The Einsatzgruppen were German mobile killing units that operated within German-occupied territory after Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. The Einsatzgruppen rounded up Jews, Gypsies, the disabled, Communists, and prisoners of war and then murdered them.

One of the more well known mass killings conducted by the Einsatzgruppen was at Babi Yar, where 100,000 people were slaughtered.

By the spring of 1943, it is estimated that the Einsatzgruppen had murdered approximately 1.25 million Jews and thousands of others.

The following pictures show the Einsatzgruppen preparing their victims and then killing them.

Victims on the Way to Their Death

• Jews on their way out of the city of Kiev

Undressing and Waiting

• Jewish women and a child
• Close-up of a young mother with her two children
• Unidentified people sit among piles of clothing
• German police look on as Jewish women are forced to undress
• Naked Jewish women, some of whom are holding infants, wait in a line before their execution

Shooting

• Jewish men are forced to dig their own graves
• A group of Soviet civilians kneeling by the side of a mass grave
• Member of Einsatzgruppe D prepares to shoot a Ukrainian Jew kneeling on the edge of a mass grave
• The execution of civilians
• A German policeman shoots individual Jewish women who remain alive in the ravine

After the Killing

• German police look through the clothing of people killed
• Two women talking to a member of an Einsatzgruppe
• The remains of shoes and clothing of people killed in the ravine at Babi Yar