The “Final Solution” in the German-Conquered Soviet Union

On June 22, 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, followed by Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing squads) that organized mass shootings of Jews. The “Final Solution” had begun on Soviet territory. 

Einsatzgruppen, German army personnel, Hungarian troops, local militia, and even neighbors rounded up Jews, Soviet commissars, and Roma, shooting them near their homes. A major massacre occurred at Babi Yar, a ravine outside Kiev, where Einsatzgruppen shot 33,771 Jews on September 29–30, 1941, between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Nazis and their collaborators murdered approximately 1.5 million Jews in the Soviet Union; 200,000 Jews were murdered in Transnistria – part of Ukraine that Germany had given to Romania.