Footprints of the lords of death in Lithuania: the brutality of the einsatzgroups remains surprising

The main characters in the book are the leaders of these groups, ordinary witnesses to what happened in the vast territory between Tallinn and Odessa, which in 1941. occupied by the German army for several summer months. Kaunas, Vilnius, Rokiškis, Jurbarkas and all of Lithuania fall into that space between the Baltic and the Black Sea. Geographically and in terms of the number of people killed, our country is only a fragment in the general context, but it has not been paid attention to. A broad, unrestricted look at national frameworks adds value to the story.

Formally, the einsatzgroups were formed to protect the back of the attacking German army from partisans, saboteurs and other “plagues”. However, the available documents show that their main objective is to exterminate the Jews of Eastern Europe. The history of the Einsatz groups is not revealed by Rhodes himself, but by the documents cited. The featured study author collected, analyzed, and used many important sources that were available to him. As I read, I was surprised that a large number of documents remained. Understandably, even more such materials have been found today. Unfortunately, the general public knows little about this. Although we have all heard of the Nuremberg tribunal, according to Rhodes, thousands of pages of that process are of little use even to historians. He’s not just urging investigators to open those cases.