The Killings

 
 
 

Before being killed These Jewish men are forced to dig their own graves by Waffen-ss troops.(1942)

 
 

Jewish men and boys await their death in an athletic fieldnear Lomazy

 

After a flood human bones were exposedin Babi Yar.

Jews being executed by German Einsatzgruppen.

 

The method that the Einsatzgruppen employed was to shoot their victims in ravines, abandoned quarries, mines, antitank ditches, or huge trenches that had been dug for this purpose.  The killing by shooting, especially of women and children, had a devastating effect on the murderes mental state, which hard liquor could not suppress.  Among this the primary factors that led to an alternetive method of executions.  It was found in the form of gas vans and the exhaust was piped into the truck.  the Einsatzgruppen did their murderous work in the daylight and in the presence of the local population; only when the Germans began their retreat was an effort made to erase the traces of their crimes. The job of the Sonderkommando was to open the mass graves, disinter the corpses, cremate them, and spread the ashes all over.  The einsatzgruppen left a immense record of their deeeds in the form of summary reports drawn up in Berlin on the basis of detailed reports submitted by the various units in the field. Among the most comprehensive of these reports was the Ereighnismeldung der USSR which was first issued on June 23, 1941 and was continued until Report No. 195, dated April 24,1942.