Baxter, Ian Images of War. Hitler's Holocaust in the Ukraine 1941-1944

Rare Photographs from Wartime Archives

Before the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Ukraine was home to one of the largest Jewish populations in Europe. According to estimates, nearly one million Jews were murdered in Ukraine between 1941 and 1944. Many of these Jews were murdered in 1941 by the death squads of the Einsatzgruppen, the Ordnungspolizei battalions, Ukrainian auxiliary police units, collaborators and Wehrmacht troops. Most of these people were executed near their homes. Hitler's Holocaust in the Ukraine 1941-1944 tells of the plight of the Jewish community in Ukraine and the mass murders that took place there. It shows how German troops occupied a large part of Ukraine and incorporated it into the so-called Reichskommissariat Ukraine. Within a week of the German invasion of Ukraine, police units and their auxiliary troops, led by members of the SS Einsatzgruppen, began murdering Jewish communities. There were various massacres, including that of Babyn Yar, in which approximately 33,000 Jews were executed within two days in August 1941. One of the first massacres in Ukraine was ordered just a few days after the start of the German invasion and is known as the Lviv pogrom, in which 6,000 Jews were murdered by Einsatzgruppen and Ukrainian nationalists. Further mass murders followed, including the Kamianets-Podilsky massacre, in which approximately 23,000 residents were killed. Other murders included the massacres of Pavlohrad, Berdychiv, Odessa, Artemivsk, Sarny and numerous other murders throughout the country. With detailed captions and texts, as well as a wealth of rare photographs, this book from the Images of War series is an important study of how Ukraine was subjected to Nazi terror policies, whose ideological goal was the eradication of communism and the extermination of Jews and Ukrainians, all of whom were classified as subhuman.