The Einsatzgruppen Reports: Selections from the Dispatches of the Nazi Death Squads' Campaign Against the Jews July 1941-January 1943 [Hardcover]

Yitzhak Arad (Author), Shmuel Krakowski (Author), Shmuel Spector (Editor)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 378 pages
• Publisher: Unites States Holocaust (July 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0896040577
• ISBN-13: 978-0896040571
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.7 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #932,445 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Doesn't include everything, but offers a nice overview, April 30, 2006

By 

Jarrod Leeth "grad_student 26" (Athens, OH) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Einsatzgruppen Reports: Selections from the Dispatches of the Nazi Death Squads' Campaign Against the Jews July 1941-January 1943 (Hardcover)

By using the term "Selections", it is obvious that not everything from every Einsatzgruppe report is included here, but enough is provided so that the reader can understand the mission of the Einsatzgruppen in the Soviet Union. There are hundreds of Einsatzgruppen reports, from the Jaeger Report, which talks of murders (of Jews and Communists) in Lithuania, from those of Wilhelm Stahlecker, the head of Einsatzgruppe A. The Latvian archives has a map showing the number of Jews killed in each of the Baltic states, and Estonia has "judenfrei" written on it, showing that it was now "free of Jews". The Jewish population of Minsk was also completely eradicated, and a quarter or so of that city's population was Jewish. Einsatzgruppe B killed approximately 45,000 Jews, as reported by Arthur Nebe, who later became an opponent of Hitler and the Nazi regime. Einsatzgruppe C and D also killed tens of thousands of Jews. In the case of the latter, numbers were given by Otto Ohlendorff, the head of Einsatzgruppe D, at his trial. You can contest the authenticity of this book's contents, but, based upon what I have seen, and the research I have done, these reports are accurate, and you could always find copies of them yourself in Russian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Belarussian, or even Ukrainian archives. The National Archives here in America has a whole series of operational reports from the Einsatzgruppen, including one that lists the numbers of Jews murdered at Babi Yar. With evidence like this, denying Nazi atrocities becomes difficult.

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Historical documents of immense importance, May 13, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Einsatzgruppen Reports: Selections from the Dispatches of the Nazi Death Squads (Paperback)

The reports in this book is often referred to when you read other books about the Holocaust.Here you must think for yourself when you are confronted with the metaphorical rhetoric that the Germans used in their reports that they sent back to Berlin.I have read many books about this subject and that is of big help if you can put these reports into context.That you can do by reading for example Martin Gilberts The Holocaust.Then this book will be of greater value because reading it unprepared will be tedious.I like this book because it gives me a unique chance to look into documents that is doubtless evidence of what really happened during the nazi era.

15 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Banality of Evil, November 14, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Einsatzgruppen Reports: Selections from the Dispatches of the Nazi Death Squads' Campaign Against the Jews July 1941-January 1943 (Hardcover)

It is chilling and eye-opening to read these reports written from the Eastern front. The violent work of the special death squads is chronicled in such a casual manner that the authors might just as well have been sending to Berlin a litany of materiel needs or a laundry list. The report from Kiev in late summer 1941, listing the tens of thousands killed at Babi Yar, remind one how casually these Nazi "supermen" seemed to go about their grisly business, at least at the outset of the mass killings. It also reminds one of how efficient the Germans were in keeping records--even of some of their worst genocidal atrocities. Good thing too, because these documents were instrumental in convicting a good number of these ordinary men who in the end persuaded themselves to commit extraordinarily horrific acts.