and the LSSAH would supply all of the regimental, battalion and most of the company commanders. This new division would become the 12th SS Panzer Division (Hitlerjugend). Massacre of civilians on the Eastern Front During the fighting around Kharkov, a unit under the command of Joachim Peiper gained a nickname "Blowtorch Battalion", after the inhabitants of two Soviet villages were shot or burned. Ukrainian sources, including surviving witness Ivan Kiselev, who was 14 at the time of the massacre, described the killings at the villages of Yefremovka and Semyonovka on 17 February 1943. On 12 February Waffen-SS troops of the LSSAH occupied the two villages, where retreating Soviet forces had wounded two SS officers. In retaliation, five days later LSSAH troops killed 872 men, women and children. Some 240 of these were burned alive in the church of Yefremovka. The reputation of the "Blowtorch Battalion" was confirmed in August 1944, when Sturmbannführer Jacob Hanreich was captured south of Falaise in France and interrogated by the Allies. He stated that Peiper was "particularly eager to execute the order to burn villages". Hanreich had previously served with Leibstandarte but was with SS Division Hitlerjugend at the time of his capture. Additional sources support the division's reputation for brutality. The following statement, taken from the surreptitious recording of POWs' conversations by the Allies, describes the atrocities on the Eastern Front. SS-Untersturmführer Krämer (captured on the Western Front during his service with the SS Division Hitlerjugend) recounted the following from his time with the LSSAH: I have experienced it in Russia at Orel. An MG 42 was set up in the main aisle of a church, [...] and the Russian men, women and children were taken into the church, without knowing at all what was happening. Then they were shot immediately with the MG 42 and petrol was poured on them and the whole place was set on fire. Fabrikaktion Operation Elements of LSSAH took part in Fabrikaktion "factory action" a/k/a/ Großaktion Juden "Major Action (on) Jews", an operation to capture remaining German Jews that worked in the arms industry. Men of the LSSAH helped the Gestapo round up Jews in Berlin; people were taken from their jobs and herded in to cattle wagons on 27–28 February 1943. Most of the captured perished either in Auschwitz or other camps in the East. In May 1943, Hans Frank shipped 500 watches collected from Auschwitz prisoners