The victims were then marched or transported to the killing site. Often referred to as an Aktion, a massacre typically began when Jews and other victims were rounded up or ordered to report to a central destination. According to reports sent to the Einsatzgruppen headquarters in Berlin, 33,771 Jews were massacred during this two-day period. When occupied territories came under civilian control, stationary offices of the SS and Police replaced the Einsatzgruppen and continued to conduct mass shootings. For example, over two days in September 1941, a small detachment of Einsatzgruppe C along with larger units of Waffen SS, Order Police and Ukrainian auxiliaries conducted a mass shooting of Jews in Babyn Yar (Babi Yar), a ravine outside Kyiv (Kiev). Many of the killers and victims knew one another as neighbors and colleagues. The latter helped to identify victims as well as kill them.

Units of the Waffen SS, Order Police, Wehrmacht, allied Romanian forces and local collaborators aided them. The 3,000 personnel of all four Einsatzgruppen did not conduct these killings alone. Under the cover of war and using the pretext of military necessity, the Einsatzgruppen organized and helped to carry out the shooting of more than half a million people, the vast majority of them Jews, in the first nine months of the war.

The main targets were Communist Party and Soviet state officials, Roma, and above all Jews of any age or gender. With the start of Hitler’s “war of annihilation” against the Soviet Union in June 1941, the scale of Einsatzgruppen mass murder operations vastly increased. Together with units of the Waffen SS, Order Police, and local collaborators, they shot thousands of Jews and tens of thousands of members of the Polish elites. When Germany attacked Poland in September 1939, the Einsatzgruppen also killed civilians perceived as enemies. Their tasks included identifying and neutralizing potential enemies of German rule, seizing important sites and preventing sabotage, and recruiting collaborators and establishing intelligence networks. Whenever Nazi Germany’s army marched into a country, Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and SD ( Sicherheistsdienst, the SS intelligence service) immediately followed to secure newly seized territory.

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