REGIONS OF THE USSR UNDER GERMAN MILITARY OCCUPATION
Following Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, German forces penetrated deep into Soviet territory, reaching the outskirts of Moscow by November 1941. From August 1941, the western sections of occupied territory were handed over successively from German military administration to civil rule as Reichskommissariate Ostland and Ukraine were established and gradually expanded eastward through the end of 1941 and into 1942.
In this volume, those parts of the occupied Soviet Union that remained under German military administration during the occupation have been divided into three regions in accordance with the boundaries of the respective Soviet Socialist Republics at the time of the German invasion in June 1941: Eastern Belorussia, Eastern Ukraine and Crimea, and Russia. In 1941, before the German occupation, Crimea formed part of the Russian Federation, but here it is combined with Eastern Ukraine, as it also was occupied by forces of German Army Group South.
The Eastern Belorussia Region covers the Vitebsk and Mogilev oblasts and also parts of the Gomel’, Minsk, and Poles’e oblasts of the Belorussian SSR. During the period when the ghettos in Eastern Belorussia were established and liquidated from the summer of 1941 until the summer of 1942, the region was occupied by the German army, and specifically it came under the authority of Rear Area, Army Group Center (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Mitte).
The Eastern Ukraine and Crimea Region covers the Chernigov, Khar’kov, Stalino, Sumy, and Voroshilovgrad oblasts of the Ukrainian SSR, as well as Germanoccupied Crimea, during the period of German military occupation. During the period when most of the ghettos in the Eastern Ukraine Region were established and liquidated from the fall of 1941 until the summer of 1942, the region was subordinated primarily to Rear Area, Army Group South (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Süd). The four ghettos established in the Crimea lay within the Rear Area of the German 11th Army.
The Occupied Russian Territory covers primarily the area of the pre-1941 Kalinin, Leningrad, Orel, Smolensk, and Tula oblasts. The ghettos established in this region between the summer of 1941 and the spring of 1942 lay primarily within the jurisdiction of Rear Area, Army Groups Center and North, although some, such as that in Kaluga, remained under the control of German frontline troops. In addition, during the German offensive against Stalingrad, in the summer and fall of 1942, a few ghettos were established in the areas occupied by German Army Group A (Heeresgruppe A) in the Rostov oblast’, the Ordzhonikidze krai, and the Kalmyk and Kabardino-Balkar ASSRs (Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics). [End Page 1637]
