Yahad

Yahad

The devastation the Holocaust by Bullets caused in communities across Eastern Europe can be hard to comprehend.

For over 18 years, Yahad - In Unum has been documenting these crimes, recording micro-histories in towns and villages that fell under Nazi Occupation.

InEvidence, our interactive map of the Holocaust by Bullets, is a free-to-access interface allowing visitors to explore the horrors committed by the Nazis and their collaborators, inc. witness interviews, photos and archival material.

^ Holocaust by Bullets is the term used when the Germans (SS, Einsatzgruppen, the Wehrmacht, Police Units, etc.) and their Collaborators murdered Men, Women and Children in Eastern Europe by shooting them over open pits during World War 2.

It officially started with the German Invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, but the majority of the murders occurred in the Soviet Union (Russia, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Ukraine) and eastern Poland after the German Invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941.

Before the Death Camps were created in 1942 the Germans and their Allies would follow the same basic routine in every massacre.

They would take over the territory and then either force all the Jews to register themselves or take the lists of Jews collected by the Soviet Communists before the War (every Soviet Citizen had to carry an Internal Passport and Line #5 in the Passport stated the Nationality. Russians/Soviets considered Jews to be a Nationality so they would put “Jew” as their Nationality instead of “Russian”, “Latvian”, etc. If a person had a Russian Parent and a Jewish Parent then when the Child turned 16 and got their first Internal Passport they had to chose which Nationality they would be for the rest of their life and couldn’t change it afterwards.

Once the Germans knew how many Jews there were in the area they posted signs and announcements up stating that every Jew had to assemble at such and such a time on such and such a day for “Resettlement.” Each person could only bring 5 Kilos (11 lbs.) of hand luggage with them.

Then the People were marched from the assembly point inside the town or city to either woods or open fields where other Jews had been forced to dig deep, open pits. The People were made to walk through a “tunnel’ of Armed Soldiers.

The People were then made to throw their belongings into piles and then forced to strip naked before being marched to the open pit and shot in the back.

Many times the Germans “played” with the Victims and shot the Children before the Parents (even as the Parents begged to be shot first.) Sometimes the raped Young Girls and the Women in front of their Families and then shot them. To save bullets the Germans didn’t shoot the Babies. They either bashed them bodies against a tree or shot the Parents or Grandparent holding the Baby and the Baby fell into the pit alive until it was suffocated to death by either the other dead bodies falling on it or the dirt placed on top after the shootings.

It is believed that 2 Million Jewish Men, Women and Children were murdered by the Germans and their Collaborators during the Holocaust by Bullets Stage.

The Germans also murdered Millions of Non-Jewish Men, Women and Children in this manner (Catholic Priests and Nuns, Communists, Gypsies, the Disabled, etc.)

Eventually, the Germans decided to murder the People in a faster and cleaner way and so built the Death Camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Chełmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka and Majdanek (all in German-Occupied Poland.)

A typical Gas Chamber could murder 2,000 People at one time (in 15-20 minutes) and a typical Crematoria could burn 600 bodies a day. To make up for the shortfall the Germans also burned the bodies in open pits in the Death Camps with the corpses stacked like firewood in a Mathematical Method to burn faster and use less fuel.

This is a website compiled using German Records and Eyewitness Reports of the Massacre Sites.

There are 2,001 Documented Sites Online that you can click on and see pictures, learn about the locations’ War History and hear Witness Accounts (both from the German Killers and the Jewish Victims.)  There are 1,281 Sites that need to be put Online.

The most well-known Holocaust by Bullets Massacre Site is Babyn Yar in Kyiv, Ukraine, the USSR. From September 29-30, 1941 the Germans murdered 33,771 Jewish Men, Women and Children in an open pit. Another 150,000 Jews, Communists, Priests, the Disabled and Gypsies were murdered in the same spot at later dates. I visited Babyn Yar when I was in Kyiv in November 2007.

When I worked at the US Holocaust Museum in Washington DC I met a Latvian Collaborator who helped the Germans murder Men, Women and Children on the beach in Liepāja, Latvia in December 1941. He was still proud of the “work” he did during the War and even carried a blood-stained doll from one of his Victims. ^

www.yahadmap.org