Written by zachor_foundation on May 7, 2014
As the Red Army approached, the Germans decided to attempt to efface their genocidal actions. A special unit, Sonderkommando 1005, was established for this purpose. On August 18, the members of this unit began to exhume and cremate the corpses at Babi Yar. For this purpose, the Germans brought in 327 prisoners, including 100 Jews. They were housed in a bunker dug into the side of the ravine; it had an iron latticework gate that was locked at night and
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Written by zachor_foundation on May 7, 2014
In the midst of a deportation Aktion in the ghetto on September 1-4, 1943, the FPO, the Jewish underground organization in the ghetto, urged the inhabitants not to report for deportation and to launch an uprising. The inhabitants ignored the call, believing that they were heading not to death in Ponary, but to labor camps in Estonia, as the Germans had stated and, as it happened, was indeed the case. In the late afternoon on September 1, members of the
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Written by zachor_foundation on May 7, 2014
In early September 1943, in the course of Operation “Iltis,” Jews who held Belgian citizenship and who had been spared from deportation thus far, were rounded up and deported. This deportation was carried out by a special section of the Association of Belgian Jews (the Belgian Judenrat) in Brussels. The act of arrest and deportation was managed by units of the German police, the Feldgendarmerie. The majority of those deported perished in Auschwitz.
