What nationality were the killing squad who helped murder 100,000 people mainly from Vilnius?
Ypatingasis būrys Ypatingasis būrys ("Special Squad") or Special SD and German Security Police Squad (Lithuanian: "Vokiečių Saugumo policijos ir SD ypatingasis būrys" , Polish: "Specjalny Oddział SD i Niemieckiej Policji Bezpieczeństwa" , also colloquially "strzelcy ponarscy" ("Ponary riflemen" in Polish) (1941–1944) was a Lithuanian killing squad of approximately 50 men, also called the "Lithuanian equivalent of Sonderkommando", operating in the Vilnius Region. The unit, primarily composed of Lithuanian volunteers was formed by the German occupational government and was subordinate to Einsatzkommando 9 and later to Sicherheitsdienst (SD) and Sicherheitspolizei (Sipo). There are different estimates regarding the size of the unit. Polish historian Czesław Michalski estimates that it grew from base of 50 while Tadeusz Piotrowski asserts about that there were 100 volunteers at its onset. According to Michalski, after its initial creation at various times hundreds of people were its members. Arūnas Bubnys states that it never exceeded a core of forty or fifty men. 118 names are known, 20 of the members have been punished. Together with German police the squad participated in the Ponary massacre, where some 70,000 Jews were murdered, along with estimated 20,000 Poles and 8,000 Russian POWs, many from nearby Vilnius.
List of Polish Jews From the Middle Ages until the Holocaust, Jews comprised a significant part of the Polish population. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, known as a "Jewish paradise" for its religious tolerance, attracted tens of thousands of Jews who fled persecution from other European countries, even though, at times, discrimination against Jews surfaced in Poland just as it did elsewhere in Europe. Poland was a major spiritual and cultural center for Ashkenazi Jews and Ashkenazi Jewry. At the start of the Second World War, Poland had the largest Jewish population in the world (over 3.3 million), but the vast majority of them were killed by the Nazis in the Holocaust during the German occupation of Poland, particularly through the implementation of the "Final Solution" mass extermination program. Only 369,000 (11%) survived. After massive postwar emigration, the Polish Jewish population stands at somewhere between 50,000 and 200,000.