno, essentially what a typical day might look like for an Einsatzgruppen detatchment. Mr Graebe's testimony best exemplifies the heartless motives of the Einsatzgruppen, a unit whose sole duty is to clear German occupied territory of Jews, Communists and Roma.

“From September 1941 to January 1944, I was director and chief engineer of the Sdolbunow branch of the Josef Jung Construction Company of Solingen.

On October 5th 1942, at the time of my visit to the construction offices in Dubno, my foreman, Hubert Moennikes told me that some Dubno Jews had been shot near the building, in three huge ditches about 30 metres long and three metres deep. The number of people killed daily was estimated at around 1,500. The 5,000 Jews who lived in Dubno before the Pogrom were all marked for liquidation.

Armed Ukrainian militia was forcing people out, under the surveillance of SS soldiers. The same militiamen were responsible for guard duty and driving the trucks. The people in the trucks wore the regulation yellow pieces of cloth that identified them as Jews on the front and back of their clothing.

The people from the trucks – men, women and children – were forced to undress under the supervision of an SS soldier with a whip in his hand. Without weeping or crying out, these people undressed and stood together in family groups, embracing each other and saying goodbye while waiting for a sign from the SS soldier, who stood on the edge of the ditch.

During the 15 minutes I stayed there, I did not hear a single complaint or plea for mercy.

At this moment, the SS man near the ditch called something to his comrade. The latter counted off some twenty people and ordered them behind the mound. Tightly packed corpses were heaped so close together that only the heads showed. Most were wounded in the head and the blood flowed over their shoulders.

The ditch was two­-thirds full. I estimate that it held a thousand bodies. I turned my eyes toward the man who had carried out the execution. He was an SS man; he was seated, legs swinging, on the narrow edge of the ditch; an automatic rifle rested on his knees and he was smoking a cigarette.

The people, completely naked, climbed down a few steps cut in the clay wall and stopped at the place indicated by the SS man. Facing the dead and wounded, they spoke softly to them. Then I heard a series of rifle shots. I looked in the ditch and saw their bodies contorting, their heads, already inert, sinking on the corpses beneath. The blood flowed from the nape of their necks.

A new batch of victims approached the place. They climbed down into the ditch, lined up in front of the previous victims and were shot. On the way back, while rounding the mound, I saw another full truck which had just arrived."

The Testimony

Survivors of Dubno Massacre honoring the dead in 1945

Karl Jäger (1888-1959)

The Jäger Report

The Jäger Report was a comprehensive document written by Karl Jäger, who was the commander of Einsatzkommando 3, a section of Einsatzgruppen A. It is the most detailed document from an Einsatzkommando regarding the massacres in the Soviet Union, and was used in the Nuremberg Trials as evidence of killings in Lithuania, Latvia and Belarus.

The Katzmann Report

Explanation

The Report

The nine page report report consists of never ending tables of actions by the Einsatzkommando 3. The report documented 112 executions in 71 locations in Lithuania, Latvia and Belarus. In total 138,272 murders took place within the span of over a year, with the majority being Jews. At the end of the report, Karl Jäger boasted that Lithuania was now free of Jews.

Even though at this stage the Einsatzgruppen were conducting killings by the bullet, the absuredly high numbers shown in this report shows how effective and unrelenting a single Einsatzkomando can be. It is truly sickening how a small group of people were able to travel around foreign countries with the purpose of persecuting and ultimately eliminating minorities.

Dachau Concentration Camp (1945)

Significance of the Holocaust in 2022

The Significance of the Holocaust

The Holocaust was one of the most devastating events in human history. The Holocaust gave the Germans a political incentive, motivation for the soldiers to keep pushing into enemy territory to rid the world of lives deemed unimportant. This event took the lives of 11 million people, and left the remaining survivors in a state of struggle for the remainder of their lonely lives. The extent of the damage inflicted in the span of a few years is beyond belief, and so, we as a society, must understand the process which lead to it.

The educational value of learning about the Holocaust is immeasurable as it teaches future generations of the implications when intense hatred overcomes society. It is a reminder of what humans are capable when evil, hate and racism poisons the minds of an entire country. Evidence of this is beginning to happen in China against the Uyghur people, a muslim ethnic group north west of China. The government has detained over a million Uyghur in hopes of eradicating all non-Chinese religions in China, a stark resemblance of anti-antisemitism in Nazi-Germany. Perhaps if the Holocaust was integrated into the Chinese education system would this not have happened.

Warsaw Ghetto (1941)

"When we look at Auschwitz we see the end of the process. It's important to remember that the Holocaust actually did not start form gas chambers. This hatred gradually developed from words, stereotypes and prejudice through legal exclusion, dehumanisation and escalating violence.

Memorial and Museum Auschwitz Birkenau

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