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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Ordnungspolizei: auf den Rollbahnen des Ostens
2012.1.544
Book with a black and white photograph of a soldier in a tank as the cover. Titled, "Ordnungspolizei" by Hans Richter. Interior includes German text and black and white photographs.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
Translated as Order Police on Battle Route of the East, this pamphlet documents the activities of the SS militarized Police in the East in 1941, with photographs of the SS police in action in Russia taking on paratroopers, guerillas, and civilians. Prominent as well are photos of the removal of Jews and their possessions, as well as forced entry of their synagogues.
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Letter from Fritz Katzmann (1906-1957)
2015.2.169
Front: Tan paper with "Higher SS and Police Leader" letterhead in upper left corner, and typewritten message. Includes additional writing in pencil, as well as blue and red crayon, and date stamp in green.Back: Continuation of typewritten message, and signature in blue from Fritz Katzmann with his name printed in pencil beneath.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
Typed letter signed by Katzmann on "Higher SS and Police Leader" letterhead. Danzig, January 3, 1943. Sent to Maximilian von Herff, Chief of SS Personnel Main Office. Katzmann reports on an SS-Standartfuhrer named Alfons Graf regarding the latter's promotion. Katzmann was an SS-Gruppenfuhrer and police leader who perpetrated genocide in Danzig, Lvov (Lemberg), and Galicia. He took part in the assassinations of the Night of the Long Knives. After the invasion of Poland, he established the Radom Ghetto. With the advent of Operation Barbarossa, he was transferred to Lvov, and was promoted to Brigadier General. He ordered the murder of approximately 60,000 Jewish men, women and children. In 1941, 80,000 Jews were relocated to the Ghetto he established in Lvov. A kindergarten had been set up for children who were all secretly murdered. In Galicia he ordered transports from Lvov to the Belzec extermination center. By the end of 1942, only 40,000 Jews remained in the Lvov Ghetto. In January 1943, another 15,000 Jews were murdered including members of the Judenrat. By the end of June 1943, after the liquidation of another 140,000 Jews and yet another promotion, Katzmann was able to declare that Galicia was Judenfrei. Transferred to Danzig, he was responsible for the liquidation of the Stutthof concentration camp and its sub-camps. After Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945, Katzmann disappeared, escaping prosecution for his crimes and living until 1957 in Darmstadt, apparently without having communicated his existence to his wife and five children.
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German Soldier Feldpost Letter Written to his Family in Munich Accompanied by Photo of Arrested Jews
2019.2.86abc
a: Green envelope addressed to "Paul Gruber," gray, torn postage stamp of Hitler in upper right corner. b: Two- sided, typed letter, front includes "Reichshof/Krakau 18.June 1943" in upper right side. Back includes "II" in the center at the top of the page. c: Black and white photo of a soldier standing in front of a large group of people standing in three lines with their arms up.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
The soldier, Sergeant Oskar Gruber, writes that he has just arrived in Krakow, and that he is currently being accommodated at a reserve hospital in a protected area, and that the zone is happily “free of Jews” (Judenfrei). Referring to a photo accompanying the letter, he reports that the last “pest” has been expelled. He hopes for his family’s sake that the British and Americans will leave them (his family) alone. He references his experience in Russia seeing many thousands dying there and that he is happy just to have survived. He goes on to say that what the Fuhrer (Hitler) has described about Jews is “far too harmless,” and that as far as he and his comrades are concerned, “the Jew is the most miserable (race) on this earth…when everything is over, and when we emerge victorious from this war, then the world will understand everything about this uncultivated race.” On the reverse of the photo is a note “Jews 17.6, please keep safe, Oskar.”
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Envelope from the SS and Politzeifuehrer Weissruthenien (Belarus)
2012.1.281
Green envelope with handwritten address to Herr and Frau Klotz with return address from F. Glager on back.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash: Handstamped envelope from the SS and Politzeifuehrer Weissruthenien (Belarus) to Breslau. This office was renamed from Sonderkommando 1B, Part of the Einsatzgruppe A operating in Russia.
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11th SS Volunteer Panzergrenadier Division Nordland Feldpost Letter Sent to Family Member (Mother)
2019.2.110ab
a: Blue Envelope with two circular ink stamps, one black, one purple with handwriting on front: "Frau Elise Müller". b: Brown letter handwritten in black with drawing of a man in uniform holding a bouquet of flowers.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
The author of this letter is a member of a Norwegian Voluntary Unit in the German army during WWII: 15 kompanie SS-Panzer Grenadier Rgt. “NORGE,” a Waffen-SS division of Scandinavian volunteers which fought on the Eastern front during WWII.
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Envelope from Der Sicherheitspolitzei (Riga, Latvia)
2012.1.282
Brown envelope with handwritten address to the Generalpostkommissar in Riga.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash: Handstamped envelope from Der Sicherheitspolitzei, Belarus to Riga, Latvia. This office was renamed from Sonderkommando 1B, part of the Einsatzgruppe A operating in Russia.
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Wartime Diary of Felix Landau (1910-1983)
2022.1.30a-o
15 typewritten pages of onion skin paper, pages 2-15 numbered at top center; first page begins with July 3, 1941.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
Felix Landau’s wartime diary begins in June 1941 in the Eastern Polish city of Lvov (Lemberg in German) and details his experiences as an SS Sargent of an Einsatzkommando unit for which he volunteered. His experiences as a participant in atrocities against Jews and Poles - the hallmark of the Einsatzgruppen - is mixed with his personal musings and his professions of affection for his fiancé Gertrude. Landau would play a role in Einsatzgruppen actions throughout Galicia.
Landau was Austrian by birth, joined the Nazi party at 21, and eventually progressed to membership in the SS. He was imprisoned for participation in Austrian chancellor Dollfuss’ assassination. Upon his release in 1937, Landau moved to Germany, married, and became a naturalized citizen. From his work in the Gestapo, he volunteered for Einsatzgruppen service after the German invasion of Russia on June 22, 1941. His diary entries commence in July 1941 and record his decision to volunteer for participation in actions in Lvov and Drohobycz. Landau is active in Einsatz activities including organizing Jewish labor and murdering Jews as a volunteer for an execution squad in occupied towns.
Landau’s full diary has been translated by Tuviah Friedman, former Director of the Institute of Documentation of Nazi War Crimes in Haifa, Israel. Mr. Friedman played a major role in the capture of Adolf Eichmann. A hard copy of the entire translation of Landau’s diary is available at Kenyon. The following entries are excerpted from the diary.
Lemberg, July 3rd, 1941: On Monday 30.6.1941, after a sleepless night I volunteered…for a Commando Operation…At 4 PM on 2 July, 1941, we arrived in Lemberg. In comparison Warsaw is harmless. Shortly upon arrival, the first Jews were shot by us. As is usual, some of the modern-time leaders become mad with a superiority complex, really imagine to be what they seem... Whilst writing the order is given to get ready. Commando operation with steel helmet and rifle, 30 rounds of ammunition…500 Jews stood on parade for execution by shooting… lined up ready to be shot…I don’t much care for shooting defenseless people-even if they are only Jews. I prefer honest open combat.
5.7.1941: …Today we might have our first hot meal…there is the smell of corpses everywhere when passing burnt houses. Time is filled out with sleep. In the course of the afternoon about another 300 Jews and Poles are put down. At a street corner we saw several Jews covered all over with sand. We looked at one another. All thought the same thing. The Jews had crawled out of the grave of the shot people… [Instead, they learn that Ukrainians had rounded up some 800 Jewish men and taken them up to the ruins of the Citadel on a hill. Landau’s Einsatzkommando unit was scheduled to shoot them the following day, but they were released and in the process a group of Wehrmacht soldiers beat them mercilessly.] …We continued driving down the road. Hundreds of Jews with blood streaming down their faces, holes in their heads, broken hands and eyeballs hanging from their sockets are running along the road…soldiers standing with cudgels thick as fists lashing out and beating anyone crossing their path… Jews heaped row upon row, like pigs, whimpering terribly. Nothing against it only they should not let the Jews run around in this state. For today we have nothing else to do…Comradeship is still good…I am disappointed…too little combat, hence this bad mood.
Drohobycz 12/7/1941: At 6 o’clock I am suddenly being woken out of my sleep. On parade for execution. Alright then, so I can play hangman and afterwards grave digger, why not? It’s …strange, it is combat one loves, and then one has to shoot down defenseless people. 23 are to be shot, amongst them the women already mentioned. They are to be admired. They refuse to accept as much as a glass of water from us. I am designated a marksman and have to shoot eventual escapees. We drive along the road for a kilometer and then turn to the right into a wood. We are only 6 men …and are looking for a suitable location for the execution and burial. A few minutes and we found such a place. The death candidates step forward with shovels to dig their own grave. Two of them are crying. The others appear to have tremendous courage. What may go through their minds at this moment? I think each has a small hope that somehow, he will not be shot after all. The death candidates are being paraded in three rows as there are not enough shovels. Strange, nothing moves in me. No pity, nothing. This is how it is, and that’s all there is to it. Only very gently does my heart beat when uncalled for emotions and thoughts awaken…And here I am today, a survivor standing in front of others in order to shoot them. Slowly the hole gets bigger and bigger, two of them are crying continuously. I keep them digging longer and longer: they don’t think so much when they’re digging. During work they are quieter. Valuables, watches and money are being put on one heap. After all of them are brought to a vacant place, the two women are made to stand at one end of the grave as first in line to be shot. Two men are already shot…in the undergrowth…The women stopped to the pit, tremendously composed and turned around. Six of us had to shoot them…three men to aim to the heart, three men to the head. I take the heart. The shots are heard and brain matter whiz through the air. Two in the head is too much.
22.7.1941: …In the morning the workers ordered arrived. When I then wanted to go to the committee of the Jews, one of its members arrived and asked for my assistance, since the Jews refused to work there. I went over there. When these arseholes saw me, they ran away in all directions. A pity I didn’t have a pistol on me, or I would have shot some down…I declared that unless 100 Jews would fall in within one hour, I would choose 100 Jews to be shot. Scarcely 30 minutes later, 100 Jews arrived and another 17 men for those that had escaped beforehand. I reported the incident and at the same time demanded that those that had run off were to be shot for having refused to work…12 hours later, 20 Jews were killed.
[Related item: 2022.1.42]
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Felix Landau Report of Pending Legal Proceedings for War Crimes
2022.1.42
half-sheet typewritten document with hole or tear near top center and hole punch near lower left, Betr.: is underlined at top left.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
Information obtained postwar on Felix Landau, probably after his arrest by Americans in 1946. The Gendarmerie command in Gramastetten had requested information. Message states that Landau is pending legal proceedings for serious war crimes committed in Poland, “including…suspicion of many murders of Jewish deportees.”
Landau had been arrested by Americans in 1946, placed in Glasenbach prison, but escaped in 1947. He would be arrested again in 1959, condemned to life imprisonment in 1962, and pardoned in 1973.
[Related item: 2022.1.30a-o]
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Office of Chief of Counsel for War Crimes Affidavit
2012.1.528ab
Tan page with typewritten information regarding SS-Officers Otto Ohlendorf and Heinz Hermann Schubert. Titled, "Office of Chief of Counsel for War Crimes."
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
Affidavit by Heinz Schubert, adjutant of Otto Ohlendorf, in charge of Einsatzgruppe D, regarding execution of Russians and Jews near Simferopol between October 1941 and June 1942. Schubert was "to see that the execution place was hidden," valuables collected discretely, etc.
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Office of Chief of Counsel for War Crimes Document
2012.1.527a-c
Tan documents with typewritten information regarding German camps in Russia. Titled, "Office of Chief of Counsel for War Crimes."
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
Documents relating to Einsatzgruppen and their respective Einsatzkommandos regarding singling out Soviet Russians from prisoner camps in the General Government; specifically, protocols for executions being discrete and not arousing suspicion; how inmates are to be separated into those considered "suspicious" and those who may be useful for labor. "Undesirables" who are to be executed include: Communist Party Functionaries, Jews, Political Commissars, and members of the intelligentsia.
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Men Assembled in Preparation for Execution
2015.2.9a
Front: Greyed black and white photograph of cold, underdressed men huddled together in a group. Barracks in the background.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash: An especially rare and graphic candid photograph with deckled edges. A large group of men, herded together, almost all bearded, clearly not dressed for the cold weather and a few bare-footed, facing forward. Various barracks-like structures lie several hundred yards behind them. Such photos were strictly forbidden by the Nazis, yet clearly taken by one of them.
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Aftermath of Execution
2015.2.9b
Greyed black and white photograph of a mass grave. Dead bodies in the ground, a line of soldiers in dark colors stand above it. Barracks in the background.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash: An especially rare and graphic candid photograph with deckled edges. Fifteen soldiers in greatcoats are marching along the edge of a pit as an officer looks down upon the bodies of the newly-killed prisoners and as another soldier in the pit appears to administer a coup de grace to a dying man with an uplifted arm. Such photos were strictly forbidden by the Nazis, yet clearly taken by one of them.
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Polizei Soldbuch
2014.1.296
Cover: Green cover with eagle and Swastika in a reef. Title 'Soldbuch zugleich Perfonalausweis.' within black border. Green binding on left side. Interior: 36 pages with numerous stamps and handwriting throughout.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
Soldbuch for member of regiment South Police Battalion 314, one Leo Markert, a Revierober Wachtmeister of the Schutzpolizei with awards including the anti-partisan badge in silver and close combat clasp in silver containing an attached foldout detailing engagements by date and place. Anti-partisan is a euphemism for Jews. Picture removed, probably to conceal identity. Entries as well for postwar internment in a British POW camp. Many engagements occurred in Ukraine in all probability as a part of Einsatzgruppen activities.
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Real Photo Polish Postcards of Nazi Atrocities
2012.1.100a
Black and white photograph of Nazis shooting a group of people with printed postcard lines and caption on back.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash: German firing squad shooting civilians in the woods near Bochnia.
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Real Photo Polish Postcards of Nazi Atrocities
2012.1.100b
Black and white photograph of Nazis undressing corpses with printed postcard lines and caption on back.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash: Post-execution photo of civilians undressing and burying bodies under watchful eyes of Germans.
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Real Photo Polish Postcards of Nazi Atrocities
2012.1.100c
Black and white photograph of Nazis filming a group of children with printed postcard lines and caption on back.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash: Germans filming female victims.
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Real Photo Polish Postcards of Nazi Atrocities
2012.1.100d
Black and white photograph of Nazis watching naked Jews with printed postcard lines and caption on back.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
Jews – men and a young boy - stripped naked, hovering over a pit awaiting execution.
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Real Photo Polish Postcards of Nazi Atrocities
2012.1.100e
Black and white photograph of a line of corpses with printed postcard lines and caption on back.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
Krakow: murdered Jews post-execution.
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Real Photo Polish Postcards of Nazi Atrocities
2012.1.100f
Black and white photograph of Jews being herded by soldiers with printed postcard lines and caption on back.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash: Jews being removed from Rzeszow, either being sent to ghetto or deported.
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Real Photo Polish Postcards of Nazi Atrocities
2012.1.100g
Black and white photograph of a Jewish man on his knees with Nazi soldiers nearby with printed postcard lines and caption on back.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
Old Jewish man, dressed in prayer garb, being made to dance while Germans enjoy his humiliation.
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Real Photo Polish Postcards of Nazi Atrocities
2012.1.100h
Black and white photograph of a group of people carrying their belongings with printed postcard lines and caption on back.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash: Jews packing belongings for trip to the ghetto in Grodno.
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Real Photo Polish Postcards of Nazi Atrocities
2012.1.100i
Black and white photograph of Jewish men standing and on their knees wearing armbands with printed postcard lines and caption on back.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
Jewish men, with armbands, forced to humiliate themselves playing leapfrog to the delight of Germans. Jewish onlookers.
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Real Photo Polish Postcards of Nazi Atrocities
2012.1.100j
Black and white photograph of children lined up with printed postcard lines and caption on back.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash: Children in Lodz ghetto, under the watchful eye of their elders, being loaded on trains for transport to death camps.
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Testimony Signed by Karl Hermann Frank
2012.1.376
White paper with printed and handwritten German. Includes three signatures on the bottom right including one from Karl Hermann Frank.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash: Karl Hermann Frank (1898-1946) was SS Obergruppenfuhrer and a prominent Sudeten German Nazi official in Czechoslovakia serving under Reich protector Reinhard Heydrich until the latter's assassination. Frank was instrumental in implementing Hitler's orders of revenge, which included the destruction of the Czech villages of Lidice and Lezaky, the murder of their male inhabitants, and the deportation of women and young adults to concentration camps. Frank was executed in 1946. Document signed twice by Frank, adding his title as deputy Gauleiter and his SS number, in which he swears: "I am German, of Aryan lineage..." he attests that he is not a Freemason nor member of any secret society, and vows his allegiance to the state.
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Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski
2012.1.393
Black and white photograph of a man in glasses in Nazi uniform.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski was highly regarded by Hitler for his brutality and 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 told Himmler that the firing squads were having a deleterious effect on the assassins, after which Himmler consulted about other methods to murder Jews, leading to the focus on gas as a more industrial solution to the Jewish problem.