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THE FINAL SOLUTION

AUSCHWITZ MEMORIAL

AUSCHWITZ MEMORIAL

THE FINAL SOLUTION

Third Reich leaders considered various possibilities of removing Jews from Europe. In 1941 they decided to settle the problem once and for all by realising the final solution to the Jewish question (Endlösung der Judenfrage). On the basis of this decision the Jews were sentenced to death for purely ‘racial’ reasons. Age, education, sex, personal wealth, social status or services rendered to the society or country were all irrelevant.


The preliminary stage in the total annihilation of Jews in the occupied territories of Poland, Czechoslovakia, USSR and the Baltic states were the ghettos, where hundreds of thousands of individuals were isolated. Hunger, disease and terror meant that mortality rapidly increased among the ghetto inhabitants. In the summer of 1941 special units of Security Police (SD) and the SS, called Einsatzgruppen, supported by local collaborators, carried out the mass executions of Jewish populations in German occupied territories of the USSR.


On 20 January 1942, the Wannsee Conference decided on the actual procedure of exterminating Europe’s 11 million Jewish inhabitants.


Approximately 1.5 milion of Jews as well as douzen thousands of Slavs and Roma were murdered by Einsatzgruppen in the German occupied eastern parts of pre-war Poland, western USSR and the Baltic states, whereas roughly 4 million Jewish men, women and children were killed in the ghettos, concentration camps and extermination camps.

A moment just after the massacre. In the foreground bodies of the victims. In the background above them a crowd standing and watching. On the right a man preparing to hit another man lying down, presumably wanting to hit and kill him.

Source: Bundesarchiv, B 162 Bild-04128.

German occupied Lithuania, 1941. Pogrom of Jews in Kaunas (Kowno) by criminals, who had been granted amnesty and were instigated by the Lithuanian security police.


In the center of the photograph four women standing and a teenage girl hidden behind them. They are wearing only underwear. Behind them piles of clothes lie on the ground. Soldiers in the background. The moment before the execution.

Source: Bundesarchiv, B 162 Bild-02615.

German occupied Latvia in 1941. A massacre on Jews performed by an Einsatzgruppen unit in Liepaja (Lipawa).


In the foreground a pit filled with the bodies of murdered people. A man is sitting in front of the pit. Above him a German soldier is holding a pistol to his head. In the background soldiers observing the situation.

Source: USHMM

USSR, Jews massacred in Vinnytsia (Winnica) by an Einsatzgruppen unit.


Street in Łódź. Winter. Carts with belongings slowly gliding through the snow. Around them people carrying various pieces of luggage.

Source: Bundesarchiv, R 49 Bild-1311.

Jews being deported to the ghetto in Łódź (getto Litzmanstadt).


Station platform, adults and children with their backs turned are about to board freight trains.

Source: USHMM

Deportation of Dutch Jews from the temporary cam in Westerbork.


A group of men in coats and winter clothes standing and waiting to be directed to the train. They are holding luggage in their hands or on the ground in front of them. They are being led by soldiers.

Source: Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-179-1575-07.

Deportation of Jews form Joannina in the German occupied Greece.


On the right, coal cars filled with people going to the extermination camp. Some people are still boarding. An obese soldier in a uniform and a cap is watching the situation.

Source: The picture from the collection of Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw.

Deportation of the Jewish population from Koło to the extermination camp Kulmhof.


A group of people of different ages - women, men and children - is being led down a street in Rzeszow. In front a woman with a baby in her arms. They are being escorted by a soldier. A building on the right. A crowd in the background.

Source: Photo Archive of Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, ref. 916/2.

Rzeszów, Poland. Deportation to the ghetto.


A crowd of people standing and waiting in front of the bus. In the background most likely a transit camp - a wire fence, benches, buildings.

Source: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-B10920.

Deportation of the Jewish community from Rivesaltes to the transition camp in Drancy.


Seven middle-aged men dressed in suits, hats and coats are standing in front of a building. In the windows of the vast building stand people that are watching them.

Source: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-S69244.

Jews in the Drancy transition camp in the German occupied France.


Largest ghettos in occupied Europe (1939–1944)

Graphic design: Leszek Nabiałek

The map shows countries in borders from 1941