[BroJoeK]

September 3, 1941

• "First gassing tests in Auschwitz using Zyklon-B.
  The victims were Soviet prisoners of war and non-Jewish polish inmates.

• "Six hundred Soviet prisoners of war and 300 Jews are “euthanized” at Auschwitz.

• "Six Jews who refuse to serve on the Jewish Council at Dubossary, Ukraine, are publicly hanged.
  Later, 600 elderly Jews are driven into Dubossary’s eight synagogues and burned alive when the synagogues are set ablaze.

"Under the control of Einsatzgruppe B of the SS, these dejected Jewish men in Mogilev, Belorussia, march to forced labor or death.
The large size of the Star of David on their clothing suggests that this photograph may have been intended as part of a propaganda film, designed to fuel hatred of the Jew as a subhuman threat to society.
Oversized stars, signs hung around necks, degrading labor--all of these were filmed and photographed to transform human beings into the sorts of Jewish caricatures favored by Nazi cartoonists and illustrators."

[PzLdr]

Einsatzgruppe ‘B’ was commanded by SS Gen. Artur Nebe, Chief of the German Criminal Police. He was the only Einsatzgruppe commander to volunteer for the job, and did so without knowing what the job was. Nebe was involved in the 20th of July plot, and was executed by the SS.

A subunit of the Gruppe won notoriety for conducting a “model” execution unde the eyes of Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler, which caused him to become physically ill. This led, in part, to Himmler’s search for a quicker, cheaper, less traumatizing [to the executioners] method of murderthat increasingly turned to poison gas.