The SS Officer Behind the Vilnius Ghetto Mass Killings: Martin Weiss
Recently Added
•
13m
22 June 1941. Under the codename Operation Barbarossa, Nazi Germany invades the Soviet Union and rapidly occupies Lithuania. In the months that follow, the Jews of Vilnius are forced into ghettos, subjected to starvation, terror, and mass executions carried out by Nazi Einsatzgruppen death squads and their local collaborators.
This documentary tells the story of Martin Weiss, an SS officer of Einsatzkommando 3, part of Einsatzgruppe A, who became one of the key perpetrators behind the mass killings connected to the Vilnius Ghetto and the Ponary massacre site near Vilnius. Weiss supervised selections, deportations, executions, and later the destruction of evidence of mass murder as the Soviet army advanced westward.
From the liquidation operations in the Vilnius Ghetto to the burning of tens of thousands of bodies at Ponary, this film examines the crimes committed by Nazi death squads in Lithuania and the postwar fate of one of the men responsible for them.
Up Next in Recently Added
-
Vichy France’s Secretary of State Who...
After the collapse of France in 1940, Fernand de Brinon emerged as one of the most prominent supporters of collaboration with Nazi Germany. A journalist, political figure, and later Secretary of State in Vichy France, he became a key link between the Vichy regime and the German authorities in occ...
-
The Danish Woman Who Betrayed Resista...
During the Nazi occupation of Denmark in the Second World War, the Danish resistance movement grew through sabotage and underground activities against the German occupiers. Among those connected to the resistance was Grethe Bartram, a young Danish woman who became one of the most notorious inform...
-
The Sobibór Survivor Who Helped Hunt ...
At just 15 years old, Stanisław Szmajzner was deported to the Sobibór extermination camp, where he was forced to work for SS officers as a goldsmith while witnessing the horrors of the Holocaust.
In October 1943, he joined the famous Sobibór uprising led by Alexander Pechersky and escaped the ca...
