This page is referenced by:

1. 1 2016-11-03T08:47:15-04:00 media/Einsatzgruppen.jpeg Aktionen: Terror Unleashed 26 plain 2020-06-24T11:27:05-04:00 Between 1938 and 1944, mobile killing squads, or Einsatzgruppen, were utilized to ruthlessly murder thousands of men, women, and children.  The Einsatzgruppen that followed after the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 exterminated entire communities as part of its mission to eliminate the "Judeo-Bolshevik threat."

   ...they found themselves on the narrow ground above the precipice, twenty to twenty-five metres in height, and on the opposite side there were the Germans' machine guns.  The killed, wounded, and half-alive people fell down and were smashed there.  Then the next hundred were brought, and everything repeated again.  The policemen took the children by the legs and threw them alive down into the Yar.
        - Witness to the Aktion at the Babi Yar

   The German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 marked a turning point in World War II.  Around this time, the Nazis formed and trained four special mobile units of the SS, know as Einsatzgruppen.  The Einsatzgruppen were supplemented with soldiers from the Order Police and the Waffen SS.  Their assignment was to follow the German army as it advanced into Soviet territory and kill all the Jews they encountered along the way.  Typically, the Jews taken by the Einsatzgruppen were forced to march into isolated areas, where they were lined up, executed and dumped in mass graves.

   It's almost impossible to imagine what nerves of steel it took to carry out that dirty work down there.  It was horrible... That evening we were given schnapps again.
        - As quoted in Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning

   Early attempts to remove Jews from Nazi-occupied Europe included a plan for resettlement of Czechoslovakian Jews in the Lublin-Nisko region of southeast Poland.  The first transport relocated 600 Jews from Czechoslovakia on October 26, 1939.  When this program ceased in early February 1940, an estimated 78,000 Jews had been forcibly removed from their homes and transported to Poland.  There was little or no accommodation for basic human needs, and as a result, thousands of people died in the winter of 1939-40.  The program was discontinued due to a lack of rail transport and administrative support.
   
   In the summer of 1940, the Nazis considered a plan to remove all the Jews in Europe and transfer them to the French-controlled island of Madagascar.  This was contingent on the Nazis' ability to have access to a large fleet of ships, which it intended to acquire through victory over Great Britain.  The plan was abandoned when it seemed clear that a timely defeat of Britain was unlikely.
   
   
   
   
   
   For audio tour content, click here: