Kamenets-Podolski — the threshold crossed

In the summer of 1941, the massacres of Jews on the Eastern Front cross a new threshold. Until then targeting mainly adult men, they now extend, on orders from above, to women and children: this is the passage from 'selective' killings to the extermination of entire communities. SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln, Higher SS and Police Leader for the south of the USSR, is one of the principal organizers of this escalation.

At Kamenets-Podolski, in Ukraine, the situation is aggravated by an influx: Hungary, an Axis ally, has expelled toward the occupied territories some 16,000 'stateless' Jews, who add to the local Jewish population. The German authorities, embarrassed by these deportees, see in it an 'opportunity'.

Jeckeln must decide the fate of these tens of thousands of people: organize their internment and their exploitation as a labour force; send them back to Hungary, whence they come; or proceed with their mass killing, the method now advocated by the SS hierarchy to 'solve' the question. The choice will make Kamenets-Podolski a precedent.