The operation which was started by the Einsatzgruppen
in June 1941 was a new phase in Nazi policy towards the Jews. It can be seen
as the beginning of the ‘Final Solution of the Jewish Question’. The
total annihilation of the Jewish people was now being attempted by the Nazis,
as forecast by Hitler in his Reichstag speech of January 1939, two-and-a-half
years earlier.
