SS Einsatzgruppen at Babi Yar

On 22 June, 1941 Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, the code name for the German assault against the Soviet Union. Caught completely by surprise, the Red Army was in full retreat in only a matter of days; Hitler and his Wehrmacht had Stalin and his Red Army on the ropes.

Operation Barbarossa also marked the commencement of operations of the SS Einsatzgruppen, head of the SS Heinrich Himmler’s mobile killing squads. Their assignment was to follow the Wehrmacht into the Soviet Union as a rear guard and eliminate any “partisans” left in their wake. In this case the term “partisan” was meant to include members of the Soviet regime, any communists, undesirables, Red Army soldiers, and of course Jews.

Unfortunately for the population of Eastern Europe the Einsatzgruppen were exceptionally efficient at the task at hand, slaughtering scores of innocent people. One particularly horrendous event took place at a ravine outside of the Ukrainian city of Kiev called Babi Yar.

The Wehrmacht took Kiev by the middle of September due to the fact that the Red Army was still in no position to even slow them down. Citing fabricate reports of partisan assaults, the Einsatzgruppen wasted very little time going about their work, rounding up twenty percent of the city’s Jewish population and preparing them for slaughter.

During the period of September 29^th to 30^th, the Einsatzgruppen moved approximately 34,000 Jews from the ghetto of Kiev, having zero regard for age or sex they included women, children and the elderly. These innocent people were forced marched from the city to a ravine outside of town, carrying what little personal belongings that they could.

Upon arriving at the ravine, the victims were herded like cattle into fenced in enclosures where they had their belongings confiscated and were told to strip naked. After being subjected to this deplorable action, the victim were marched down into the ravine where they laid face down and machine gunned in the back. After one group was killed there would be a thin layer of dirt thrown over the corpses and the next group was murdered, right on top of the last.

This continued for two days ultimately leading to the murder of approximately 34,000 Jews, one of the single most destructive acts of the Holocaust. There were reports of some survivors that managed to extricate themselves from the mass of rotting corpses, only to be found later by members of the Einsatzgruppen and murdered anyway.

Babi Yar was not the first atrocity committed by the Einsatzgruppen, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last, but it was the worst. In total, these groups would be responsible for killing between 1 and 2 million people in the wake of Barbarossa before the groups would be disbanded for more “efficient” methods of mass murder.

Copyright© 2012 R. Bertz; all rights reserved.

Rhodes, R. (2002). Masters of death: The ss-einsatzgruppen and the invention of the holocaust. New York, NY: Vintage Books.