Mobile Killing Squads; Einsatzgruppen

Inquiry Question #2
Alexio Cabanero
Payton Miesner-McClaflin
 Why should our classmates learn
about this part of History?
Silence and indifference to the suffering of others

can perpetuate these problems.

Who were the Einsatzgruppen?
Were squads composed
primarily of German SS
and police personnel.
Under the command of the
German Security Police
officers.
Normal men with families
and morals.
What men were apart of the Einsatzgruppen?
The 4,000 killers had to deal with
the fact that they killed people, so
a lot of them drank heavily to
help suppress the feelings and
emotions of being murderers
Their job was to kill people, so
they started to emotionally shut
down and just only do things
physically and try to distant
themselves from their crimes.
What Were the Einsatzgruppen Considered?
Heinrich HImmler who was appointed
Reichsfuhrer- SS in 1929 and from its
very inception he saw the SS as an elite
force, as an elite unit, the partys
Praetorian Guard! with all the SS
personnel selected on the principles of
racial purity and unconditional loyalty to
the Nazi Party.
How big did the SS expand?
Between 1925 and 1929 the
SS was considered merely a
battalion of the SS and
numbered no more than 280
personnel. And by the end of
1932, the SS had over 50,000
members
 Why was the Einsatzgruppen created?
The Einsatzgruppen were formed as a special action group
to function behind the advancing German Army
immediately deal with the region's non-combatants.
To implement the Nazi agenda of "cleansing" these
regions of Jews and
To establish and secure immediate political order by
liquidating all persons perceived as enemies of the Reich.
These non-Jewish "enemies" were political functionaries,
communists, intellectuals and other such influential
people of any former regime.
Anyone who could stir public sentiment against the Nazi
agenda could very well consider themselves an enemy of
the Reich.
What did the Einsatzgruppen do?
The men killed about 2 million
men, women, and children
Their victims were Jews,
Disabled, Political officials,
Gypsies, and anyone else they
believed were a threat.
How Persuasive/Moving the Einsatzgruppen was?

Sometimes, the killing squads did

not even have to do the dirty
work. Before they arrived, local
residents had already taken the
law into their own hands and
decided to kill all the local Jews
that they could find
How did the Einsatzgruppen kill the people?
The Einsatzgruppen killed
a lot of their victims with
guns, but that started
getting expensive
Once they realized that it
was expensive, they
started using Gas Vans
Babi Yar
Killed at least 34,000 Jews in a 2 days
of September 1941. Russian estimates
put the number of killed at nearly
100,000
The Einsatzgruppen kept the jews of
Kiev in 3 synagogues
They went without food and water for
2 days before being killed
They then were lined up along open
pits, and shot to death as their bodies
fell in
Whats a Gas Van? (Gaswagen)
It was a vehicle equipped as a
mobile gas chamber
The vehicle had an air-tight
compartment for victims, into which
exhaust fumes were transmitted
while the engine was running
They died of suffocation because
they werent able to get Oxygen
How Consistent was the Einsatzgruppens killings?
At first, the mobile killing squads
shoot primarily Jewish men
Soon, wherever the mobile killing
squads go they shoot all Jewish man,
women and children, without regard
for age or gender.
By the spring of 1943, the mobile
killing squads will have killed more
than a million Jews and tens of
thousands of partisans, Gypsies and
Soviet political officials.
Mass Murder of Jews in Latvia
The Latvian census taken in 1935 identified
93,479 Jews living in throughout the
country, of these, it is estimated that about
70,000 perished in the Holocaust, the vast
majority at the hands of Einsatzgruppen
death squads in December 1941. The
totality and speed with which the mass
murder of Jews in Latvia was achieved
meant that most families were completely
destroyed with no one left to mourn or
even inquire about the dead.
Mass Murder in Lithuania
In Kovno 1,500 Jews were killed on
the night of 25 June and 2,300 on
the 26 June 1941.
December 29, 1942 report
The most often cited Einsatzgruppen
document may be an alleged Himmler
report to Hitler on anti-partisan warfare
dated December 29, 1942 and in which in
one place there is a claim that 363,211 Jews
were killed in August-November 1942
"these alleged massacres are mostly
unconfirmed by any other document: it is
unknown where, when, and by whom they
were performed.... How is it possible to kill
363,211 persons without leaving a major
amount of documentary traces?"
The Taking of Kretinga
On arrival in Kretinga, Jackys (commander)
immediately ordered all the adult men of
the town to assemble in the market square,
separating the Jews into a designated
corner.
The gentiles were soon released, but the
Jews were subjected to humiliation and
torture. They were forced run around the
square in a kneeling position while the
Germans and Lithuanians beat them
mercilessly with belts and clubs.
This humiliation continued through the day
and at twilight the Jews were forced into the
synagogue in Megova Street.
Humiliation and Executions (Kretinga cont.)
Other Jewish men were imprisoned in the local
jail under the watch of Lithuanian guards. In
the board of inquiry after the German defeat, a
witness, Antanas Betzanicius, reported that he
had seen 80 Jews being taken out of the cells to
the Akmena river bank and forced to crawl
from the bank down to the river.
Those who did not crawl fast enough were
severely beaten with clubs.
Between July 11th to the 18th, 120 men were
taken from the jail to be shot at the Jewish
cemetery and in mid-August, 20 women and
children, members of families of 15 men
already murdered, were executed.
What is the most significant lesson our classmates
should learn after this presentation?
The suffering that the people went through should

not be silenced and ignored, if so it can perpetuate

these problems.