After Army Group North’s push through the Baltic countries on their way to Leningrad, Einsatzgruppe A (EG A) was tasked with ridding the newly occupied territories of “undesirables”, including Jews, Roma, intelligentsia, teachers, capitalists, commisars, homosexuals, and the mentally ill. On 1 December 1941, Einsatzkommando 3, a subordinate of EG A tasked with actually conducting the killings, finished operations in Lithuania. Their commander, SS Colonel Karl Jaeger, issued a very detailed report of his command’s activities, “Complete tabulation of executions carried out in the Einsatzkommando 3 zone up to December 1, 1941”. The cold and clinical “Jaeger Report” is one of the most complete and most horrifying documents of the Holocaust. The last page:

“Total carried forward 99,804
12.9.41 City of Wilna 993 Jews, 1,670 Jewesses, 771 Jewish children 3,334
17.9.41 City of Wilna 337 Jews, 687 Jewesses, 247 Jewish children and 4 Lith. Comm. 1,271
20.9.41 Nemencing 128 Jews, 176 Jewesses, 99 Jewish children 403
22.9.41 Novo-Wilejka 468 Jews, 495 Jewesses, 196 Jewish children 1,159
24.9.41 Riess 512 Jews, 744 Jewesses, 511 Jewish children 1,767
25.9.41 Jahiuna 215 Jews, 229 Jewesses, 131 Jewish children 575
27.9.41 Eysisky 989 Jews, 1,636 Jewesses, 821 Jewish children 3,446
30.9.41 Trakai 366 Jews, 483 Jewesses, 597 Jewish children 1,446
4.10.41 City of Wilna 432 Jews, 1,115 Jewesses, 436 Jewish children 1,983
6.10.41 Semiliski 213 Jews, 359 Jewesses, 390 Jewish children 962
9.10.41 Svenciany 1,169 Jews, 1,840 Jewesses, 717 Jewish children 3,726
16.10.41 City of Wilna 382 Jews, 507 Jewesses, 257 Jewish children 1,146
21.10.41 City of Wilna 718 Jews, 1,063 Jewesses, 586 Jewish children 2,367
25.10.41 City of Wilna 1,776 Jewesses, 812 Jewish children 2,578
27.10.41 City of Wilna 946 Jews, 184 Jewesses, 73 Jewish children 1,203
30.10.41 City of Wilna 382 Jews, 789 Jewesses, 362 Jewish children 1,553
6.11.41 City of Wilna 340 Jews, 749 Jewesses, 252 Jewish children 1,341
19.11.41 City of Wilna 76 Jews, 77 Jewesses, 18 Jewish children 171
19.11.41 City of Wilna 6 POW’s, 8 Poles 14
20.11.41 City of Wilna 3 POW’s 3
25.11.41 City of Wilna 9 Jews, 46 Jewesses, 8 Jewish children, 1 Pole for possession of arms and other military equipment 64
EK 3 detachment in Minsk from 28.9-17.10.41:
Pleschnitza Bischolin Scak Bober Uzda 620 Jews, 1,285 Jewesses, 1,126 Jewish children and 19 Comm. 3,050

Prior to EK 3 taking over security police duties, Jews liquidated by pogroms and executions (including partisans) 4,000

Total 137,346

Today I can confirm that our objective, to solve the Jewish problem for Lithuania, has been achieved by EK 3. In Lithuania there are no more Jews, apart from Jewish workers and their families. . . .

The distance between from the assembly point to the graves was on average 4 to 5 Km. . . .

I consider the Jewish action more or less terminated as far as Einsatzkommando 3 is concerned.

Those working Jews and Jewesses still available are needed urgently and I can envisage that after the winter this workforce will be required even more urgently.

I am of the view that the sterilization program of the male worker Jews should be started immediately so that reproduction is prevented. If despite sterilization a Jewess becomes pregnant she will be liquidated. . . .

(signed)
Jager SS-Standartenfuhrer”

On 19 September 1941, the Wehrmacht’s Army Group C captured Kiev in the Ukraine. The Germans were initially welcomed as liberators (Stalin starved 7,000,000 Ukrainians to death less than ten years earlier) but the brutal treatment of civilians by the occupiers quickly turned the Ukrainians against the Germans. On 25 September, the German military governor, the rear area police commander, and the SS Obergruppen commander for Army Group C, and the Einsatzgruppen C commander decided to execute “Action T4” in Kiev.

Action T4 was originally the nickname for the National Socialist directive of forced euthanasia of handicapped and mentally ill people, but by the program’s formal cancelation in August 1941 the term Action T4 had grown to be used to justify the death of all “undesirables”, such as Jews, Poles, Gypsies, the disabled, Communist party members, capitalists, teachers, local leaders, intelligentsia, and anyone deemed a threat to National Socialist ideology. Action T4 in Kiev would be carried out by Einsatzgruppen C.

Einsatzgruppen is German for “deployment group”, a typically innocuous term that Nazi’s like to use for the various parts of the “Final Solution”. They were charged with the forced “de-politicization” of occupied territories, or more accurately the de- politicization of everyone who disagreed with National Socialism. They acted as judge, jury, and executioner, and were answerable to no one outside of the SS chain of command. The executions would occur at Babi Yar (Old Woman’s Gully) near several cemeteries inside Kiev.

On 28 September, 1941, a trench 150 m long by 30m wide by 15m deep was dug by Soviet prisoners. Posters were placed around Kiev demanding all Jewish residents report the next day with all of their valuables, documents, and warm clothes to a street corner in Western Kiev. The next morning more than 30,000 showed up expecting to resettle.

Many arrived before dawn, hoping to get a good seat on the train. Many packed for a long journey, and one survivor noted that many women wore strings of onions about their necks. The massive group was “processed” down Melnyk Street toward Babi Yar. First they gave up their luggage, then valuables, then they progressively lost more clothes. By the time they heard the gunshots and figured out what was going on they were naked, vulnerable, and hustled between rows of German SS and Ukrainian collaborators in groups of ten to the trench. Anyone would resisted was beaten and pushed along.

At the trench, the Jews were forced to lie down in rows on top of the corpses of the previous ten, then an Einsatzgruppen officer walked by and shot each in the head. When the bodies reached near the top, they were covered over. The process lasted all day, and into the next.

33,771 Jews were murdered in the largest mass execution to date in the war in Europe. But the National Socialists were only just beginning.

The German and Soviet occupation of Poland in the summer of 1940 was a brutal affair, and thousands joined the growing resistance. Nonetheless, tens of thousands of political prisoners were rounded up, some for the simple offense of not seeing a German walk past and bowing quickly enough. Most, if not outright killed, were sent to a growing series of concentration camps that sprung up across the country. The largest and fastest growing camp was outside of the Polish town of Oswiecim.

On 19 September, 1940, resistance member and former cavalry troop commander, Witold Pilecki volunteered to be captured and get sent to the camp where he would conduct a detailed reconnaissance, and set up a resistance movement inside if possible. The next day he was picked up in a random sweep and nearly beaten to death. A few days later he was transferred to the camp outside of Oswiecim, more commonly known to the Germans as Auschwitz.

Pilecki stayed in Auschwitz for the next three years and sent weekly reports to the Polish Underground which eventually made their way to British Intelligence. Additionally, he led and coordinated the resistance movements inside the camp, synchronized escapes, planned a camp uprising, and set up services and amenities for the prisoners including a news service and a secret hospital (the Germans killed sick prisoners). But it was his documentation of the Holocaust that would be the most benefit to Mankind.
Pilecki documented the abuses of the guards, the conditions of the prisoners, and later the daily arrival of Jews and other “undesirables”. His organization meticulously detailed the extermination of hundreds of thousands of people by the National Socialists. His reports were the first evidence of genocide on an industrial scale to reach the outside world. He escaped the prison in 1943, after the guards made known that the Polish prisoner camp “staff” (Pilecki was a baker) was going to be liquidated and replaced with new arrivals.

Pilecki fought in the Home Army against the Germans for the rest of the war. After the German surrender, the Soviets rounded up any Poles with connections to the British backed Polish Government-in-Exile. Witold Pilecki, a man who survived the absolute worst the National Socialists could devise, was arrested, given a show trial, and executed by Soviet socialists for “Crimes against the People.”

The night before he was executed, he told his wife, “”I cannot live. They killed me because Oświęcim (Auschwitz) was just a trifle compared with them (the Soviets).”