The Schutzstaffel (SS): Waffen-SS, Gestapo & Einsatzgruppen
The SS Officer Behind the Vilnius Ghetto Mass Killings: Martin Weiss
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.
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