The Einsatzgruppen killings begin
1941 · Event
Behind the armies invading the Soviet Union come four mobile killing squads, some 3,000 men, with orders that widen within weeks from Jewish men to entire communities. By the end of 1941 they and their helpers have shot roughly a million people, village by village, pit by pit — the Holocaust's first phase, carried out in the open air.
On these timelines: The Holocaust, Judaism, World War II, Eastern Europe & the Balkans, Master
More from The Holocaust
- The Holocaust (1933)
- The mass transports reach Auschwitz (1942)
- Operation Reinhard (1942)
- The deportation of Hungary's Jews (1944)
- The Frank family is arrested (1944)
- Lemkin coins the word 'genocide' (1944)
- The Évian Conference fails the refugees (1938)
- Death of Anne Frank (1945)
Around 1941
- Korean War (1950)
- Berlin Airlift (1948)
- World War II (1939)
- Chinese Civil War (resumed) (1945)
- Spanish Civil War (1936)
- Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany (1933)
- Battle of Stalingrad (1942)
- Apartheid (1948)
- Indian independence and Partition (1947)
- Battle of Britain (1940)