Nazi Einsatzgruppe commander who executed 100,000 lithuanian women, children and elders

Martin Weiss was born on 21 February 1903 in Karlsruhe, then part of the German Empire. On 30 January 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany by President Paul von Hindenburg. In 1934, Weiss joined the SS, and three years later, he became a member of the Nazi Party.
The Second World War started on 1 September 1939, when Germany invaded Poland, and several days later, Weiss was conscripted into the German army. On Sunday, 22 June 1941, under the codename Operation Barbarossa, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. The following month, Weiss arrived in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, a city known as the "Jerusalem of the North" for its vibrant Jewish culture and religious life.
The Jews of Lithuania had a rich and distinct culture, characterized by a unique dialect of the Yiddish language. Lithuanian Jews were influential in various Jewish ideologies, including the Jewish workers' movement, Zionism, and rational religious thought. Before the Second World War, the Jewish population in Lithuania was around 160,000, making up about 7 percent of the total population. Weiss arrived in Lithuania as a member of the Einsatzkommando 3, a mobile killing unit responsible for carrying out mass executions of Jews, political prisoners, and other groups deemed undesirable by the Nazi regime. In the following weeks, he was part of the unit dispatched to various locations in the country, where, according to his own testimony, they conducted "clearing operations in the rear of the front lines." In October 1941, Weiss was transferred to the office of the Commander of the Security Police and the Security Service in Vilnius. Several weeks later, he participated in the 'Yellow Permit Operation,' the first major shooting operation in which he was directly involved, conducting the selections. During the operation, around 3,000 Jews in the Vilnius Ghetto received work permits, marking them as "essential" laborers. However, those without these yellow permits—approximately 3,700 individuals, including the elderly, sick, children, and others deemed "unfit for work"—were condemned to death. Under Weiss's supervision, these individuals were forcibly rounded up and taken to the Ponary massacre site, located about 10 kilometers southwest of Vilnius, where they were systematically shot.


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