Sonderkommando ("Special Unit"): A Collection of Documents and Materials Detailing the Activities of Sonderkommando 4A in the Occupied Territory of the USSR, 1941-1943

This collection, based on documents from German and Ukrainian archives, examines the activities of Sonderkommando 4a. The study focuses primarily on its operations in Ukraine, as well as in the Voronezh, Kursk, and Stalingrad (now Volgograd) regions of the Russian Federation. From its formation in June 1941 until its dissolution in November 1943, the unit murdered approximately 90,000 people.The volume consists of two parts. Part I contains archival documents and materials that fully expose the criminal activities of Sonderkommando 4a between 1941 and 1943. Part II presents a biography of SS-Obersturmführer August Häfner, who served as an officer in the unit from June to September 1941.The period from June to September 1941 marks the time when the unit carried out its most intensive mass shootings. Although the commando killed about 90,000 people over its entire 28-month deployment in occupied Soviet territories, nearly 50,000 of those victims were murdered during just the first three months in Ukraine. Häfner played a key role in several of these massacres.