When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the war quickly became something far darker than a conventional military campaign. Behind the advancing German army followed special mobile killing squads called Einats Grippen, literally deployment groups. Their mission was simple but horrifying.

To eliminate Jews, communists, Roma political prisoners, and anyone else deemed an enemy of the Reich. Between 1941 and 1943, these units carried out one of the most brutal campaigns of mass murder in history. They killed over 1.5 million people, mostly by mass shootings long before the gas chambers of Achvitz or Trebinka were built.

To understand how an isat scrippen execution worked is to understand how bureaucratic planning, ideology, and human cruelty combined to industrialize killing in the open air. The Einstat Scrupin were organized by Reinhardt Hydrickch, the chief of the Reich Security Main Office, the RSHA, and one of the architects of the Holocaust.

Each group was composed of men from the SS, Gustapo, security police, and SD, the security service. When the invasion of the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarasa began on the 22nd of June 1941, four main Einat Scrippen were formed. Einat scripper A operating in the Baltic states as in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

Irons scripper B covering Bellarus. Einat scripper C working in northern and central Ukraine. Einat scripper D in southern Ukraine, the Crimea and the Caucuses. Each group was made up of around 500 to a,000 men and was divided into smaller INSATs commandos and Sonda commandos or special detachments. They followed closely behind the Vermach, entering towns and villages shortly after the front line had moved forward.

Their orders were vague at first, eliminate potential enemies. But in practice, this meant the systematic extermination of Jews, especially adult men at first, then women, children, and the elderly as Nazi policy hardened. Once a town or village was occupied, the process began with the identification of local Jews and other targets.

Irons Scrippen officers often worked with local collaborators such as Lithuanian, Ukrainian or Latvian police units who provided names, addresses, and lists of community leaders. In some cases, German troops or local authorities simply announced that all Jews must report to a specific location for registration or resettlement.

In many towns, Jews were forced to wear armbands marked with the Star of David and were confined to temporary ghettos or holding areas. Rumors quickly spread about the fate that awaited them, but few could believe that an entire population would simply be executed in cold blood. Before each killing operation, the commander of the local Einats commando received orders from the higher up the chain, often passed down from the RSHA or from local SS and police leaders.

The next steps were logistical and methodical. Firstly, they selected the site. The units would find a secluded place near the town, a ravine, sand pit, forest clearing, or an old anti-tank ditch. The site had to be hidden from view but close enough to transport hundreds or thousands of people.

Famous examples include Babar Ravine near Kev, Panari forest near Villness or Rumbula forest near Ria. Then the digging of the pits began. Either local force laborers, Soviet PWS or the victims themselves were made to dig large trenches. These could be dozens of meters long and several meters deep. In some cases, pre-existing ravines were used.

Then ammunition and vehicles would be gathered. Trugs brought in ammunition, fuel, and food for the men. Some units even brought cameras as officers often photographed or filmed the massacres. Then they would coordinate with local police. The Vermachtan local auxiliary police often guarded roads, rounded up victims, or maintained order, ensuring the killings could proceed without resistance or witnesses escaping.

On the day of the execution, the victims were ordered to gather. Announcements might be made claiming the Jews were to be resettled to the east or sent to work camps. People were told to bring identification papers, valuables, and warm clothing. Some were even instructed to bring shovels.

In smaller towns, the process was more brutal. Armed soldiers and police simply dragged people from their homes at dawn. Families were herded into marketplaces, synagogues, or town squares. The victims were often forced to hand over their valuables, including gold, jewelry, and wedding rings. In some cases, women were stripped of their coats or boots before being marched away.

German soldiers, policemen, and local collaborators looted the belongings after the killings. The journey to the execution site was one of the most terrifying stages. Victims were marched in columns, sometimes hundreds or thousands at a time, guarded by armed men with dogs. Those who collapsed or tried to flee were shot immediately.

Eyewitnesses later recalled the eerie silence of these marches. Some people prayed, others held their children or tried to comfort the elderly. In Ukraine, many villagers remembered the sound of machine guns echoing through the forests long after the columns disappeared from sight. At places like Babiar, over 33,000 Jews from Keefe were marched over two days, the 29th and 30th of September 1941 to the ravine on the city’s edge, and very few returned.

The actual killing process was horrifyingly systematic and shockingly efficient. There were two main methods used by the Einata. Firstly, the sardine packing method, the sardine pack. This technique devised by Friedrich Yakan, the higher SS and police leader in the Baltic region was used in many large-scale massacres.

The victims were brought to the edge of the pit in small groups. They were ordered to strip naked and hand over any remaining valuables. They were then forced to lie down in the pit or ravine. Shooters, usually SSmen or police, stood above and shot each person in the back of the head or neck with pistols or rifles.

New groups were then made to lie on top of the dead bodies layer upon layer until the pit was full. The term sardine packing came from the way the corpses were stacked tightly like sardines in a tin. It was intended to save space and bullets. The second method was the line or group shooting method.

In smaller operations or when pits were shallow, victims were lined up along the edge of a trench or ditch. Firing squads shot them so their bodies fell directly in the grave. The next group was brought forward and the process repeated. Sometimes to save ammunition, the Irons Griffin used submachine guns such as MP40s or Mousa rifles with single precise shots.

Shooters were trained to aim for the base of the school for an instant kill. The men of the Einstein were not all hardened SS veterans. Many were educated men, lawyers, teachers, and professionals. Their average age was around 30. Most were indoctrinated with Nazi ideology and had volunteered for service, believing they were fighting bulsheism or Jewish influence.

But many still struggled with the psychological toll of the killing. Reports survive of drunkenness, breakdowns, and even deaths by their own hands amongst the shooters. Commanders like Hinrich Himmler were aware of this. At one massacre in Minsk, Himmler reportedly turned pale and almost fainted when he witnessed an execution up close.

Still, the killing continued. Officers encouraged their men to drink heavily afterwards to relax after the shooting. Victims belongings, watches, wallets, jewelry were sometimes distributed amongst the men as rewards. Once the killing was done, the pits were filled in.

In some places, the ground moved for days as trapped victims tried to escape or as gases escaped from decomposing bodies. To cover the evidence, Einsteat Scrippen units would plant trees over the sites or have local peasants smooth out the earth. As the war turned against Germany in 1943 to 44, Operation 105 was launched to exume and burn the bodies to hide the crimes.

Jewish prisoners called Commando 100005 were forced to dig up the corpses and cremate them on Pers made of railway tracks and fuel. Afterwards, those prisoners were also killed. While Jews made up the vast majority of the victims, Einat Scrippen also executed Roma gypsies, communist officials, partisans, psychiatric patients, and intellectuals.

Entire Jewish communities, some which had existed for centuries, were wiped out in days. In the Baltic states, over 90% of Jews were killed by the end of 1942. The massacre of Babiar remains the most infamous. 33,771 Jews were murdered over two days. But there were hundreds of other killing sites. Pinari where 70,000 were killed.

Rambula where 25,000 were killed. Came padulsk 23,000 were killed and misos where 1,700 were killed. Each one a graveyard without tombstones. Theat scrippins crimes were not completely hidden. Some German soldiers took photographs and even compiled albums showing the shootings. These images of naked men, women, and children kneeling before pits became crucial evidence after the war.

Local villagers often heard or saw what happened. Some left accounts describing blood soaked earth, the cries of children and gunfire echoing for hours. A few courageous people risk their lives to shelter or hide Jews. But in most occupied territories, the terror was so overwhelming, the resistance was nearly impossible.

What makes the ISAT script and killings particularly chilling is their bureaucratic precision. Daily reports, operational situational reports were sent to Berlin recording how many people were killed. These reports use cold administrative language. In Schllo, 627 Jews executed in Minsk.

1,200 partisans and Jews liquidated. The victims became numbers in a spreadsheet of extermination. This paperwork preserved after the war revealed that the Einsteat Scrippen alone killed over 1.3 million people by early 1943. A staggering total achieved before the death camps reached full operation.

By 1943, as the Red Army advanced, the Einat Scrippen retreated westwards. Many of their commanders returned to Germany or took up post in concentration camps. After the war, their crimes were investigated at the Nuremberg trials, specifically in the Einstein trial. Of the 24 defendants, 14 were sentenced to death, though only four were actually executed.

Others received prison terms or were released early during the 1950s. One of the most infamous, Otto Erland, commander of Einstein D, admitted to killing over 90,000 people and justified it as necessary to eliminate the threat of bulcheism. He was hanged in 1951. The massacre sites of the Einsteat Scrupin remain some of the most haunting places in Eastern Europe today.

Many were forgotten during the Soviet era when Jewish suffering was not specifically commemorated. Since the 1990s, memorials have been built at Babiar, Penari, and Remula, often funded by Jewish communities and historians determined to remember those lost. Unlike the mechanized murder of the gas chambers, the Einstein killings were intimate.

Victims and killers saw each other’s faces. Children clung to parents. Shooters saw the eyes of those who they killed. As one survivor of a Ukrainian massacre later said, “They looked at us as if we weren’t human, but we were human until the last moment.” The Einsteppen represented the first most direct stage of the Holocaust, mass murder by bullets.

Their actions transformed Nazi anti-semitism from persecution to extermination. Without gas chambers or crerematoria, they managed to kill over a million people in forests, ravines, and fields, one bullet at a time. These were not spontaneous atrocities, but organized methodical executions carried out with chilling efficiency by men who saw themselves as dutiful soldiers.

The Einstein showed that genocide did not need factories of death. It only required ideology, obedience, and a willingness to dehumanize. Their crimes stand as a grim warning of what can happen when ordinary men are taught to believe that killing others is not just acceptable, but necessary. Thanks for watching.

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