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====The Einsatzgruppen====

====The Einsatzgruppen====

Alongside the German Army were special mobile units whose job it was to locate and kill Jews, Gypsies, Soviets commissars, and others deemed unfit in the areas controlled by the army.  These ''Einsatzgruppen'' (“special units”) were also aided by local populations who felt the Germans had relieved them of Soviet occupation as well as sharing a hatred for Jews and other minorities.  Making no difference between young or old, male or female, the Einsatzgruppen killed 70,000 Jews at Ponary, near Vilnius, Lithuania; 33,771 Jews were machine-gunned in a ravine known as Babi Yar near Kiev, Ukraine, between September 28-29, 1941;  9,000 Jews were killed at the Ninth Fort at Kaunas, Lithuania, on October 28, of which half of the dead were children.  On November 30 in the Rumbula Forest outside of Riga, Latvia, between 25,000-28,000 were killed.   

Alongside the German Army were special mobile units whose job it was to locate and kill Jews, Gypsies, Soviets commissars, and others deemed unfit in the areas controlled by the army.  These ''Einsatzgruppen'' (“special units”) were also aided by local populations who felt the Germans had relieved them of Soviet occupation as well as sharing a hatred for Jews and other minorities.  Making no difference between young or old, male or female, the Einsatzgruppen killed 70,000 Jews at Ponary, near Vilnius, Lithuania; 33,771 Jews were machine-gunned in a ravine known as Babi Yar near Kiev (read the great Russian poem "Babi Yar" by Yevgeny Yevtushenko), Ukraine, between September 28-29, 1941;  9,000 Jews were killed at the Ninth Fort at Kaunas, Lithuania, on October 28, of which half of the dead were children.  On November 30 in the Rumbula Forest outside of Riga, Latvia, between 25,000-28,000 were killed.   

The killings were done in first and second waves, with the bodies buried in mass graves.  When the Soviets threatened and carried out counter-offensives to reclaim lost territory, special units made up of concentration camp inmates (''sonderkomandos'') would return to the sites, dig up the bodies, and burn them in mass pyres, destroying the evidence of their crimes.  The number of individual persons killed by the Einsatzgruppen has been estimated at a bare minimum of one million.

The killings were done in first and second waves, with the bodies buried in mass graves.  When the Soviets threatened and carried out counter-offensives to reclaim lost territory, special units made up of concentration camp inmates (''sonderkomandos'') would return to the sites, dig up the bodies, and burn them in mass pyres, destroying the evidence of their crimes.  The number of individual persons killed by the Einsatzgruppen has been estimated at a bare minimum of one million.