The photograph above is one of the most well-known photographs of the Holocaust. Yet, it is from a period of the Holocaust which is seldom spoken about.
We mostly hear about the concentration camps and extermination camps. However, prior to the industrialized scale of murder, approximately two million Jews were murdered by bullets.
The summer and autumn of 1941 represented a period of critical escalation. In a matter of months, mobile Nazi killing units, which had begun shooting all adult male Jews during the invasion of the Soviet Union, then expanded to include a genocide targeting women, children, and entire Jewish communities.
Many different types of German units perpetrated mass shootings in the territories seized from Soviet forces. The most infamous is the Einsatzgruppen. However, the Einsatzgruppen was composed of 3,000 personnel. They were responsible for a wide variety of tasks, as they were deployed directly behind the entire Eastern front. The other German units included the Order Police battalions, Waffen-SS units, and German military (Wehrmacht) units also perpetrated numerous massacres. However, it wasn’t only Germans who perpetrated the crimes—frequently, they were helped by local collaborators.
I haven’t written many posts on this aspect—simply because I need to have a clear understanding, and it would require me to look at horrific footage and photographs. This does have a physical impact on me. Below is an eyewitness report of Dina Pronicheva, a Ukrainian Jewish actress at the Kyiv Puppet Theatre and a survivor of the Babi Yar massacre.
“A policeman told me to undress and pushed me to the edge of the pit, where a group of people were awaiting their fate. Before the shooting started, I was so scared that I fell into the pit. I fell onto dead bodies. At first, I didn’t understand a thing—where was I? How did I end up there? I thought I was going inside. The shooting went on; people were still falling. I came to my senses—and suddenly I understood everything. I could feel my arms, my legs, my stomach, my head. I wasn’t even injured. I was pretending to be dead. I was on top of dead people – and injured people. I could hear some people breathing; others were moaning in pain. Suddenly, I heard a child screaming, ‘Mum!’ It sounded like my little daughter. I burst into tears.”
Czech-born Viktor Trill was one of the perpetrators in testimonies at Babi Yar, he said the following:
“It is possible that on this day I shot between around 150 and 250 Jews. The whole shooting went off without incident. The Jews were resigned to their fate like lambs. After we got out, first we were issued with alcohol. It was grog or rum. I then saw a gigantic ditch that looked like a dried out river bed. In it were lying several layers of corpses. The execution began first by a few members of our Kommando going down into the ravine. At the same time about 20 Jews were brought along from a connecting path. The Jews had to lay down on the corpses and were then shot in the back of the neck. More Jews were continually brought to be shot.”
Father Patrick Desbois, a French priest, uncovered the truth behind the murder of 1.5-2 million Jews in the occupied Soviet Union by Nazi and Nazi-aligned forces. The book Holocaust by Bullets (published in 2008), detailed Desbois’ journey in locating and studying the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. In the early chapters, Desbois described his grandfather’s story of incarceration, an experience that drove him to study the Holocaust.[2] The book features a few of the hundreds of testimonies of witnesses or requisitioned villagers present at the mass executions that Desbois has collected with the help of translators, historians, and archival scholars.[3]
This memoir brings to light the emotional impacts of genocide and the intimate, human dimensions of the Nazi extermination.
Sources
https://www.ushmm.org/online-calendar/event/VEFBBABIYAR0921
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/mass-shootings-of-jews-during-the-holocaust
https://www.timesofisrael.com/names-testimonies-of-nazis-in-babi-yar-massacre-released-80-years-on/
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