Editing Final Solution (section)

===''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>