This first episode provides context for when, how and why the mobile death squads, or EZG, were established.

In December 1941, after the EZG’s intervention, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and the Baltic states are declared “Judenfrei”: free of Jews.

Faced with the advancing Soviet troops, Nazi Germany decides to have the bodies of death camp victims dug up and burned in graves.

After being judged at the Nuremberg trials, the majority of those responsible for the murder of nearly 1.5 million Jews would walk free in the 1950s.