The Einsatzgruppen were SS mobile units attached to the regular German army (Wehrmacht) tasked with the elimination of civilian elements deemed hostile to the Reich. In the Polish campaign of 1939, they executed members of Poland’s intelligentsia including political leaders, college professors and priests, as well as Jews. The scale of murder increased dramatically during Operation Barbarossa, Hitler’s assault on the Soviet Union and the Ukraine in June 1941. Four Einsatzgruppen, each subdivided into mobile Kommando units, were to operate along the front from north to south. Their victims included Roma and Sinti, Communist party officials (Commissars), “mental defectives” and especially Jews: Jewish men, women, and children of all ages were to be executed.
The Einsatzgruppen leaders themselves were highly educated Nazi careerists, some with doctorates and law degrees. One was a Protestant pastor and theologian. Another had two PhDs. All were personally selected by Reinhard Heydrich, head of Reich Security under Heinrich Himmler, both for their level of education and their degree of fanaticism. The Einsatzgruppen Kommando groups worked with the German Order Police, local militia groups and collaborators as they cut a large swath across the Baltic States, Eastern Poland, the Ukraine and Soviet Union. Victims would be rounded up with the help of locals, ordered to report to a central location (e.g., a town square), marched or driven to remote sites, and, having been forced to undress, shot over ravines, cliffs, ditches, sand pits, quarries or graves they were at times made to dig themselves. All the while family and friends they had known a lifetime stood by anxiously awaiting their turn.
Interviews conducted by French Catholic priest Father Patrick Desbois with surviving witnesses - formerly neighbors of the murdered Jews - enabled him to piece together aspects of the infrastructure of execution that facilitated the murder of Jews by the Einsatzkommandos (Holocaust by Bullets; In Broad Daylight). While there were variations in details from community to community, Father Desbois is painfully clear that the systematic murder of Jews depended on auxiliary and local police on one hand, but importantly on the conscription and active participation of local neighbors for jobs such as providing transportation to the murder site; grave digging and filling the gravesite after an “Aktion,” and provision of food and drink for the executioners.
Holocaust historian Wendy Lower (The Ravine:A Family, a Photograph, a Holocaust Massacre Revealed) also identified patterns of collusion between non-Jewish locals and the Germans. Teenage girls were conscripted into gravedigging. Ukrainian police were employed for collecting the Jews to be murdered. The presence of the Germans seemed to release years of barely suppressed rage against Jewish neighbors by the Ukrainians. Jews were assaulted and mocked even as their homes were pillaged. Jewish women-including teenagers- were raped by local militia. Even babies were not spared the monstrous barbarity.
Lower’s Ravine documents her determined probing into the background of a photograph depicting the murder of a Jewish woman and her two children on the edge of a ravine near the Ukrainian town of Miropol in October, 1941. The mother is pictured kneeling over the edge of this ravine, her head wreathed in smoke from rifles fired at point blank range-blank by a Ukrainian militia man and a German officer. She is clutching the hand of the barefoot young boy with another child-a girl-nestled in her apron, barely discernable through the plume of smoke- before falling- holding her children close- into the depths of the ravine to lay among Jewish neighbors who had already met the same fate.This photograph evokes the depthless horror of the systematic murder of Jews throughout the territory defiled by the Einsatzgruppen and their collaborators.
The Einsatzgruppen were ultimately responsible for the murder of 1.5 to 1.7 million Jews throughout German-occupied Baltic countries, Eastern Poland, the Ukraine and the. Soviet Union. Father Desbois and Dr. Lower draw our attention not only to the means and methods of the mass murder of Jews, but as well to the unbearable truth of an extensive landscape of unmarked mass graves, shrouded in silence, concealing a dark history. There were more Jews murdered by the Einsatzgruppen squads and their collaborators than perished in Auschwitz, notwithstanding that Auschwitz has become a veritable metonym for the Holocaust.
Other “atrocity” photographs in this collection include: 2012.1.397 and 2012.1.100d. The former, the “Last Jew in Vinnitsa” shows an unidentified Jewish man about to be shot by a member of Einsatzgruppen D. German historian Jurgen Matthaus places this event in Berdichev and not Vinnitsa. More than 35,000 Jews were murdered in Berdichev in 1941.The latter is a photograph transformed into a post World War II Polish postcard and shows Jews awaiting execution in the forest near the Polish town of Bochnia, circa 1942.
--Michael D. Bulmash, K1966
Browse the Bulmash Family Holocaust Collection.
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Postcard from Rabbi Goldbaum Glusk, Poland to Rabbi Bamberger, Germany
2014.1.264
Front: Tan postcard with printed red postcard lines and text. Includes writing in black ink and several black hand stamps.Back: Message written in black ink. Includes several purple hand stamps.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
Rabbi Shalom Tzvi Goldbaum of Glusk (Lublin), entreats Rabbi Nathan Bamberger of Wurzburg, Germany, for financial assistance in order to marry off his daughter because "the time has come" to do so. Letter written in Hebrew, with Rabbi stamps in three different languages: Hebrew, Polish, and Russian. Rabbi Goldbaum, who was born in 1867 in Hrubieszow, Lublin, Poland, but resided in Kiev, Ukraine, was one of the more than 33,700 Jews murdered in a single operation over a two-day period at Babi Yar on September 29, 1941. Marched to the outskirts of Kiev in small groups, the victims were stripped, forced to lie in the ravine and machine-gunned. Rabbi Goldbaum, who had four children, was 74.
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Letter from Friedrich Jeckeln
2012.1.387
Typewritten letter on "Abschnitt IV der Schutzstaffeln der NSDAP" stationery. Includes Nazi insignia and signature in blue.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
As Commanding SS General of Einsatzgruppen, Friedrich Jeckeln was responsible for the deaths of over 100,000 Jews, Romanians, and Slavs. As SS Obergruppenfuhrer and police chief in eastern Russia, he controlled all Einsatzgruppen mass executions and partisan operations in his district. Jekeln was responsible for the systematic slaughter of men, women, children, and the elderly at Babi Yar, Kiamanets-Podilskyi, and Bubula. Captured by Russians, he was hanged at Riga in 1946.
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Broadside Announcing the German Occupation of Poland
2012.1.572
Tan poster with red borders. Includes Nazi Eagle and Swastika on top. Includes two portions of text, one in German and one in Polish. The German side is titled, "An die Bevölferung!" The Polish side is titled, "Obywatele!"
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
Red-bordered broadside bearing Nazi Eagle device at top and announcing the German occupation of Poland. Titled in German and Polish: "To the population!" and reads, in part: "... According to the will of the Fuhrer and high command of the armed forces, German troops have marched into your country. In the areas occupied by German troops, Army Commanders have taken over governing authority. Their orders as well as the orders from all German military authorities are to be followed precisely... Strikes are forbidden, additionally, passive resistance and sabotage of all types will be considered an enemy act against the German armed forces and will be dealt with accordingly. Each individual should follow orders given to him for his own welfare as well as for the welfare of the community..."
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German Propaganda Justifying Invasion of Poland
2014.1.439
Brown leaflet titled, "Das Totenfeld der Volksdeutschen in Polen."
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
An imprint by the German authorities justifying the invasion of Poland. The leaflet, in German, reports on the alleged systematic massacre of the of ethnic Germans and claims that the Poles had killed 58,000 innocent civilians since the end of World War I. In small part "... Even by 1931, one million Germans had been displaced from their homes by the Poles. The German-Polish pact of January 1934 did not even bring the expected changes, but instead... more Polish rabble-rousing and terror in connection with their chauvinistic organizations and their Polish rape-and-torture administrations. The German-Polish contract was just a cloak for the Polish Government to continue their oppression of Germans... We have already informed the world press, that this Polish blood orgy happened against unarmed German men, women and children. The Bromberg night was just the beginning of a campaign of terror and murder against every single German in Poland..." The Bromberg incident, dubbed by German propagandists as "Bloody Sunday," involved the alleged massacre of ethnic Germans in the city of Bromberg (Bydogoszcz), which the Nazis used to further inflame public opinion against the Poles. The German government claimed "our special investigation group already found hundreds of mass graves. We could open just a few of them, because of the winter weather. We already identified 12,857 bodies. In the spring we will be able to open all those graves and identify those killed. The Chief of civil administration founded an administration for finding and rescuing ethnic Germans, which has been ordered to investigate how many Germans were killed since the outbreak of the war... The total number of people murdered by Poles is actually 58,000. These victims of Polish terror were not just found at Bromberg. The field of dead extends to the Silesian and mid Polish sector. Even in these areas, thousands of Germans have been displaced as cattle and had been shot by the Polish Army with machine guns. The German nation paid a large amount of blood for this, the Polish nation will be burdened forever..." Sadly, such German propaganda is still cited by some today as "proof" of Polish atrocities toward ethnic Germans living there.
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German Broadside Warning French Civilians Against Sabotage
2019.2.28
Two large, bold printed titles on each half of page, each followed by a paragraph, "KRIEBEL" printed in lower right side of each half of page
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash: Broadside printed in both German and French warning French civilians that sabotage directed at military communications is forbidden and will be met with severe punishment, including possible death. By way of example, it states that one Parisian factory employee named Henri-Jules Guerin of Paris had cut a cable, was apprehended by local citizens, court-martialed, and sentenced to death. In effort to maintain good relations with the free population, all saboteurs must be handed over to the German military authorities immediately and thus avoid the use of force against the citizenry. The announcement is signed in type at the conclusion by one Divisionkommandeur Generalmajor Karl Kriebel.
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Ukrainian Affidavit of Non-Jewish Ancestry
2014.1.33
Front & back: Document with columns of printed text in German, Russian, and Polish. Further information: This Ukranian document lists the specific items that identify a person as Jewish. The final paragraph is a statement to be given denying Jewish ancestry.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
Sworn affidavit of non-Jewish ancestry. Ukrainian. July 7, 1940. Typed document printed in German, Ukrainian and Polish, listing the specific items which identify a person as Jewish. Beneath is a statement to be given denying Jewish ancestry according to aforementioned Paragraphs 1 and 2. The affidavit concludes: The "provisions of Paragraphs 1 and 2 shall apply accordingly."
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“Personal-Bericht” (Staff Report) from Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski
2012.1.392
Tan document titled "Personal=Bericht" (Staff Report). Includes printed and typewritten information with signature on back side.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
This document is Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski's assessment of a soldier. Bach-Zelewski was highly regarded by Hitler for his brutality and his improvisational skills. As SS general and general of the Waffen-SS assigned to the Russian front, Bach-Zelewski was a leader of the Einsatzgruppen, and was thus responsible for many atrocities on the eastern front in which he took a personal part. In October 1941, after 35,000 people had been executed in Riga, he proudly wrote "there is not a Jew left in Estonia." He actively participated in massacres of Jews in Minsk and Mogilev in Russia. Bach-Zelewski claimed to have lectured Himmler after the Minsk executions, telling him that the men of the firing squad were now ruined for life, that they were destined to become nervous wrecks or ruffians. Himmler asked Arthur Nebe to end the suffering of these murderers as soon as possible by considering other killing methods more humane than shooting. In July 1943, Bach-Zalewski received command of all anti-Partisan actions in Belgium, Belarus, France, the General Government, the Netherlands, Norway, Ukraine, Yugoslavia, and parts of Bialystok. In practice, his activities remained confined to Belarus and contiguous Russia.
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Feldpost Postcard from SS Organization Managing Resettlement of Ethnic Germans
2012.1.283
Front: Black and white photograph of a busy street with a trolly and doubledecker bus.Back: Message handwritten in pencil and addressed to Marie Jenner.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
Feldpost card with handstamp from Volkdeutsche Mittelstelle Ausseldung Galizien, the Ethnic Germans' Welfare Office in Galicia, Poland. This postcard includes a handstamp from this SS Organization responsible for the resettlement of Volksdeutsch (ethnic Germans) in occupied territories and also involved in the confiscation of Jewish properties.
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Members of the Nazi SS SIPO, Headed by Heydrich, Stationed in the East
2012.1.103
Front: A black and white photograph of three men in Nazi uniforms with pencil writing around the photograph.Back: Printed postcard lines and message written in pencil.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
Real-photo postcard from 1940 with picture of members of a commando unit of Heydrich's SIPO stationed in the East.
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Lineup Prior to Assassination of "Partisans and Jews" in Minsk
2016.1.44
Front: Image of many men lined up, four Germans in uniform stand apart from them; Back: handwriting in blue ink
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash: Photograph taken prior to an execution by a Nazi soldier. On verso is solder’s writing in which he describes the lineup of partisans and Jews and states that the “snipers came first” but the partisans “cried like children.” Germans invaded the Soviet Union as part of Operation Barbarossa on June 22, 1941, and Minsk, in Belarus, was attacked immediately. It was the hub of significant partisan resistance, as well as the location of a large Jewish Ghetto.
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Operation Barbarossa: Photograph of Nazi Atrocities
2019.2.92
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.
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Operation Barbarossa: Photograph of Nazi Atrocities
2019.2.93
Man hanging from tree during winter
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
Photograph records a lone partisan hanging from a tree. A date on the back of the photo records the event as occurring December 1941. The village in which it occurred is illegible.
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.
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Postcard Written in Yiddish from Lida, Belarus under Russian Control, to Palestine Just Prior to German Invasion
2014.1.273
Front: A tan postcard with orange printed postcard lines and text. Includes writing in black ink, a blue and white postage stamp and black and purple hand stamps.Back: Message in black ink.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash: Card mailed several months before the German invasion of Belarus, which was under the control of the Soviet Union at this time.
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Official Document with W. Filderman Signature Stamp Regarding Extra Religious Services
2012.1.67
Half sheet of typewritten message in Romanian.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
A note regarding the obligatory nature of the Synagogue's extra religious services on December 1st, "for the Crown and country." William Filderman was an important leader of the Jewish community in Romania. As a former classmate of Ion Antonescu, he was able to prevail upon him to hold back on deporting Jews to Nazi death camps as a consequence of which many Romanian Jews survived the Holocaust.
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Feldpost Postcard from Member of Police Battalion 303 in Krakow
2014.1.249
Front: A sepia photograph of an orante buildling and trees with a printed caption.Back: Tan postcard with black printed postcard lines. Includes a message and address in green ink, black and purple hand stamps and a line of writing in black ink.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
Police Battalion 303 helped make up the Police Regiment South which, along with Einsatzgruppe C, contributed to the mass murder of Ukrainian Jews. Police Battalion 303 was ultimately under the control of Friedrich Jeckeln. In 1941, it played a role in the mass shooting of Jews in Berdichev (4,144), Zhitomir (18,000) and Babi Yar. At Babi Yar, this Battalion was attached to Otto Rasch's Einsatzgruppen C. Paul Blobel, commander of Sondercommando 4a, was responsible for organizing the mass execution of Jews in a ravine near Kiev. Along with local collaborators, Ukrainian police, Police Battalion 45, and assorted Sipo/SD officers, Police Battalion 303 participated in the murder of 33,771 Jews over a two-day period. Babi Yar was the largest single mass shooting of civilians on the Eastern front.>/p>
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Censored Postcard from Odessa, Ukraine to Palestine
2014.1.233
Front: A tan postcard with red printed text and lines with writing in black ink. Includes a blue postage stamp, as well as one purple and two black hand stamps.Back: Message written in black ink.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
In approximately three months from the date of this letter, the Nazis and their Axis allies would invade the Soviet Union. In August, the Romanians laid siege to Odessa, a port town on the Black Sea. While half of the Jewish population of 180,000 fled, 80,000 remained after the occupation by the Romanians. Blaming the Jews for a bomb that had exploded in military headquarters, the Romanians shot and burned alive 19,000 Jews. Approximately 20,000 more were murdered in another village. What remained of the Jewish community was ordered into two ghettos, where many perished from disease, exposure, and starvation. Others were sent to Romanian camps and ghettos where they were eventually murdered.
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Waffen-SS Feldpost Postcard from Commander of the Order Police Headquarters, Ukraine
2014.1.301
Front: Tan paper with pencil handwriting. Small pencil message on lefthand margin. Back: Left side continues pencil message. Black stamp in lower lefthand corner. Right side has address over printed green ink. Black stamp over right corner.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash: The Order Police served under the SS and were often accompanying the Einsatzgruppen after the Wehrmacht invaded Poland in 1939, participating in mass murder of Jews and partisans in German-occupied territory of Ukraine and Soviet Union.
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Feldpost Card of Gorlice, Poland, from Member of Reserve Police Battalion 45, Involved in Babi Yar Massacre
2019.2.114
Greyscale postcard image of a street in Gorlice with some blue ink handwriting on the front as well as the back
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
Postcard from member of the infamous Police Battalion 45, commanded by Martin Besser, which, three months after this card was written, would assist Friedrich Jeckeln, Paul Blobel, (Sonderkommando 4a), and Otto Rasch (Einsatzgruppe C) in the mass murder of more than 33,000 Jews over the course of two days in a Kiev ravine. The battalion massacred men, women, and children in other towns as well, including Vinnitsa, Berdichev, and Shepetovka.
The writer of this postcard reports that he “has happily landed in Gorlice. It is swarming with Jews, which you can recognize by their armbands.” He mentions cryptically that his unit will probably immediately go on “vacation.”
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Eyewitness Testimony from Soldier Who Witnessed the Kovno, Lithuania, Pogrom
2014.1.298ab
Envelope front: Addressed to Hernn Aloif Bock. Two stamps, one black feldpost on upper right corner, one purple in lower left corner. Blue ink, handwritten.Back: Return address written on top in blue ink with a rectangular purple stamp underneath. Letter: Handwritten in blue ink on both sides. Pencil marks underlining a good portion of the writing on the front, with some pencil symbols in the upper lefthand corner.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
Holocaust documentation by a soldier who witnessed the Kovno, Lithuania, pogrom in July 1941 first-hand. Feldpost letter from FB04583, 6.Kranken-Kraftwagen-Zug Armee Sanitaets Abteilung (Army Ambulance Medic Unit 6th Detachment), a medic who bears witness to the deadly antisemitic activity of the local population. While they were clearly organized and supported by the Germans, the locals played a significant role in the massacre of the Jews. The author writes "Since the 25th of July [SIC - 25 June, the handwritten date on the letter and the feldpost cancel is July 5th] we have been in the capital of Lithuania, in Kowno. In the first days here it was a regular shooting gallery. There were thousands of Jews, including also wives and children, which were arrested by the Lithuanian Heimwehr, hauled away and shot..." The Heimwehr refers to the 'Homeland Security' force of Lithuanian locals (often ethnic Germans) recruited by the Waffen-SS to support police and partisan activities.
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Dr. Ludwig Israel Laszky Cover from Urzedow (Lublin Province) to Dr. V. Kunz in Zurich, Switzerland
2016.1.09
Front: Addressed to 'Dr. (Y) Kuniz', two postage stamps - red '1 ZLOTY' above a green '10'. Back: Handwritten return address of Dr. Lanszky, Censor tape at bottom.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash: According to Grazyna Sawa-Adamska, Dr. Ludwig Laszky and his wife Sara moved from Vienna to Urzedow toward the end of 1941 and he was treating Jewish patients. They were two of approximately 300 Jews murdered by Nazis in Urzedow.
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The Einsatzgruppen and Operational Situation Report: USSR no. 17
2022.1.35a-p
16 page copy of typewritten report with page numbers listed at top left for pages 2-16, page 1 states ‘Berlin, den 9.Juli 1941’ at top right.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
The Einsatzgruppen were SS mobile units attached to the regular German army (Wehrmacht) tasked with the elimination of essentially civilian elements deemed hostile to the Reich. In the Polish campaign of 1939, they murdered members of Poland’s intelligentsia including political leaders, college professors and priests, as well as Jews. The scale of murder increased dramatically in Operation Barbarossa, Hitler’s assault on the Soviet Union and the Ukraine in June 1941. Four Einsatzgruppen, subdivided into mobile Kommando units, were to operate along the front from north to south. Their victims included Romani (“Gypsies”), Communist party officials or Commissars, “mental defectives”, and especially Jews. Jewish men, women, and children of all ages were murdered. Nor were infants spared.
The Einsatzgruppen leaders themselves were highly educated Nazi careerists, some with doctorates and law degrees. One was a Protestant pastor and theologian. Another had two PhDs. All were personally selected by Reinhard Heydrich, head of Reich Security under Heinrich Himmler, both for their level of education and their degree of fanaticism. The Einsatzgruppen Kommando groups worked with the German Order Police, local militia groups and collaborators in their assigned areas of responsibility as they cut a large swath across Eastern Poland, the Ukraine and Soviet Union. Victims would be rounded up with the help of locals, ordered to report to a central location like a town square, marched or driven to remote sites, and, having been forced to undress, shot over ravines, cliffs, ditches, sand pits, quarries or graves they were either made to dig themselves or as a service provided by locals; all the while, family and friends stood by watching and waiting - naked themselves - for their turn to come. As reported by Father Patrick Desbois (In Broad Daylight), locals who had known the Jews in their community may be conscripted for grave digging, providing transport, filling the gravesite with dirt and lime after an operation, clothing transport, provision of food and drink for the executioners, and even witnessing the slaughter. Over time, vans rigged for carbon monoxide poisoning were utilized to spare the shooters from the increasingly evident psychological impact of murdering Jews.
The Einsatz brigades, assisted at times by both Waffen and Wehrmacht soldiers, were ultimately responsible for the murder of more than 1.5-1.7 million Jews.
All Einsatzgruppen field commanders were responsible for submitting reports to Heydrich’s Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) in Berlin detailing their operations. These “Operation Action Reports” were compiled, dated, numbered, labeled “secret Reich business,” and distributed to German elites and high-ranking military and police officers. The Operation Action Reports and their gruesome contents were discovered in Berlin after the war and utilized in war crimes trials in Nuremberg.
Copy made in the 1960s of Operational Situation Report USSR. It appears that elements of the July 7th OSR are fully integrated in this case into the July 9th OSR. The English translation is from the National Archives and Records Administration, Hermann Feuer. Source: Holocaust Education and Archive Research Team.
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The Einsatzgruppen and Operational Situation Report: USSR no. 19
2022.1.34a-g
7 page copy of typewritten report with page numbers listed at top center for pages 2-7, page 1 states ‘Berlin, den 11.Juli 1941’ at top right.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
The Einsatzgruppen were SS mobile units attached to the regular German army (Wehrmacht) tasked with the elimination of essentially civilian elements deemed hostile to the Reich. In the Polish campaign of 1939, they murdered members of Poland’s intelligentsia including political leaders, college professors and priests, as well as Jews. The scale of murder increased dramatically in Operation Barbarossa, Hitler’s assault on the Soviet Union and the Ukraine in June 1941. Four Einsatzgruppen, subdivided into mobile Kommando units, were to operate along the front from north to south. Their victims included Romani (“Gypsies”), Communist party officials or Commissars, “mental defectives”, and especially Jews. Jewish men, women, and children of all ages were murdered. Nor were infants spared.
The Einsatzgruppen leaders themselves were highly educated Nazi careerists, some with doctorates and law degrees. One was a Protestant pastor and theologian. Another had two PhDs. All were personally selected by Reinhard Heydrich, head of Reich Security under Heinrich Himmler, both for their level of education and their degree of fanaticism. The Einsatzgruppen Kommando groups worked with the German Order Police, local militia groups and collaborators in their assigned areas of responsibility as they cut a large swath across Eastern Poland, the Ukraine and Soviet Union. Victims would be rounded up with the help of locals, ordered to report to a central location like a town square, marched or driven to remote sites, and, having been forced to undress, shot over ravines, cliffs, ditches, sand pits, quarries or graves they were either made to dig themselves or as a service provided by locals; all the while, family and friends stood by watching and waiting - naked themselves - for their turn to come. As reported by Father Patrick Desbois (In Broad Daylight), locals who had known the Jews in their community may be conscripted for grave digging, providing transport, filling the gravesite with dirt and lime after an operation, clothing transport, provision of food and drink for the executioners, and even witnessing the slaughter. Over time, vans rigged for carbon monoxide poisoning were utilized to spare the shooters from the increasingly evident psychological impact of murdering Jews.
The Einsatz brigades, assisted at times by both Waffen and Wehrmacht soldiers, were ultimately responsible for the murder of more than 1.5-1.7 million Jews.
All Einsatzgruppen field commanders were responsible for submitting reports to Heydrich’s Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) in Berlin detailing their operations. These “Operation Action Reports” were compiled, dated, numbered, labeled “secret Reich business,” and distributed to German elites and high-ranking military and police officers. The Operation Action Reports and their gruesome contents were discovered in Berlin after the war and utilized in war crimes trials in Nuremberg.
Copy made in the 1960s of Operational Situation Report USSR. The English translation is from the National Archives and Records Administration, Hermann Feuer. Source: Holocaust Education and Archive Research Team.
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Copy of Broadside Announcing Curfew Times for Jews in Brody, Poland (Ukraine)
2016.1.59
Text separated by vertical line at center, left side in Ukrainian, right side in German
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
German broadside announcing – in both Ukrainian and German – curfew times for Jews in Brody, Poland (Ukraine) in July 1941. In September 1939, not long after the invasion of Poland by Germany, Brody was occupied by the Soviet Union under the terms of the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact. When Germany launched Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union in June 1941, Brody was occupied by Einsatzgruppen. By May 1943, with the assistance of local Ukrainian units, all the Jews of Brody were either murdered of deported to the Belzec and Majdanek killing centers.
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Illustrating the Persecution of Civilians in Poland
2012.1.399
Black and white photograph of a man shaving the beard of a man as men in uniform surround them. Back includes pasted news clipping.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
Soldiers enjoy humiliating a Jewish man by shaving his beard.
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Official Document with W. Filderman Signature Stamp Regarding Forced Labor Camps
2012.1.69
Typewritten documents on onionskin paper in Romanian.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
A document issued by the Federation of Jewish Communities Unions in Romania regarding the rules for all Romanian Jews, following the implementation of forced labor camps. It describes how every Jewish association should relocate funds, what efforts must be made by everyone from local communities, and what helping activities must begin as soon as possible. Signed (in part) by Dr. Wilhelm Filderman, a prominent lawyer and Jewish leader in Romania who endeavored to save Jewish lives in an horrifically antisemitic Romania.