German Sources

There are two main types of German sources available for researchers. First, the Einsatzgruppen reports. Each commando wrote a report of their activities, the execution of opponents, as well as the atmosphere amongst the local population, the state of the agriculture and industry, the political opinions, the living standards... Precise documents that allow us to establish an accurate estimate of each village’s victims and have insight on the internal organization of the Einsatzgruppen.

The second type of sources are those of the German trials that took place after the war against Nazi criminals. The hundreds of thousands of pages that were drafted as preparation for these trials can be found at the Federal Archives (Bundesarchiv) of Ludwigsburg, in Germany. These documents are made up of depositions of Einsatzgruppen members, of police battalions, of Waffen-SS, of German civilians that worked in the occupied territories (entrepreneurs, qualified workers...), of Volksdeutsche (also known as German leaders), Jewish survivors, and local witnesses. These precious documents have valuable information relating to shootings, the life in the ghetto, even the command chain amongst the German officials. These archives are essential as they fill in blanks that exist today in large part due to the Nazi’s destroying their own documents at the end of the war.

The Soviet Sources

Simultaneous to the liberation of the first Soviet territories occupied by the Nazis, a Soviet Extraordinary State Commission was created to investigate the crimes committed and the damage done by the Nazis and their collaborators. Working within a local framework, the Commission interviewed eye-witnesses of the massacres and documented all the mass graves using medical and legal expertise. Additionally, it worked to make a list of victims, unfortunately often incomplete due to an inability to identify the corpses found. These archives, indispensable for research regarding the Holocaust by Bullets, have been accessible to western historians since the fall of the Soviet Union. Once criticized for their Soviet phrasing, today the Commission’s work is largely used in Western historiography.

Another important source: the KGB trials prosecuting the Nazis and their collaborators. The first trial was in 1943 in Krasnodar. The depositions and acts of these trials represent a considerable portion of archives. These documents provide a precise insight on the genocide in each village, as well as the organization of the local police, and its pivotal role as an intermediary between the German occupants and the villagers.

The Nazis used different strategies in order to round up the local Jews throughout the occupied Soviet territories before shooting them. They would put up posters that would announce, for example, registration for work, or a displacement of Jews to a camp or even Palestine. The creation of ghettos, whether it be open or closed, made the identification and rounding-up processes much easier. In certain cases, the German and local squadrons would encircle a village at dawn, go door to door arresting Jews and then bring them directly to the shooting site. A range of different sites were used as round-up points: the market square, a school building, stables, and other places were the local population could watch their Jewish neighbors being arrested.

The column of Jews being led to the shooting was a reoccurring part of the genocide throughout the occupied Soviet territories. By truck, by cart, often by foot, the victims sometimes had to walk kilometers through villages and countryside, in the cold or in the heat, after many weeks or months of deprivation, just to arrive at their execution site. The extermination had already begun at the time of the aforementioned march. The weak that could not follow the rhythm imposed by the guards were beaten to death or shot. In these columns there were not just victims and perpetrators, but also locals requisitioned to drive the carts to the execution site, forced to carry back the Jews’ belongings after the shooting. Sometimes the victims did not yet know that they were being led to their death. They would find out after a bend in the path where they would come face to face with the already-dug ditches.

Once the victims arrived onsite, the ditches in which they would be shot had already been dug by either other Jews or requisitioned villagers. Occasionally, they had to dig them themselves. Then, between beatings and orders, men, women, children, and elderly were forced to undress completely, even in winter. They had to leave their belongings on the ground or in the carts, then were frisked for valuables.

After undressing, the victims were forced to line up on the edge of the ditch or inside the ditch. The Einsatzgruppen, or the members of other Nazi units, shot the victims in the back, in the nape of the neck, in the head. Often, the young children were thrown, alive, into the ditch or shot while still in their mother’s arms. Group after group, every victim fell into the ditch as the perpetrators shot at them. Many were only injured as the requisitioned villagers filled in the ditches behind them.

Once the victims were murdered, the ditches filled in, the perpetrators and policemen would riffle through the victim’s belongings in search of valuables. The belongings were then loaded onto trucks or carts sometimes by the murderers themselves, but more often by the villagers. They were then stocked in a building, then imported into Germany or sold at auctions by the German or local administration. The Jews’ homes and the ghetto were searched and looted occasionally down to the very last plank of wood by the Germans, the police and a part of the local population.

The extermination of the Jews in the death camps was a secret and hidden practice. Nazis used all possible means in order to destroy any evidence of genocide. One of the peculiarities of the Holocaust by Bullets in the East is that there exists a large amount of photographic and video evidence of the shootings. The executions were heterogeneous: the shootings happened during the day as well as at night, in the summer and the winter; publicly and secretly. The last remaining witnesses of the genocide are still alive and they remember the extreme violence. The killing units were often aware of the presence of the local population during the shootings, but it did not matter to them. Sometimes they even forced people to be present during the execution of their Jewish neighbors.