After the Occupation of Poland in 1939, the Nazis confined the Jews to ghettos. In the USSR, the systematic elimination of women, men, and children began as soon as Hitler invaded in June 1941.
In the Baltic states (particularly in Lithuania), Ukraine, and Belarus, pogroms were organized by local residents. At the same time, mass killings were carried out by the Nazi mobile killing units, the Einsatzgruppen, in full view of the local population and sometimes with their cooperation. These were mass executions. Jews were lined up around pits—often dug by the Jews themselves on the orders of the Nazis—and were shot to death.
In 1941, the mass extermination of Europe’s Jews began. It would continue for several years. The full extent of this extermination was not yet known at the time.
Later, these mass killings would come to be known as the “Shoah by bullets.”
On August 24, 1941, Jewish intellectuals in the USSR issued an appeal on Radio Moscow and revealed the existence of mass killings of Jews in the East. The creation of a Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee was announced. Soviet artists and writers called on Jews around the world to intensify their struggle against Nazism. The message was received by the underground Jewish section of the M.O.I., both in Paris and in Lyon.
The unique fate of the Jews in this war is highlighted for the first time. The text is published in Russian, English, and Yiddish.
In France, the August 24 appeal was quickly taken up by Jewish communist organizations and then published in *Unzer Wort* and *Notre Parole* on September 1, 1941. In these publications, the Jewish section issued its recommendations for action.
Many Jewish communists or sympathizers in the Resistance then came to realize the need for immigrant Jews to wage their own specific struggle as part of the Resistance’s broader fight.
