Object ID
2019.2.92
Object Name
Photograph
Date
1941
Files
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Description
Two men hanging
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
Shows the hanging of two Soviet “partisans” from a gallows with no recorded date or place. A sign records their alleged “crimes” against the occupiers.
Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, marked the commencement of Operation Barbarossa. The Baltic states - Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia - were overrun in short order. As the Wehrmacht pushed ever deeper into the Ukraine and Soviet Union, the four SS Einsatzgruppen death squads were close behind. Einsatzkommandos rounded up Jews, Communists, Gypsies and other “undesirables.” Men, women, and children were marched into the forest and shot over pits or ravines. “Terrorists” or “partisans” were executed by public hanging – often en masse – on makeshift gallows, or railings of buildings, and left hanging for days on end; others were shot to death, still others were incinerated in barns. Egged on by the Nazis, local citizens could discharge their antisemitic rage at Jews, who were also blamed for their putative allegiance to the Soviet Union and the way locals were dealt with by the Soviet NKVD.
Dimensions
3 1/2 x 5 1/2"
Keywords
Operation Barbarossa, Soviet NKVD, Einsatzgruppen
Subcollection
Bullets
Recommended Citation
"Operation Barbarossa: Photograph of Nazi Atrocities" (1941). Bulmash Family Holocaust Collection. 2019.2.92.
https://digital.kenyon.edu/bulmash/1468