Flame


The Einsatzgruppen


"Once I really am in power, my first and foremost
task will be the annihilation of the Jews."

Adolf Hitler




On June 22, 1941, the German army invaded Soviet territory. They did not enter alone - small units of SS and police, some three thousand men in all, were also dispatched on special assignments. Their task to kill the Jews on the spot - Jews, but not only Jews; communists, Gypsies, political leaders, and the intelligentsia were also killed. Order police battalions, Waffen SS units, the Higher SS, and Police Leaders also carried out the mass executions.

Shot

Their primary targets, Jews, were concentrated in the areas within easy reach of the German army. Almost nine in ten Jews were urbanized, living in large cities where the rapid advance of the army and the swift action of the mobile killing units left them unaware of their fate, paralyzed, unable to act.

There were five stages to the killing. The invasion was followed immediately by the roundup of Jews and other intended victims. Those rounded up were marched to the outskirts of the city where they were shot. Their bodies were buried in mass graves - large ditches were filled with bodies or people who had been shot one by one and buried layer upon layer.

The residents of these cities could see what was happening. They could hear the shots and the victim's cries. Most often, they remained neutral, neither helping the killer nor offering solace to the victim. Yet neutrality helped the killer, never his victim.
Woman

Frequently, local pogroms were encouraged by the Wehrmacht and the SS, especially in Lithuania and Latvia. Every Jew killed brought the Nazi's closer to their goal.

Auxiliary police comprised of local natives became indispensable to the understaffed killing units. Local collaborators volunteered.

Before this phase of the killing ended, more than 1.2 million Jews were killed. Their bodies were piled high in mass graves throughout the occupied Soviet territories. (1)
(1) Berenbaum, Michael, editor. Witness to the Holocaust. New York: HarperCollins. 1997. pp. 112 - 113

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The Shoah is the entrance into our collection of documents, testimonies, trial transcripts and photographs documenting the brutal history of the Einsatzgruppen mobile killing units. Here we also explore early German antisemitism and the roots of the shoah. Shoah is a Hebrew word meaning "Desolation." It is the preferred term for the "Holocaust" by Jewish scholars.

Our section on "Holocaust Revisionism," which is in reality merely thinly veiled antisemitism, contain articles on modern antisemitism and hate groups as well as rebuttals to holocaust denial. Michael Philips' excellent spoof on "Revisionist" methodology, How to be a Revisionist Scholar, is contained here.

If you are a return visitor to this web site you may find our additions page useful in keeping track of what is new or noteworthy.



The Shoah | Revisionism | Additions


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The candle at the top of this page burns in memory of the six million Jewish men, women, and children murdered by the Nazis.


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Electric Zen
Ken Lewis
April 17, 1998
Rev. 1.2.2