Body, too

“Passersby could be forced to watch public hangings of ‘saboteurs’ or ‘Jews.’ German onlookers, meanwhile, often took pictures. The victims were left suspended from the balconies or lampposts—there were no public gallows in the cities—for days. In Kiev, the first public hangings, of two ‘arsonists,’ apparently took place in late September 1941. They are also reported for that city in February and March 1942. On at least one of those later occasions, the ropes broke and, as a crowd looked on, the henchmen resorted to shooting the accused. Inhabitants of large cities also saw gas vans (actually, one van per city) speeding by. They called this mobile gas chamber that could hold and kill fifty prisoners the dushohubka—the destroyer of the soul.” – Karel C. Berkhoff,  in Harvest of Despair