INTERVIEW - What is the “Holocaust by bullets”?

2024-01-26T04:17:21.404Z

Highlights: Nearly one and a half million Ukrainian Jews were murdered during Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union. The vast majority fell under the bullets of Einsatzgruppen, mobile killing units. To return to the history of this mass massacre, Virginie Girod speaks with Marie Moutier-Bitan, doctor in contemporary history at EHESS. Themes covered: Shoah, Jews, Nazi Germany, USSR, Second World War and pogroms in Ukraine.

Nearly one and a half million Ukrainian Jews were murdered during Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union. The vast majority fell under the bullets of Einsatzgruppen, mobile killing units. To return to the history of this mass massacre, to which the expression “Shoah by bullets” refers, Virginie Girod speaks with Marie Moutier-Bitan, doctor in contemporary history at EHESS and specialist in the Shoah in Union. occupied Soviet. In 1939, the USSR and Nazi Germany signed a non-aggression pact. Hitler, freed from the fear of having to fight on two fronts, pushed Europe into war. However, this is a temporary maneuver. "Hitler wants to destroy the communism in power in the Soviet Union and fight against what he calls 'Judeo-Bolshevism'. According to him, the Jewish populations are the main supporters of the Bolsheviks. It is a Nazi ideological construction", deciphers Marie Moutier-Bitan. On June 22, 1941, the Third Reich broke the non-aggression pact and invaded the USSR. This invasion caused immense massacres. With the advance of German troops, pogroms increased. “There is nothing spontaneous about these pogroms,” specifies Marie Moutier-Bitan, “they are organized in advance with local nationalists. The Jews are targeted by Wehrmacht soldiers and by the local population, who when they do not participate not directly to the massacre, pillages the homes of the Jews". The Nazis, however, will rationalize the extermination of the Jews. “The pogrom was a very spectacular event but it caused relatively few victims for the Nazis. They therefore carried out organized and systematic shootings,” recalls the specialist. “The Nazis are convinced they are waging a just war.” During the Babi Yar massacre in September 1941, more than 30,000 kyiv Jews were murdered over two full days. The history of these shootings, widely documented in Soviet archives, will only be known to the general public after the latter were opened following the fall of the USSR. The expression "Holocaust by bullets" is however little used by academics "because it excludes other killing devices which took place in these occupied Soviet territories such as hangings, gas trucks or even starvation in the ghettos ", recalls Marie Moutier-Bitan. Themes covered: Shoah, Jews, Nazi Germany, USSR, Second World War