Einsatzgruppe Egypt (German: ) was an SS unit led by SS-Obersturmbannführer Walther Rauff, which was formed in occupied Greece during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

Einsatzgruppen (, ; also ' task forces') were (SS) paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for mass murder, primarily by shooting, during World War II (1939–1945) in German-occupied Europe. The had an integral role in the im ...

("deployment groups") were paramilitary death squads that operated within German occupied territories. Historians

Klaus-Michael Mallmann Klaus-Michael Mallmann (born 3 November 1948, in Kaiserslautern) is a German historian at the University of Stuttgart. Scientific career Mallmann studied history, Sociology, Politics and German studies at the Saarland University. In 1979 he was a ...

and , based on archival research, state that the unit's purpose was to carry out a mass killing of the Jewish populations in the British mandate of Palestine and

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...

. Despite the word "Palestine" never being mentioned in the archival documents, the researchers state that the unit's objective was to go there in order to enact systematic mass murder of Jews. Given its small staff of only 24 men, Mallmann and Cüppers theorize the unit would have needed help from local residents and from the '' Afrika Korps'' to complete their assignment. On 20 July 1942 Rauff was sent to

Tobruk Tobruk or Tobruck (; grc, Ἀντίπυργος, ''Antipyrgos''; la, Antipyrgus; it, Tobruch; ar, طبرق, Tubruq ''Ṭubruq''; also transliterated as ''Tobruch'' and ''Tubruk'') is a port city on Libya's eastern Mediterranean coast, near th ...

to report to Rommel, Commander of the ''Afrika Korps''. But since Rommel was 500 km away at the First Battle of El Alamein, it is unlikely that the two were able to meet. According to historian Haim Saadon, Director of the Center of Research on North African Jewry in World War II, Rauff's documents show that his foremost concern was assisting the Wehrmacht, rather than extermination of Jews, and his plan for this was to place the Jews in forced labour camps. In relative terms, the North African Jews escaped the Final Solution. The plans for ''Einsatzgruppe'' Egypt were set aside after the Allied victory at the Second Battle of El Alamein.

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Afrika Korps War Crimes - The "War Without Hate" Myth
by

Mark Felton Mark Felton (born 1974) is a British historian of the Second World War and author of more than twenty books. His most recently published work is 2019's ''Operation Swallow: American Soldiers' Remarkable Escape From Berga Concentration Camp'', wh ...

{{Authority control Nazi SS Einsatzgruppen

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