Skip to main content

Search the Holocaust Encyclopedia

Trending keywords:
A group of young girls pose in a yard in the town of Eisiskes. The Jews of this shtetl were murdered by the Einsatzgruppen on September 21, 1941. Photo taken before September 1941.

Mobile Killing Squads
Mobile Killing Squads
  • Looking through the belongings of massacred Jews

    Soldiers from unidentified units of Einsatzgruppe C look through the possessions of Jews massacred at Babi Yar, a ravine near Kiev. Soviet Union, September 29–October 1, 1941.

  • Rochelle Blackman Slivka describes the formation of the Vilna ghetto

    The Germans occupied Vilna in June 1941. In October, Rochelle and her family were confined to the Vilna ghetto, where her mother died. Her father, a Jewish council member, was killed in a camp in Estonia. When the ghetto was liquidated in 1943, Rochelle and her sister were deported--first to the Kaiserwald camp in Latvia and later to Stutthof, near Danzig. In 1945, on the sixth week of a death march that forced the sisters to protect their bare feet with rags, the Soviet army liberated them.

  • Steven Springfield describes conditions in the Stutthof concentration camp

    The Germans occupied Riga in 1941, and confined the Jews to a ghetto. In late 1941, at least 25,000 Jews from the ghetto were massacred at the Rumbula forest, near Riga. Steven and his brother were sent to a small ghetto for able-bodied men. In 1943 Steven was deported to the Kaiserwald camp and sent to a nearby work camp. In 1944 he was transferred to Stutthof and forced to work in a shipbuilding firm. In 1945, Steven and his brother survived a death march and were liberated by Soviet forces.

  • Aaron Lejzerowicz

    Aaron was one of four children born to a Jewish family in the northeastern Polish town of Zdzieciol. His father was a shoemaker and, along with a business partner, he also ran a shoe store in the town. Aaron attended a private Jewish school, where he studied the Polish language and history as well as Jewish history and Hebrew.

    1933-39: On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. Three weeks later, Poland was partitioned between Germany and the Soviet Union [under the German-Soviet Pact]. Aaron and his family felt lucky. Zdzieciol was in the eastern part occupied by the Soviets so they didn't see any Germans in 1939. His family heard stories about the German treatment of Jews and were elated to see the Soviets. His father advised his children that two trades needed during war were tailoring and shoemaking.

    1940-44: In June 1941 Germany invaded the USSR. In early 1942 the Germans set up a ghetto in Zdzieciol, and on August 6 decided to liquidate it. At 4 a.m., his family heard people running; Germans and drunk Lithuanians surrounded the town. Aaron and his family were marched to a cemetery and ordered to lie face down. Professions were called out: "Carpenters! Blacksmiths!" When shoemakers were called, Aaron raised his hand, never lifting his head. A soldier hit him with a rifle and ordered him up. He was among those deported to a work camp. The rest were shot.

    Later, Aaron escaped and joined the Soviet partisans. Conscripted into the Soviet army in July 1944, he was in Germany when the war ended. He immigrated to the United States in 1947.

After the German army invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, a new stage in the Holocaust began. Under cover of war and confident of victory, the Germans turned from the forced emigration and imprisonment of Jews to mass murder. Special action squads, or Einsatzgruppen, made up of Nazi (SS) units and police, moved with speed on the heels of the advancing German army. Their job was to kill any Jews they could find in the occupied Soviet territory. Some residents of the occupied regions, mostly Ukrainians, Latvians, and Lithuanians, aided these German mobile killing squads by serving as auxiliary police.

The mobile killing units acted swiftly, taking the Jewish population by surprise. The killers entered a town or city and rounded up all Jewish men, women, and children. They also took away many Communist party leaders and Roma (Gypsies). Victims were forced to surrender any valuables and remove their clothing, which was later sent for use in Germany or distributed to local collaborators. Then the killing squad members marched their victims to open fields, forests, and ravines on the outskirts of conquered towns and cities.There they shot them or gassed them in gas vans and dumped the bodies into mass graves.

On September 21, 1941, the eve of the Jewish New Year, a mobile killing squad entered Ejszyszki, a small town in what is now Lithuania. The killing squad members herded 4,000 Jews from the town and the surrounding region into three synagogues, where they were held for two days without food or water. Then, in two days of killing, Jewish men, women, and children were taken to cemeteries, lined up in front of open pits, and shot to death. Today there are no Jews in Ejszyszki. It was one of hundreds of cities, towns, and shtetls whose Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. The rich culture of most of these Jewish communities was lost forever.

The killing squads murdered more than a million Jews and tens of thousands of other innocent people. At Babi Yar, near Kiev, about 34,000 Jews were murdered in two days of shooting. Only a few people in the general population helped their Jewish neighbors escape. Most people were afraid that they too might be killed.

The massacres of innocent men, women, and children in Babi Yar and other towns were not the crimes of hoodlums or crazy men. The executioners were "ordinary" men who followed the orders of their commanding officers. Many of the killers had wives and children back in Germany. Propaganda and training had taught many members of the mobile killing squads to view their victims as enemies of Germany. Some killers drank heavily to dull their thoughts and feelings. In addition, when they described their actions they used code words like "special treatment" and "special action" instead of "killing" or "murder" to distance themselves from their terrible crimes.

Key Dates

June 22, 1941
Killing squads deployed against Jews
German mobile killing squads, called special duty units (Einsatzgruppen), are assigned to kill Jews during the invasion of the Soviet Union. These squads follow the German army, as it advances deep into Soviet territory, and carry out mass-murder operations. At first, the mobile killing squads shoot primarily Jewish men. Soon, wherever the mobile killing squads go they shoot all Jewish men, 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, Roma (Gypsies), and Soviet political officials.

September 29–30, 1941
About 34,000 Jews killed at Babi Yar
The Germans order the Jewish residents of Kiev to assemble on Melnik Street for resettlement outside the city. In reality, those who report are directed along Melnik Street toward the Jewish cemetery and the ravine, called Babi Yar. Jews are forced to hand over their valuables, disrobe, and move into the ravine in small groups. German killing squads and Ukrainian auxiliary units shoot them. The massacre continues for two days. About 34,000 Jews—men, women, and children—are killed in this operation. In the months that follow, thousands more Jews are shot at Babi Yar. Many non-Jews, including Roma (Gypsies) and Soviet prisoners of war, are also killed in the ravine.

December 1, 1941
A killing squad commander reports 137,346 killed
In the so-called "Jaeger Report," SS Colonel Karl Jaeger reports on the killings his unit carried out in Lithuania between July 2 and December 1, 1941. He reports that his squad killed 137,346 Jewish men, women, and children. Jews in the cities of Kovno, Ukmerge, and Vilna are killed in a series of massacres throughout the summer of 1941. Almost all Jews living in small Lithuanian towns and villages are killed. Jaeger reports that only about 35,000 Jews remain, mostly as forced laborers in the Kovno, Vilna, and Siauliai ghettos.

Thank you for supporting our work

We would like to thank Crown Family Philanthropies, Abe and Ida Cooper Foundation, the Claims Conference, EVZ, and BMF for supporting the ongoing work to create content and resources for the Holocaust Encyclopedia. View the list of all donors.

Glossary

Full Glossary