JUNE 22, 1941

KILLINGS ACCOMPANY GERMAN INVASION OF SOVIET UNION

German special duty units, called mobile killing squads (Einsatzgruppen), are assigned to kill Jews during the invasion of the Soviet Union. These squads follow the German army as it advances deep into Soviet territory, and carry out mass-murder operations. At first, the mobile killing squads shoot primarily Jewish men. Soon, wherever the mobile killing squads go they shoot all Jewish men, women, and children, without regard for age or gender. By the spring of 1943, the mobile killing squads will have killed more than a million Jews and tens of thousands of partisans, Roma (Gypsies), and Soviet political commissars.

SEPTEMBER 3, 1941

EXPERIMENTAL GASSINGS BEGIN AT AUSCHWITZ

Experimental gassings are carried out at the gas chamber in Auschwitz I, the main camp at Auschwitz in southern Poland. 600 Soviet prisoners of war and 250 ill or weak prisoners are forced into an experimental gas chamber. The Germans test the killing potential of Zyklon B gas. Zyklon B was the commercial name for crystalline hydrogen cyanide gas, normally used as an insecticide. The "success" of these experiments leads to the adoption of Zyklon B as the killing agent for the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center. Mass killings begin there in January 1942.

DECEMBER 8, 1941

CHELMNO KILLING CENTER BEGINS OPERATION

Chelmno is located about 45 miles west of Lodz. It is the first Nazi camp to use poison gas for mass killings. Victims deported to the camp are forced into gas vans. A tube directs the van's exhaust into the hermetically sealed compartment, which holds between 50 and 70 people. Once the carbon monoxide kills all those locked inside, the van is driven to mass graves and emptied. Three gas vans operate at Chelmno, and approximately 320,000 people will be killed there by mid-July 1944.