Einsatzgruppen

Mobile Killing Squads

Report dated June 26, 1943 by Kusch on tour in Ukraine and exxtermination of Jews
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1943-06-26 / Report by Journalist Kausch on a Tour in Occupied Ukraine and Crimea: “Jews were exterminated like bedbugs”

Report by German Journalist Hans-Joachim Kausch dated June 26, 1943 on a tour through occupied Ukraine and Crimea organised by the Ministry of the East. The report contains blunt and unambiguous admissions regarding the extermination of Ukraine’s Jewish population. Kausch writes that in Ukraine, “there had been 1.1 million Jews. They have been completely liquidated”. He notes that “some Hungarian and Slovak officers took photographs of executions, which later reached America”. According to Kausch, “Ukrainians mostly watched the executions with indifference”. He quotes a high-ranking official of the Reich Commissariat that “Jews were exterminated like bedbugs”.

Cover Letter to Korherr report on Final Solution of the Jewish Question dated April 28, 1943
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1943-04-28 / The Korherr Report: Nazi Statistics on the “Final Solution” Through Early 1943

This post reproduces the so called Korherr Report, a statistical report on the “Final Solution of the European Jewish Question” up to 1943 and its accompanying cover letter from April 1943. Authored by SS statistician Richard Korherr for Heinrich Himmler, the report presents – through a veneer of euphemism and bureaucratic precision – the numerical decline of European Jewry via excess of deaths over births, emigration, deportation and so-called “evacuations” and “special treatement”. The report concludes that “European Jewry since 1933 … likely lost nearly half of its population”. A substantial portion of this loss is attributed to 1,274,166 Jews “processed through camps in the General Government” (i.e. Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor), 145,301 Jews “processed through camps in the Warthegau” and 633,300 Jews “evacuated in the Russian territories”.

Letter dated October 27, 1942 by Himmler to Prützmann on the extermination of the Ghetto Pinsk
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1942-10-27 / Himmler’s Order to Exterminate the Pinsk Ghetto

On October 27, 1942, Heinrich Himmler issued an order to Hans-Adolf Prützmann, the Higher SS and Police Leader in Ukraine, commanding to “immediately clear and annihilate the Ghetto in Pinsk”. The only exemption was to be 1,000 Jewish forced laborers, who were to be handed over to the Wehrmacht. However, if their secure confinement could not be guaranteed, they too were to be “annihilated.”

Meeting transcript dated June 8, 1943
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1943-06-08 / Erich Koch, Reichskommissariat Ukraine: “The Jews Are All Gone”

Transcript from June 8, 1943, of a meeting between Adolf Hitler and Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of the Wehrmacht High Command. Hitler recounted a conversation with Erich Koch, Reichskommissar for Ukraine. Koch stated, “I am losing 500,000 Jews here. I have to remove them, because the Jews are the element of unrest,” and went on to explain, “there are no craftsmen left. The Jews are all gone.”

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1942-03-06 / Power Struggles in the Nazi Occupation: Minsk Prison Mass Shooting of January 1942

In a report dated 6 March 1942, Oberregierungsrat Paul Haensel presented findings from his inspection trip to Minsk. According to prison officials and legal personnel, “approximately 280 civilian prisoners were taken from the prison in Minsk by the SD, led to a pit, and shot”, with another 30 prisoners executed shortly afterwards “since the pit’s capacity had not yet been fully used”. Haensel concluded there was “no justification for this mass shooting without any due process”. The killings were “allegedly carried out to combat typhus”, yet, as Haensel noted “there were no cases of typhus in the prison either before or after the incident”. The Minister for the Eastern Territories, Alfred Rosenberg, protested the executions to Heinrich Himmler, prompting a written response from Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), on 25 March. Heydrich claimed the situation had been misunderstood. According to him, 328 prisoners were shot on January 28, 1942 as the prison was a typhus hotspot. Heydrich closed his letter by warning Rosenberg’s deputy and Gauleiter Alfred Meyer to be cautious about believing reports coming from Minsk, also citing as example “the accusation of improper Jewish evacuations”.

Stahlecker Report on extermination of Jews in the Baltics until October 15. 1941
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1941-10-00 / The October 1941 Stahlecker Report: Genocide in the Baltics

The Stahlecker Report, submitted after October 15, 1941, offers an account of how Einsatzgruppe A, under the command of Walter Stahlecker, conducted mass killing operations across Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia during the early months of the Nazi occupation of the Baltics. The German authorities deliberately incited and staged “self-cleansing” pogroms. But the report also states that “it was expected that pogroms alone would not solve the Jewish problem in the Eastern territories,” and that as a result, “extensive executions were carried out by special commandos.” According to the report “the total number of Jews liquidated in Lithuania amounts to 71,105” and “in Latvia, a total of 30,000 Jews have been executed so far”. By mid-October 1941, the total number of people executed under Einsatzgruppe A stood at 135,567.

Memo of June 5, 1942 on gas vans
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1942-06-02 / SS-Officer Just’s Memo on Gas Vans: “97,000 have been processed using 3 deployed vehicles”

Memo dated June 5, 1942, authored by SS-Hauptsturmführer Willy Just of RSHA office II D 3 a (Motor Vehicle Department of the Security Police) on technical modifications to the gas vans used in mass killing operations. Just reports that “since December 1941 97,000 have been processed using 3 deployed vehicles, without any defects occurring in the vehicles” and “the known explosion in Kulmhof (Chełmno) is to be considered an isolated case due to an operating error”. He proposes the following “technical modifications to the special vehicles currently in operation and those under production”, among other things ventilation slots on the upper rear wall to allow “a rapid inflow of CO without causing overpressure”. The proposal was reviewed by Walther Rauff, head of the Motor Vehicle Department, on June 10, 1942. He approved the implementation of the modifications on a prototype vehicle.

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1942-08-12 Swiss Cardiologist Robert Hegglin’s 1942 Account of Mass Killings in Riga / Latvia

The Swiss cardiologist and medical captain Robert Hegglin participated in the so-called third medical mission of the Swiss Red Cross, which took place in Riga, Daugavpils, and Pskov between 18 June and 26 September 1942. Over the course of several months, he documented his experiences in detail in his diary—from train journeys through ravaged Latvia and Russia to clinical cases in overstretched hospitals. Among his most entries is a report on the mass shootings of Jews in Nazi-occupied Latvia: “…based on the reports available to me from German soldiers, officers, and Latvians, that nearly 100,000 Jews have been shot in the Riga area alone since the German occupation. […] If the Germans truly require such bloody atrocities, then they are unfit to become the masters of Europe.”

1944 Swiss Report: Arthur Nebe Fled with Orders for Extermination and Hostage Shootings
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1944-09-01 Swiss Report: SD Sources Claim Former Chief of Einsatzgruppe B Arthur Nebe Fled with “orders concerning the extermination of Jews”

On September 1, 1944, Swiss envoy Hans Frölicher sent a letter to Swiss Foreign Minister Marcel Pilet-Golaz reporting on news he had picked up in Berlin. According to information from the SD (Security Service), the fugitive head of the Reich Criminal Police Office and former chief of Einsatzgruppe B, Arthur Nebe, was “carrying a large amount of material with him – notably orders concerning the extermination of Jews, the shooting of hostages, and other punitive actions”. At the time, the SD feared he might hand this evidence over to the Allies. In reality, however, Nebe had not fled abroad – he was hiding near Berlin and was eventually captured by the Gestapo in January 1945. Footage of a mass gassing carried out by Einsatzkommando 8 of Einsatzgruppe B was discovered in his Berlin apartment after the war.

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