1.5 MILLION HOLOCAUST VICTIMS WERE MURDERED BY EINSATZGRUPPEN

Before Hamas filmed Oct. 7 attacks, Nazis recorded Holocaust massacres in Ukraine

'Ukraine: Holocaust Ground Zero' examines open-air massacre phase of Holocaust using photos and film footage captured by Nazis and collaborators in Europe's 'zone of exception'

Before Hamas filmed Oct. 7 attacks, Nazis recorded Holocaust massacres in Ukraine

Hitler and Goebbels on-set at a German film (public domain)

In the history of the so-called “Holocaust by Bullets,” World War II German army chaplains protested the mass murder of Jewish children on one occasion.

After SS firing squads known as Einsatzgruppen murdered the Jewish men of Bila Tserkva, in Ukraine, four military chaplains expressed concern for children left in an abandoned building following the massacre.

“We found the 90 Jewish children, some of them infants, in a hopeless situation: packed together, whimpering, crying, hungry and thirsty in the midday heat,” wrote chaplain Ernst Tewes in his account of the massacre, which took place in August 1941.

As one of two German army chaplains to witness the plight of the Bila Tserkva orphans, Tewes observed dozens of Jewish mothers forced to watch their children through a window for days without being able to help.

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“The children and their mothers, like so many others before them, were to be shot by an SS Sonderkommando,” wrote Tewes. The chaplain’s formal complaint about the massacre of orphans was sent to the Sixth Army Group commander.

This largely forgotten account of humanitarian protest features in filmmaker Michael Hewitt’s movie, “Ukraine: Holocaust Ground Zero,” which premiered last fall in the UK and is now available on streaming services.

In an interview with The Times of Israel, Hewitt said he knew about trains to death camps with gas chambers, but he had not known about SS firing squads (Einsatzgruppen) supported by local collaborators until recently.

This first phase of the Holocaust — now called the Holocaust by Bullets — was extensively captured in still photography as well as filmed. Similar to Hamas terrorists who recorded the torture and slaughter of Israelis on October 7, dozens of German SS officers and collaborators recorded aspects of the open-air massacres of Jews in Ukraine.

Two years ago, the Irish-born Hewitt listened to a radio program on the Babyn Yar massacre, the largest Einsatzgruppen killing, in which 33,771 Jews were murdered in two days at a ravine outside Kyiv. Dozens of photographs were taken of the massacre, beginning with Jews being marched to the ravine and ending with Germans and Ukrainians cleaning up the mass grave.

“It was personally fascinating to me. I was ignorant of this aspect of the Holocaust,” said Hewitt.

At least 1.5 million Holocaust victims were murdered in Einsatzgruppen massacres. In addition to occupied Ukraine, the model was deployed in parts of occupied Poland, Belarus, the Baltic states, and elsewhere.

Before Hamas filmed Oct. 7 attacks, Nazis recorded Holocaust massacres in Ukraine

After the mass murder of 33,771 Jews at Babyn Yar, Ukraine, October 1941 (public domain)

“I felt compelled to find out more,” said Hewitt.

With the advent of purpose-built death camps in 1942, the Germans replaced open-air massacres with gas chambers and improvised crematoria at Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka.

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Lessons learned by the SS during the Holocaust by Bullets were implemented at these and other death camps in occupied Poland.

In the death camps, SS shooting squads would no longer have to look at their victims. There would be no need for local collaborators and therefore no potential for filming or photography. Looting would be centralized and the victims’ possessions sent to Berlin, as opposed to falling into the hands of local collaborators.

‘The constraints of normal civilization’

“Ukraine: Holocaust Ground Zero” opens with images of atrocities committed by Russia’s army since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The film’s historians frame Ukraine as a perennial “zone of exception” or  “imperial territory” tied to “colonization.” This history connects to how and why the Holocaust by Bullets was systematized in Ukraine, said Hewitt.

“The constraints of normal civilization were removed,” said Hewitt.

In 1939, after Germany invaded Poland, Ukrainian nationalist leaders declared independence within the Third Reich. However, Hitler viewed the so-called Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists as a sword to wield against Germany’s enemies — Jews and Bolsheviks — and not as leaders of their own state.

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