Marzo 1

"Einsatzgruppen." Einsatzgruppen. N.p., 2 Mar. 2006. Web. 31 Mar. 2016.

The Einsatzgruppen were special killing units that operated in German-occupied Europe.
Their mission was defined as the combating of all anti-German elements in hostile
country behind the troops in combat. Many of the members of the group were the
intellectual elite. Out of the twenty-five Kommando leaders fifteen of them held the title
of PhD. Trials were taking too long and Reinhardt Heydrich ordered that people must be
shot or hanged without trial based on their ethnic/racial ties. The first three weeks of the
Polish Campaign of the Einsatzgruppen resulted in over 15,000 deaths. There are records
that state gestapo members were questioning whether or not they should shoot the Jews in
hopes of shooting not being the answer, but Heydrich replied, of course.(n.a, n.p) There
were groups A-D and out of all the groups group D was the most gruesome. While they
tried to keep these shootings secret for a while towards the end there were so many to be
executed that they took place in semi open areas where Non- Jewish people were able to
watch. Horrid accounts claim that they saw massive blood covered pits filled with people
of all ages and sexes, as well as drunk SS officers shooting people covered in blood
themselves. Other survivors live to tell the stories of how when they were shot they did
not die and removed themselves from the pit, and lived to tell that most of the people in
the pit werent dead and were buried alive. One survivor says that she fled the sight
before any Nazi officials came back but other survivors that were aimlessly wandering
and were forced to bury the remainder of the corpses or pack others into trucks to be sent
to the crematoria. After they were done assisting they were shot themselves. Many men
could not handle the psychological toll that was put onto them and these were the elite of
the Nazi Party. Many accounts deemed this method of killing even too gruesome for the

Marzo 2
most radicalized Nazis. Hitler and the Nazi party looked to the gas chambers as a more
humane method of killing.
"The Einsatzgruppen." The Holocaust. N.p., 19 July 2012. Web. 31 Mar. 2016.

The Einsatzgruppen was the first wave of the final solution. The group was made up of
people from the SS, as well as conscripts and volunteers. It was also common for doctors
and the highly elite to be a part of these groups. Some of the first Einsatzgruppen were
not even used to exterminate Jews, but rather to eliminate political threats, dissenters, or
potential resistance leaders. The Einsatzgruppen grew and had to be broken into four
groups; A, B, C, and D. Each group had about 1,000 men. They would travel in after the
German army went through and their task was to identify, round-up, assemble, and
exterminate the Jews and carry out any other undesirable duties. They had to have strict
operation rules to conceal what actions they were actually committing. They took place in
abandoned parts of towns or out in open fields to avoid the Aryan or non-Jewish
population. Many kept very precise documentation on the murdering. They documented
the numbers and the racial origins of those they killed. The reports stated whether they
were Jews, Jewesses, communists, or whatever other nationality they were killing. With
all of the precise documentation there were members of the Einsatzgruppen documented
which said that men broke down, or who refused to commit such acts. It is also recorded
that all of the men who were a part of the shooting were heavily intoxicated before they
performed their jobs. The officers had to be numb before they carried out the tasks they
were asked to perform. No one in their sane state would be able to shoot men, woman,
and children nonstop day and night without feeling a pang of emotion or hysteria.

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"The Holocaust: The Einsatzgruppen." The Einsatzgruppen. Jason Levine, 7 Apr.
2006. Web. 31 Mar. 2016.

There were many Jews living in Germany and the areas surrounding Germany by the
1900s. There were a total of roughly 10 million Jews in this area before the start of the
Holocaust. Many countries were practicing anti-Semitism at the time but Jews decided to
stay there in hopes of everything blowing over. The Einsatzgruppen went into effect for
the first time after the invasion of Poland. The population of Polish Jews was about 3.3
million. The Einsatzgruppen overall killed over 1.4 million Jews in a matter of four years
just by straight shooting. The Einsatzgruppen had plans of causing more turmoil across
the world. Hitler had an Einsatzgruppen created to kill the Jews in Palestine. The group
was called Einsatzgruppe Egypt and when it arrived in Palestine was scheduled to kill the
half a million Jews who had fled there. Thankfully the group was diverted elsewhere and
never carried out the acts. If it would have caused turmoil in the Middle East the history
of Jews in the Middle East may have been different, and not for the better.
Wiesel, Elie, and Marion Wiesel. Night. New York, NY: Hill and Wang, a Division of
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006. Print.

Night tells the story of Elie Wisel and how he survived the Holocaust. His mother and
sister were sent to the crematoria during their first selection. Elie was sent with his father
from Birkenau, to Buna, then to Buchenwald. He faced cold, starvation, and death all
around him. Elie lost his father right before he was liberated. Elie survived the Holocaust
but was deprived of everyone and everything that made him happy.
During the first chapters of the book we hear of Moshe the Beadles experience in the
woods. He was taken on a truck and was ordered to get out in the middle of the woods.

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He was forced to dig his own grave and wait in a line to offer his neck to the SS officers
and Gestapo. Moshe the Beadle was one of the very few to escape the horror scene with
only a wound in his leg. For the rest of the people they were not so lucky. The
Einsatzgruppen was the prequel to the death camps. Elies mother and sister were killed
in the gas chambers in the book. According to numerous sources the death squads were
even to brutal for the Nazis. They invented the gas chambers that were used throughout
the book as a more humane way of killing the Jews because shooting them and burying
them alive was too gruesome. The gas chambers were the main way to exterminate the
Jews. The Nazis would have used the systematic shooting of them with the
Einsatzgruppen instead of the gas chambers if it wouldnt have had such horrible
psychological effects on the officers, and if it would have used less supplies.