British intelligence report on interviews with Soviet POWs who had been forced to serve in German forces, Wiener Holocaust Library Collections

On 22 June 1941, Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. Most historians regard this as the start of the Holocaust and the mass murder of European Jewry. SS Einsatzgruppen units began shooting tens of thousands of Russian and Polish Jews and Roma and Sinti as well as hundreds of political officers (Commissars) in the Soviet Army.

Within three months  over a million Soviet soldiers had been taken prisoner but no provision was made for their proper treatment as required by the Geneva Convention. Thousands were shot and beaten to death whilst two million were deliberately starved to death by March 1942 in the wholly inadequate POW camps provided. It is estimated that of 5.7 million Soviet POWs, up to 3.3 million died between 1941 and 1945 in captivity.

This may well have represented the largest mass murder of a particular group in terms of deaths per day (during 1941-2) in human history.

This talk looks at the experiences of different groups within the Soviet POW population and how they were affected by Nazi racial, demographic and economic policies in occupied Eastern Europe. It also looks at the significance of these events in relation to the Holocaust and the questions and issues they raise.

With the Library’s Education Officer, Dr Peter Morgan

This session is suitable for those studying the following:

KS3 & KS4 History:

• AQA: Germany, 1890 – 1945: Democracy and Dictatorship
• Edexcel: Weimar and Nazi Germany, 1918 – 1939
• OCR (History A): Germany, 1925-1955: The People and The State
• OCR (History B): Living under Nazi Rule, 1933 – 1945

KS5 History:

• AQA: Democracy and Nazism: Germany, 1918 – 1945
• Edexcel: Germany and West Germany, 1918 – 1989
• OCR: Democracy and Dictatorships in Germany 1919 – 1963

Virtual Event guidelines:

1. The Library will send you a Zoom link and joining instructions via email prior to the event. Please check your junk email folders.
2. Please try and join 5 minutes before the event start time and we will let you into the room (do try and bear with us if this takes a few minutes).
3. If you would like to ask a question during the event, please type your question into the chat function, and we will endeavour to answer as many questions as possible during the Q&A. Your webcam will not be seen during this event.

This event is free, although registration via the link below is required. Please note that our free events are run by staff volunteers. Thank you for your patience should we have any technical or audio difficulties. We will do our best to correct them but this is not always possible.