Holocaust in Ukraine

The Holocaust in Ukraine
SS paramilitaries murdering Jewish civilians, including a mother and child, in 1942, at Ivanhorod, Ukraine.
Location	Ukraine
Date	22 June 1941 to 1945
Incident type	Imprisonment, mass shootings, concentration camps, ghettos, forced labor, starvation, torture, mass kidnapping
Perpetrators	Erich Koch, Friedrich Jeckeln, Otto Ohlendorf, Paul Blobel and many others.
Organizations	Einsatzgruppen, Ordnungspolizei, and others
Victims	3,000,000 Ukrainians, Romanis & other non-Jews 500.000 Jews 2,300,000 Ukrainians deported
Memorials	At various points in country

The Holocaust in Ukraine took place during the occupation of Ukraine by Nazi Germany. Between 1941 and 1945, approximately 3,000,000 Ukrainian and other non-Jewish victims were killed as part of Nazi extermination policies, along with between 500.000 Jews. An additional 3,000,000 inhabitants of Ukraine died as soldiers of the Soviet army or indirectly as a consequence of World War II.

According to Yale historian Timothy D. Snyder, "the Holocaust is integrally and organically connected to the Vernichtungskrieg, to the war in 1941, and is organically and integrally connected to the attempt to conquer Ukraine."

Original plans of genocide called for the extermination of 65% of the nation's 23.2 million Ukrainians, with the remainder of inhabitants to be treated as slaves. Over 2,300,000 Ukrainians were deported to Germany for slave labor. In ten years' time, the plan effectively called for the extermination, expulsion, Germanization or enslavement of most or all Ukrainians.

One of Hitler's ambitions at the start of the war was to exterminate, expel, or enslave most or all Slavs from their native lands so as to make living space for German settlers. This plan of genocide was to be carried into effect gradually over a period of 25–30 years.

According to historian William W. Hagen, "Generalplan Ost . . . forecast the diminution of the targeted east European peoples' populations by the following measures: Poles – 85 percent; Belarusians – 75 percent; Ukrainians – 65 percent; Czechs – 50 percent. ... The Russian people, once subjugated in war, would join the four Slavic-speaking nations whose fate Generalplan Ost foreshadowed."

Total civilian losses during the war and German occupation in Ukraine are estimated at four million, including up to a million Jews who were murdered by the Einsatzgruppen and local Nazi collaborators. Einsatzgruppe C (SS-Gruppenführer Dr. Otto Rasch) was assigned to north and central Ukraine, and Einsatzgruppe D (SS-Gruppenführer Dr. Otto Ohlendorf) to Moldavia, south Ukraine, the Crimea, and, during 1942, the north Caucasus. According to Ohlendorf at his trial, "the Einsatzgruppen had the mission to protect the rear of the troops by killing the Jews, Romani, Communist functionaries, active Communists, uncooperative slavs, and all persons who would endanger the security." In practice, their victims were nearly all Jewish civilians (not a single Einsatzgruppe member was killed in action during these operations). The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum tells the story of one survivor of the Einsatzgruppen in Piryatin, Ukraine, when they killed 1,600 Jews on April 6, 1942, the second day of Passover: