The Ivanhorod Einsatzgruppen photograph is a prominent depiction of the Holocaust in Ukraine, on the Eastern Front of World War II. Dated to 1942, it shows a soldier aiming his rifle at a woman who is trying to shield a child with her body, portraying one of numerous genocidal killings carried out against Jews by the Einsatzgruppen within German-occupied Europe. It was taken in Ivanhorod, a village in German-occupied Ukraine, before being mailed to Nazi Germany. However, the Polish resistance intercepted the photograph in Warsaw, and it was subsequently kept as Holocaust imagery by Polish photographer Jerzy Tomaszewski. In the 1960s, it was alleged that the photograph was a communist forgery, but that claim was eventually proven false. Since then, it has been frequently used in books, museums, and exhibitions focused on the Holocaust. British photographic historian Janina Struk describes it as "a symbol of the barbarity of the Nazi regime and their industrial-scale murder of six million European Jews." Background During the Holocaust, more than a million Jews were murdered in Ukraine. Most of them were shot in mass executions by Einsatzgruppen (death squads) and Ukrainian collaborators. In 1897, the Russian Empire Census found that there were 442 Jews (out of a population of 3,032) living in Ivanhorod, a village today in the Cherkasy Oblast, central Ukraine. In 1942, a mass shooting by Einsatzgruppen south of the town killed an unknown number of victims. Part of the massacre is depicted in this photograph. After the war, the execution site was used as a field of a collective farm. Photograph There are six victims in the photograph. The body lying at the feet of the German soldier appears to be a woman who was already shot. In the center of the photograph is a woman who appears to be shielding a child. One of her feet is raised as if she is trying to flee, or else the photograph was taken just after she was shot. To her right are three men. Only one soldier is fully visible in the picture; he appears to be aiming at the woman and child. Rifles held by German soldiers off the left edge of the photograph are visible and point at the woman and child. The shadows at the left edge of the photograph suggest that more German soldiers may be present. A wooden stake and a shovel are visible on the right