Hitler’s Holocaust in the Ukraine 1941-1944

Prior to the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Ukraine was home to one of the largest Jewish populations in Europe. It is estimated that almost one million Jews were murdered in the Ukraine between 1941 – 1944. Many of those Jews killed in 1941 were by the Einsatzgruppen death squads, Order Police Battalions, Ukrainian Police Auxiliary units, collaborators and Wehrmacht forces. Most of those people executed were killed close to where they lived. Holocaust in the Ukraine tells the plight of the Jewish community in the Ukraine and the mass killings that took place there. It shows how German forces occupied a large part of German-occupied Ukraine, and incorporated it into what was known as the Reichskommissariat Ukraine. Within a week of the German invasion of the Ukraine police units and their auxiliaries, under the guidance of members of the Einsatzgruppen began murdering Jewish communities. There were various massacres including Babyn Yar where some 33,000 Jews were executed during a two-day period in August 1941. One of the first massacres in the Ukraine was ordered only days after the start of the German invasion known as the Lviv pogroms where 6,000 Jews were murdered by Einsatzgruppen and Ukrainian nationalist. This was followed by other wholesale murders which included the Kamianets-Podilsky massacre where some 23,000 residents were killed. Other killings too included the Pavoloch, Berdychiv, Odessa Artemivsk Sarny massacrews and numerous other killings across the country. With detailed captions and text together with a host of rare photographs, this Images of War book is an important study of how Ukraine was subjected to a Nazi policy of terror with an ideological goal of eradicating communism and destroying the Jews and the Ukrainians, who were all classed as sub-human.

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