By 1941, the focus and function of the Einsatzgruppen had changed significantly. With the initiation of Operation Barbarossa, Germany's assault on the Soviet Union, the mobile killing units operated over a wide area of Eastern Europe from the Baltic to the Black Sea. There were four main divisions of the Einsatzgruppen -- Groups A, B, C and D. These groups, all under Heydrich's general command, operated just behind the advancing German troops eliminating "undesirables: political "criminals," Polish governmental officials, gypsies and, mostly, Jews. Jews were rounded up in every village, transported to a wooded area, or a ravine (either natural or constructed by Jewish labor). They (men, women and children) were stripped, shot and buried. Sachar provides a description of one of the most brutal mass exterminations â?? at a ravine named "Babi Yar," near the Ukrainian city of Kiev:
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