Germany - 1941 (II)The Einsatzgruppen were special mobile killing squads made up of SS, SD, police and other security personnel. They were to carry out Hitler's resolve to destroy communism and Soviet Jewry.
These units had orders to execute Communist leaders and "Jews in the party and state apparatus." As the Germans marched through the Soviet Union, the Einsatzgruppen followed and with the assistance of anti-Semitic collaborators, conducted mass murders of Jews.
Approximately 1.3 million Jews were killed, one by one, by the 3000 men organized into four Einsatzgruppen in the summer of 1941. As they moved into an area, they rounded up the Jews, took them to a secluded area, appropriated all clothing and valuables, and then murdered them each one by shooting them as they stood atop ravines or mass graves they themselves were often forced to dig.
Most of the Einsatzgruppen officers were professional men. There were lawyers, a physician and a clergyman. Some of them were arrested after the war, but many were not.
They exemplify how low human beings can sink into evil and depravity.
* June 18 - Turkey and Germany sign a friendship pact.
* Summer - Himmler, head of the SS, tells Rudolf Hoss that Hitler wants the Jewish question solved once and for all, and the SS is to carry out the order. Auschwitz is the camp to carry out most of the killings. It was determined that mass gassing was the most efficient method to kill large numbers of Jews.
* June 22 - Germany invades the Soviet Union. The invasion is called Operation Barbarossa. The Einsatzgruppen follows the army and does its work. In the Soviet village of Virlbalis, for example, all adult Jews are rounded up and machine-gunned. Children are grabbed by their ankles and then their heads are thrown into walls or the street. Some of these children are buried alive.
Throughout the rest of 1941, Jews are brutally tortured and murdered in all of the countries under German control: Lithuania, Poland, the Ukraine, Romania, Hungary, Holland and Russia. The details are overwhelming and sickening. An evil sickness hangs like a mist in the air infecting all who breathe it in. It's not just Germans doing the killing, but collaborators in all these countries - many of them Christians yet in the clutches of pure hatred.
* June 27 - Nazis occupy Bialystok, Poland for the second time. A German motorized unit burns hundreds of Jews alive by setting fire to a synagogue.
In late June, in the U.S., Father Charles Coughlin rejoices in Hitler's invasion of Russia saying it is "the first strike in the holy war against communism."
* July - The British learn of Nazi massacres of Soviet Jews by breaking the German codes.
* July 1 - August 31 - Personnel from the Einsatzgruppen, the Wehrmacht, and a Romanian unit, Esalon Special, kill over 150,00 Jews in eastern Romania.
* July 10 - The 1600 residents of Jedwabne, Poland, are taken by their Polish neighbors, marched to the center of town, tortured throughout the day, then herded into a barn which is set on fire with kerosene.
* July 12 - England and the Soviet Union sign a treaty to work together to defeat Hitler.
* July 25 - Jews in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, throw gasoline bombs at Nazi cars.
* July 31 - Hermann Goring writes to SS Security Chief Heydrich to "evacuate and eliminate all European Jews presently in German-held territory. The letter mentions a 'complete solution' to European Jewry."
More later...
1 comment:
...and the world stood by and made believe it wasn't happening.Few did anything to save lives; few acepted refugees. About 11 million perished, of which more than half were Jews. No country wanted them so they died. We are told to forget it and get on with our lives. If we forget, it will happen again..it already has but the victims do not seem to count once again.
Bob Poris
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