Editing Final Solution (section)

==Phase one: death squads of Operation Barbarossa==
{{main|Einsatzgruppen|Einsatzgruppen reports|Order Police battalions}}{{See also|War crimes of the Wehrmacht|Clean Wehrmacht}}
The Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union codenamed [[Operation Barbarossa]], which commenced on 22 June 1941, set in motion a "[[war of annihilation]]" which quickly opened the door to the systematic mass murder of European Jews.{{sfnp|Browning|2004|p=216}} For Hitler, [[Bolshevism]] was merely "the most recent and most nefarious manifestation of the eternal Jewish threat".{{sfnp|Browning|2004|p=224}} On 3 March 1941, [[Wehrmacht]] Joint Operations Staff Chief [[Alfred Jodl]] repeated Hitler's declaration that the "[[Jewish Bolshevism|Jewish-Bolshevik]] intelligentsia would have to be eliminated" and that the forthcoming war would be a confrontation between two completely opposing cultures.{{sfnp|Hilberg|1985|p= 281}} In May 1941, [[Gestapo]] leader [[Heinrich Müller (Gestapo)|Heinrich Müller]] wrote a preamble to the new law limiting the jurisdiction of military courts in prosecuting troops for criminal actions because: "This time, the troops will encounter an especially dangerous element from the civilian population, and therefore, have the right and obligation to secure themselves."{{sfnp|Browning|2004|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=d9Wg4gjtP3cC&q=worldview 219]}}

[[File:Himmler note 18 december 1941.jpg|thumb|Himmler note 18 December 1941: ''{{'}}als Partisanen auszurotten{{'}}'']]
Himmler and Heydrich assembled a force of about 3,000 men from [[Sicherheitspolizei|Security Police]], [[Gestapo]], [[Kriminalpolizei|Kripo]], [[Sicherheitsdienst|SD]], and the [[Waffen-SS]], as the so-called "special commandos of the security forces" known as the ''[[Einsatzgruppen]]'', to eliminate both communists and Jews in occupied territories.{{sfnp|Browning|2004|p=217}} These forces were supported by 21 battalions of [[Orpo battalions|Orpo Reserve Police]] under [[Kurt Daluege]], adding up to 11,000 men.{{sfnp|Browning|2004|p=229}} The explicit orders given to the Order Police varied between locations, but for [[Police Battalion 309]] participating in the first mass murder of 5,500 Polish Jews in the Soviet-controlled [[Białystok Ghetto|Białystok]] (a Polish [[Białystok Voivodeship (1919–1939)|provincial capital]]), Major Weiss explained to his officers that Barbarossa is a [[war of annihilation]] against Bolshevism,{{sfnp|Browning|1998|p=11|ps=: On the eve of Operation Barbarossa, Major Weiss disclosed to his men the directives of Hitler's [http://www.mrclancy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Barbarossa-Decree.pdf 'Barbarossa Decree'.]}} and that his battalions would proceed ruthlessly against all Jews, regardless of age or sex.{{sfnp|Browning|2004|p=232}}

After crossing the [[German-Soviet Frontier Treaty|Soviet demarcation line]] in 1941, what had been regarded as exceptional in the Greater Germanic Reich became a normal way of operating in the east. The crucial taboo against the murder of women and children was breached not only in Białystok but also in [[Gargždai]] in late June.{{sfnp|Browning|2004|p=260}} By July, significant numbers of women and children were being murdered behind all front-lines not only by the Germans but also by the local [[Ukrainian Auxiliary Police|Ukrainian]] and [[Lithuanian Auxiliary Police Battalions|Lithuanian auxiliary forces]].{{sfnp|Browning|2004|p=261}} On 29 July 1941, at a meeting of SS officers in [[Vileyka]] (Polish [[Wilno Voivodeship (1926–1939)|Wilejka]], now Belarus), the ''Einsatzgruppen'' had been given a dressing-down for their [[Einsatzgruppen reports|low execution figures]]. Heydrich himself issued an order to include the Jewish women and children in all subsequent shooting operations.<ref name="Kay">{{cite book |title=The Making of an SS Killer |first=Alex J. |last=Kay |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=2016 |pages=57–62, 72 |isbn=978-1107146341 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=r0jGCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA57 |quote=The Vileyka massacres by ''Einsatzkommando'' 9 at the end of July marked the transition to genocide.<sup>[p. 60]</sup> Entire Jewish population of town, at least 450 Jewish men, women and children, were killed.<sup>[p.72]</sup>}}</ref> Accordingly, by the end of July the entire Jewish population of Vileyka, men, women and children, were murdered.<ref name="Kay"/> Around 12 August, no less than two-thirds of the Jews shot in [[Surazh, Belarus|Surazh]] were women and children of all ages.<ref name="Kay"/> In late August 1941 the ''Einsatzgruppen'' murdered 23,600 Jews in the [[Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre]].<ref name="YV1941"/> A month later, the largest mass shooting of Soviet Jews took place on 29–30 September in the ravine of [[Babi Yar]], near [[Kyiv]], where more than 33,000 Jewish people of all ages were systematically machine-gunned.{{sfnp|Laqueur|Baumel|2001|p=51}} In mid-October 1941, [[HSSPF]] South, under the command of [[Friedrich Jeckeln]], had reported the indiscriminate murder of more than 100,000 people.{{sfnp|Browning|2004|pp=291–92}}

{{multiple image
 |direction=vertical
 |width=220
 |image1=Map Stahlecker's Report 1941-1943.jpg
 |caption1=Original annotated map from [[Franz Walter Stahlecker|Stahlecker]]'s Report, summarizing murders committed by ''Einsatzgruppen'' in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus and Russia until January 1942
 |image2=
 |caption2=Notably, the Stahlecker's map ''(top)'' had shown the [[Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic|Soviet Byelorussia]] according to [[Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact|bilateral terms]] of the Nazi-[[Soviet invasion of Poland]], not the Byelorussian SSR (marked in pink), from before [[Territories of Poland annexed by the Soviet Union|the Soviet annexation]] of [[Kresy]]. In this map, territory of [[Second Polish Republic|prewar Poland]] inhabited by [[Polish Jews]] is marked in yellow.
}}
By the end of December 1941, before the Wannsee Conference, over 439,800 Jewish people had been murdered, and the Final Solution policy in the east became common knowledge within the SS.<ref name="LY1991">{{cite book |last=Yahil |first=Leni |author-link=Leni Yahil |title=The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry, 1932–1945 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=e_aRvKpLUf0C&pg=PA270 |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1991 |page=270 |isbn=0195045238 }}</ref> Entire regions were reported "[[Judenfrei|free of Jews]]" by the ''Einsatzgruppen''. Addressing his district governors in the [[General Government]] on 16 December 1941, Governor-General [[Hans Frank]] said: "But what will happen to the Jews? Do you believe they will be lodged in settlements in [[Ostland]]? In Berlin, we were told: why all this trouble; we cannot use them in the Ostland or the Reichskommissariat either; liquidate them yourselves!"{{sfnp|Browning|2004|pp=408–09}} Two days later, Himmler recorded the outcome of his discussion with Hitler. The result was: "''als Partisanen auszurotten''" ("exterminate them as partisans").<ref name="YB">{{cite book |last=Bauer |first=Yehuda |title=Rethinking the Holocaust |publisher=Yale University Press |year=2000 |page=5 |isbn=0300093004 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WhvShlTeqesC&q=zurotten&pg=PA5}}</ref> Israeli historian [[Yehuda Bauer]] wrote that the remark is probably as close as historians will ever get to a definitive order from Hitler for the genocide carried out during the Holocaust.<ref name="YB"/> Within two years, the total number of shooting victims in the east had risen to between 618,000 and 800,000 Jews.{{r|LY1991}}{{sfnp|Browning|2004|p=244}}

===''Bezirk Bialystok'' and ''Reichskommissariat Ostland''===
{{see also|Reichskommissariat Ostland}}
Several scholars have suggested that the Final Solution began in the newly formed district of ''[[Bezirk Bialystok]]''.<ref name="M2004">{{cite journal |first=Marcin |last=Markiewicz |journal=Biuletyn Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej |department=Komentarze Historyczne |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110611232035/http://www.ipn.gov.pl/download.php?s=1&id=3922 |archive-date=11 June 2011 |access-date=9 February 2016 |url=http://www.ipn.gov.pl/download.php?s=1&id=3922 |at=68/96 in PDF |publisher=Biuro Edukacji Publicznej IPN |title=Bezirk Białystok (in) ''Represje hitlerowskie wobec wsi białostockiej'' |trans-title=Bezirk Białystok (in) Nazi repressions against the Białystok countryside |via=direct download 873 KB from the Internet Archive |volume=35-36 (12/2003–1/2004) |issn=1641-9561 }} ''Also in:'' {{harvp|Roseman|2002|p=111}}: "During the Wannsee meeting, the number of Jews in Białystok (i. e., in ''Bezirk Bialystok'')—subject to Final Solution—was estimated by Heydrich at 400,000. In Lithuania: 34,000. In Latvia: 3,500. In [[Belorussia|White Russia]] (excluding Bialystok): 446,484, and in USSR: 5,000,000. Estonia was listed in the minutes as being already ''[[Judenfrei]]'' (see ''[http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/wannsee.asp Wannsee Protocol]'', Nuremberg)."</ref> The German army [[Białystok Ghetto|took over Białystok]] within days. On Friday, 27 June 1941, the [[Orpo battalions|Reserve Police Battalion]] 309 arrived in the city and set the Great Synagogue on fire with hundreds of Jewish men locked inside.{{sfnp|Browning|1998|p=12}} The burning of the synagogue was followed by a frenzy of murders both inside the homes around the Jewish neighbourhood of Chanajki, and in the city park, lasting until night time.<ref name="bialystok1">{{cite web |url=http://www.sztetl.org.pl/en/article/bialystok/5,history/?action=view&page=6 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131017013243/http://www.sztetl.org.pl/en/article/bialystok/5,history/?action=view&page=6 |url-status=dead |archive-date=2013-10-17 |title=Białystok – History |publisher=[[Virtual Shtetl]] [[Museum of the History of Polish Jews]] |via=Internet Archive |page=6, paragraph #3 |id=According to records, about 5,000 Jews died at that time.<sup>[7.2]</sup> See:  {{harvp|Browning|1998|page=12}} – Weis and his officers subsequently submitted a false report of the events to [General] Pfugbeil ... 2,000 to 2,200 Jews had been killed.<sup>[8]</sup>}}</ref> The next day, some 30 wagons of dead bodies were taken to mass graves. As noted by Browning, the murders were led by a commander "who correctly intuited and anticipated the wishes of his [[Führer]]" without direct orders.{{sfnp|Browning|1998|p=12}} For reasons unknown, the number of victims in the official report by Major Weis was cut in half.<ref name="bialystok1"/> The next mass-shooting of Polish Jews within the newly formed ''Reichskommissariat Ostland'' took place in two days of 5–7 August in [[Pińsk Ghetto|occupied Pińsk]], where over 12,000 Jews were murdered by the [[Waffen-SS|''Waffen SS'']],<ref name=Boneh>{{cite web |title=The Holocaust and the Destruction of the Jews of Pinsk (4 July 1941 – 23 December 1942) |publisher=The Jewish Community of Pinsk |url=http://www.pinskjews.org.il/eng/history03.asp |first=Nachum |last=Boneh |work=The Book of Pinsk. Chapter 3: The Oppressors in Action |access-date=20 September 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170912192040/http://www.pinskjews.org.il/eng/history03.asp |archive-date=12 September 2017 |url-status=dead }}</ref> not the ''Einsatzgruppen''.<ref name="YV1941"/> An additional 17,000 Jews perished there in a [[ghetto uprising]] crushed a year later with the aid of [[Belarusian Auxiliary Police]].<ref name="En5">{{cite web |url=http://www.sztetl.org.pl/he/article/pinsk/5,-/?print=1 |title=Pińsk |publisher=[[Virtual Shtetl]] |work=Elektroniczna Encyklopedia Żydowska |id=English version |at=Translation: המאמר לא זמין בשפה זו, נכון לעכשיו |access-date=20 September 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170912191757/http://www.sztetl.org.pl/he/article/pinsk/5,-/?print=1 |archive-date=12 September 2017 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

An Israeli historian [[Dina Porat]] claimed that the Final Solution, i.e.: "the systematic overall physical extermination of Jewish communities one after the other—began in Lithuania" during the massive German chase after the Red Army across the ''Reichskommissariat Ostland''.<ref name="Porat159">{{Cite book |author-link=Dina Porat |first=Dina |last=Porat |chapter=The Holocaust in Lithuania: Some Unique Aspects |editor-first=David |editor-last=Cesarani |title=The Final Solution: Origins and Implementation |publisher=Routledge |year=2002 |isbn=0-415-15232-1 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1LeGAgAAQBAJ&q=80%2C000 |via=Google Books |page=[https://archive.org/details/finalsolutionori0000unse/page/161 161] |url=https://archive.org/details/finalsolutionori0000unse/page/161 }}</ref> The subject of [[the Holocaust in Lithuania]] has been analysed by Konrad Kweit from [[USHMM]] who wrote: "Lithuanian Jews were among the first victims of the Holocaust [beyond the eastern borders of occupied Poland]. The Germans carried out the mass executions [...] signaling the beginning of the 'Final Solution'."<ref name="Kwiet">{{Cite journal |first=Konrad |last=Kwiet |title=Rehearsing for Murder: The Beginning of the Final Solution in Lithuania in June 1941 |journal=[[Holocaust and Genocide Studies]]|volume=12 |issue=1 |pages=3–26 |year=1998 |doi=10.1093/hgs/12.1.3}} and {{cite conference |first=Konrad |last=Kwiet |title=The Onset of the Holocaust: The Massacres of Jews in Lithuania in June 1941 |type=Annual lecture |conference=J. B. and Maurice Shapiro Senior Scholar-in-Residence at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |date=4 December 1995}} Published under the same title, but expanded in {{cite book |title=Power, Conscience and Opposition: Essays in German History in Honour of John A Moses |editor1-first=Andrew |editor1-last=Bonnell <!-- et al.--> |location=New York |publisher=Peter Lang |year=1996 |pages=107–21}}</ref> About 80,000 Jews were murdered in Lithuania by October (including in [[Wilno Voivodeship (1926–39)|formerly Polish Wilno]]) and about 175,000 by the end of 1941 according to [[Einsatzgruppen reports|official reports]].<ref name="Porat159"/>

===''Reichskommissariat Ukraine''===
{{see also|Reichskommissariat Ukraine}}
Within one week from the start of [[Operation Barbarossa]], Heydrich issued an order to his ''Einsatzgruppen'' for the on-the-spot execution of all Bolsheviks, interpreted by the SS to mean all Jews. One of the first indiscriminate massacres of men, women, and children in [[Reichskommissariat Ukraine]] took the lives of over 4,000 Polish Jews in [[Łuck Ghetto|occupied Łuck]] on 2–4 July 1941, murdered by ''Einsatzkommando'' 4a assisted by the [[Ukrainian People's Militia]].<ref name="jz193">{{cite book |first=Joshua D. |last=Zimmerman |author-link=Joshua D. Zimmerman |year=2015 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=w4dsCQAAQBAJ&q=%22%C5%81uck+ghetto%22 |title=The Polish Underground and the Jews, 1939–1945 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |via=Google Books |page=193|isbn=978-1107014268 }}</ref> Formed officially on 20 August 1941, the ''Reichskommissariat Ukraine''—stretching from prewar east-central Poland to Crimea—had become operational theatre of the ''Einsatzgruppe'' C. Within the Soviet Union proper, between 9 July 1941 and 19 September 1941 the city of [[Zhytomyr]] was made ''[[Judenfrei]]'' in three murder operations conducted by German and Ukrainian police in which 10,000 Jews perished.<ref name="YV1941"/> In the [[Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre]] of 26–28 August 1941 some 23,600 Jews were shot in front of open pits (including 14,000–18,000 people expelled from Hungary).<ref name="YV1941"/><ref name=RLB>{{cite book |title=The Politics of Genocide |first=Randolph L. |last=Braham |author-link=Randolph L. Braham |publisher=Wayne State University Press |year=2000 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ATpHs6fgr_YC&q=Kamenets+Report |isbn=0814326919 |page=34}}</ref> After an [[1941 Bila Tserkva massacre|incident in Bila Tserkva]] in which 90 small children left behind had to be shot separately, [[Paul Blobel|Blobel]] requested that Jewish mothers hold them in their arms during mass shootings.<ref name="WLo">{{cite book |title=Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine |first=Wendy |last=Lower | author-link=Wendy Lower | publisher=Univ of North Carolina Press |year=2006 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UwDmUJWdcJkC&q=Radomyshl%27+Bila+Tserkva+Ukrainians |isbn=0807876917 |page=253}}</ref><ref name="ESt">{{cite book |title=Life In The Ghettos During The Holocaust |first=Eric |last=Sterling |publisher=Syracuse University Press |year=2005 |isbn=0815608039 |page=127 |via=Google Books |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ywZG1TwqHwoC&q=Bila+Tserkva+4a%2C+Ukrainian}}</ref> Long before the conference at Wannsee, 28,000 Jews were shot by SS and Ukrainian military in [[Vinnytsia]] on 22 September 1941, followed by the 29 September massacre of 33,771 Jews at [[Babi Yar]].<ref name="YV1941">{{cite web |title=Goering orders Heydrich to prepare the plan for the Final Solution of the Jewish Problem |work=The Holocaust Timeline 1940–1945 |author=Yad Vashem |year=2016 |publisher=The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority |url=http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/holocaust/timeline/timeline_40.asp |access-date=26 January 2016 |archive-date=15 July 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180715001155/http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/holocaust/timeline/timeline_40.asp |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref name="Desbois">{{cite web |title=Places of Massacres by German Task Forces between 1941–1943 |year=2009 |publisher=TOS Gemeinde Tübingen |location=Germany |first=Patrick |last=Desbois |author-link=Patrick Desbois |url=http://www.marchoflife.org/fileadmin/data/_TOS-info/2010/downloads/map_ukraine_english.pdf |access-date=26 January 2016 |archive-date=9 October 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161009213903/http://www.marchoflife.org/fileadmin/data/_TOS-info/2010/downloads/map_ukraine_english.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref> In [[Dnipropetrovsk]], on 13 October 1941 some 10,000–15,000 Jews were shot.<ref name=AEi92/> In [[Chernihiv]], 10,000 Jews were murdered and only 260 Jews were spared.<ref name=AEi92/> In mid-October, during the [[Kryvyi Rih|Krivoy-Rog]] massacre of 4,000–5,000 Soviet Jews the entire [[Ukrainian Auxiliary Police|Ukrainian auxiliary police]] force actively participated.<ref name=MBer>{{cite book |title=The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed, and the Reexamined |author-link=Michael Berenbaum |first=Michael |last=Berenbaum |publisher=Indiana University Press |year=2002 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zkZC6bp3upsC&q=Krivoy-Rog |isbn=0253215293 |page=257}} ''Also in:'' {{cite book |title=The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life Before and During the Holocaust: K-Se |author1=Shmuel Spector |author2=Geoffrey Wigoder |publisher=NYU Press |year=2001 |isbn=0814793770 |page=679 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MZzY8sG8yNsC&q=KRIVOY+ROG}}</ref> In the first days of January 1942 in [[Kharkiv]], 12,000 Jews were murdered, but smaller massacres continued in this period on daily basis in countless other locations.<ref name=AEi92>{{cite book |title=The trial of Adolf Eichmann: record of proceedings in the District Court of Jerusalem |isbn=0317058401 |id=Volume 1 |author1=Adolf Eichmann |author2=Bet ha-mishpaṭ ha-meḥozi |author3=Miśrad ha-mishpaṭim |publisher=Trust for the Publication of the Proceedings of the Eichmann Trial, in co-operation with the Israel State Archives, and Yad Vashem |year=1992 |pages=522, 93 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=i-7zAAAAMAAJ&q=Dnepropetrovsk}} ''Also in:'' {{cite book |title=Stalin and Europe: Imitation and Domination, 1928–1953 |author1=Timothy Snyder |author2=Ray Brandon |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2014 |isbn=978-0199945573 |page=194 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fZBtAwAAQBAJ&q=Dnipropetrovsk+15%2C000 |quote=Quoted 15,000 dead at [[Dnipropetrovsk]] and 12,000 Jews murdered in [[Kharkiv]].}}</ref> In August 1942 in the presence of only a few German SS men over 5,000 Jews were massacred in Polish [[Zofjówka]] by the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police leading to the town's complete sweep from existence.<ref>{{cite web |author=Beit Tal |year=2010 |title=Zofiówka |publisher=[[POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews]] |url=http://www.sztetl.org.pl/pl/article/zofiowka/5,historia/ |access-date=27 November 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141230081456/http://www.sztetl.org.pl/pl/article/zofiowka/5,historia/ |archive-date=30 December 2014 |url-status=dead }} Also in: {{cite web |author=Beit Tal |year=2014 |title=Truchenbrod – Lozisht |publisher=The Nahum Goldmann Museum of the Jewish Diaspora |url=http://www.bet-tal.com/index.aspx?id=2421 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140810091732/http://www.bet-tal.com/index.aspx?id=2421 |archive-date=10 August 2014 }}</ref>

===''Distrikt Galizien''===
Historians find it difficult to determine precisely when the first concerted effort at annihilation of all Jews began in the last weeks of June 1941 during Operation Barbarossa.<ref name=JWe/> Dr. Samuel Drix (''Witness to Annihilation''), Jochaim Schoenfeld (''Holocaust Memoirs''), and several survivors of the [[Janowska concentration camp]], who were interviewed in the film ''Janovska Camp at Lvov'', among other witnesses, have argued that the Final Solution began in [[Lviv|Lwów]] (Lemberg) in ''Distrikt Galizien'' of the [[General Government]] during the German advance across [[Territories of Poland annexed by the Soviet Union|Soviet-occupied Poland]]. Statements and memoirs of survivors emphasize that, when Ukrainian nationalists and ''[[ad hoc]]'' Ukrainian People's Militia (soon reorganized as the [[Ukrainian Auxiliary Police]]) began to murder women and children, rather than only male Jews, the "Final Solution" had begun. Witnesses have said that such murders happened both prior to and during the [[Lviv pogroms|pogroms reportedly triggered by the NKVD prisoner massacre]]. The question of whether there was some coordination between the [[Lithuania]]n and Ukrainian militias remains open (i.e. collaborating for a joint assault in [[Kaunas|Kovno]], [[Vilnius|Wilno]], and Lwów).<ref name=JWe>{{cite book |first=Jakob |last=Weiss |title= The Lemberg Mosaic |contribution=Introduction |location= New York |publisher= Alderbrook Press |year= 2011 |page=397|title-link=The Lemberg Mosaic |isbn=978-0983109105 }}</ref>

The murders continued uninterrupted. On 12 October 1941, [[Stanisławów Ghetto|in Stanisławów]], some 10,000–12,000 Jewish men, women, and children were shot at the Jewish cemetery by the German uniformed SS-men and Ukrainian Auxiliary Police during the so-called "{{ill|Bloody Sunday of Stanislau|lt=Bloody Sunday|de|Blutsonntag von Stanislau|uk|Кривава неділя у Станіславі}}" ''[[:de:Blutsonntag von Stanislau|(de)]]''.<ref name="stanislawow">{{cite web |first=Andrea |last= Löw |date=10 June 2013 |url=http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007236 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140520064011/http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007236 |archive-date= 20 May 2014 |title=Stanislawów (now Ivano-Frankivsk) |publisher=[[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]] |access-date=29 January 2016 |quote=From ''The USHMM Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945''.}}</ref> The shooters began firing at 12 noon and continued without stopping by taking turns. There were picnic tables set up on the side with bottles of vodka and sandwiches for those who needed to rest from the deafening noise of gunfire.<ref name="yadvashem-Pohl">{{cite book |first=Dieter |last=Pohl |title=Hans Krueger and the Murder of the Jews in the Stanislawow Region (Galicia) |url=http://yad-vashem.org.il/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%202292.pdf |via=Yad Vashem.org |pages=12–13, 17–18, 21 |quote=It is impossible to determine what [[Hans Krueger|Krueger's]] exact responsibility was in connection with 'Bloody Sunday' [massacre of 12 October 1941]. It is clear that a massacre of such proportions under German civil administration was virtually unprecedented. |access-date=29 January 2016 |archive-date=14 March 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150314220019/http://yad-vashem.org.il/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%202292.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref> It was the single largest massacre of Polish Jews in ''[[General Government|Generalgouvernement]]'' prior to mass gassings of ''Aktion Reinhard'', which commenced at [[Bełżec extermination camp|Bełżec]] in March 1942. Notably, the extermination operations in [[Chełmno extermination camp|Chełmno]] had begun on 8 December 1941, one-and-a-half months before Wannsee, but Chełmno—located in ''[[Reichsgau Wartheland]]''—was not a part of Reinhard, and neither was [[Auschwitz-Birkenau]] functioning as an extermination center until November 1944 in [[Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany|Polish lands annexed by Hitler]] and [[Provinz Oberschlesien|added to Germany proper]].<ref name="yadvashem-Pohl"/><ref name =Reinhard>{{cite web |url=https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005195 |title=Operation Reinhard (Einsatz Reinhard) |access-date=15 August 2016 |publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum}}</ref>

The conference at Wannsee gave impetus to the so-called ''second sweep'' of the Holocaust by the bullet in the east. Between April and July 1942 in [[Volhynia]], 30,000 Jews were murdered in death pits with the help of dozens of newly formed Ukrainian ''[[Ukrainian Auxiliary Police#Battalions|Schutzmannschaft]]''.<ref name=Die>{{cite book |title=The Shoah in Ukraine: History, Testimony, Memorialization |first=Dieter |last=Pohl|editor1=Ray Brandon |editor2=Wendy Lower |editor-link2=Wendy Lower | publisher=Indiana University Press |year=2008 |isbn=978-0253001597 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hyYGOyX1IQUC&q=Final+Solution+Volhynia |page=97}}</ref> Owing to good relations with the Ukrainian ''Hilfsverwaltung'',<ref name="Eikel">{{cite book |first=Markus |last=Eikel |chapter=The local administration under German occupation in central and eastern Ukraine, 1941–1944 |at=pp. 110–22 in PDF |title=The Holocaust in Ukraine: New Sources and Perspectives |quote=Ukraine differs from other parts of the Nazi-occupied Soviet Union, whereas the local administrators have formed the ''Hilfsverwaltung'' in support of extermination policies in 1941 and 1942, and in providing assistance for the deportations to camps in Germany mainly in 1942 and 1943. |publisher=Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, [[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]] |year=2013 |chapter-url=http://www.ushmm.org/m/pdfs/20130500-holocaust-in-ukraine.pdf}}</ref> these auxiliary battalions were deployed by the SS also in Russia Center, Russia South, and in Byelorussia; each with about 500 soldiers divided into three companies.<ref name="MW">{{cite web |title=Schutzmannschaft Bataillone |url=http://www.axishistory.com/books/137-germany-military-other/foreign-volunteers/9065-schutzmannschaft-bataillone |publisher=Axis History Books |date=9 June 2013 |first=Marcus |last=Wendel |at=Internet Archive, 6 January 1914 capture |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140106075125/http://www.axishistory.com/books/137-germany-military-other/foreign-volunteers/9065-schutzmannschaft-bataillone |url-status=live |archive-date=6 January 2014}}</ref> They participated in the extermination of 150,000 Volhynian Jews alone, or 98 percent of the Jewish inhabitants of the entire region.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Soviet Counterinsurgency in the Western Borderlands |first=Alexander |last=Statiev |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=2010 |isbn=978-0521768337 |page=69 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YIRSwRDVqu4C&q=auxiliary+150%2C000+Jews}}</ref> In July 1942 the Completion of the Final Solution in the General Government territory which included ''Distrikt Galizien'', was ordered personally by Himmler. He set the initial deadline for 31 December 1942.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Diary of Samuel Golfard and the Holocaust in Galicia |first=Wendy |last=Lower |publisher=Rowman Altamira |year=2011 |isbn=978-0759120785 |pages=17, 154 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RmdnnIlS-6cC&q=Final+Solution+1942}}</ref>