Map of Einsatzgruppen Massacres in Eastern Europe
(June 1941 - November 1942)
Following the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22,
1941, the Germans turned from forced emigration of
Jews to mass murder. Special action squads, or Einsatzgruppen,
moved on the heels of the
advancing German army with orders to kill any Jews they could find. Some residents of the occupied regions - mostly
Ukrainians, Latvians and Lithuanians - aided the killing
squads by serving as auxiliary police.
The units acted swiftly, taking the Jewish
population by surprise - they would enter a town and round up all
the Jews as well as many Communist party
leaders and Roma Gypsies.
Victims were forced to surrender valuables and remove their clothing;
then the killing squad members marched their victims to open fields, forests or ravines where they shot
or gassed the victims before dumping the bodies into mass graves.
The killing squads murdered more than a million Jews and
hundreds of thousands of other innocent people.
Sources: United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum
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