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The [[Wehrmacht|German army]] entered the [[Occupation of Poland (1939–45)|Soviet occupation zone]] on June 22, 1941 under the codename [[Operation Barbarossa]] and took over the city within days. On June 28, 1941 the Great Synagogue was set on fire with 800 to 1,000 Jews locked in it, and burned down. The so-called "Red Friday" took the lives of up to 5,000 Jewish victims – a [[wikt:harbringer|harbinger]] of things to come.<ref name="bialystok1" /> Himmler visited Białystok on June 30, 1941 during the formation of the new [[Bezirk Bialystok|Bezirk]] district and pronounced that there is a high risk of Soviet guerrilla activity in the area, with Jews being of course immediately suspected of helping them out. The mission to destroy the alleged [[NKVD]] collaborators was assigned to ''[[Einsatzgruppe B]]'' under the command of [[SS-Gruppenführer]] [[Arthur Nebe]] aided by ''Kommando SS Zichenau-Schroettersburg'' under [[Hermann Schaper]] and ''Kommando Bialystok'' led by [[Wolfgang Birkner]] summoned from the [[General Government]] on orders from the Reich Main Security Office.<ref name="Rossino">{{cite web | title=Polish "Neighbors" and German Invaders: Contextualizing Anti-Jewish Violence in the Białystok District during the Opening Weeks of Operation Barbarossa | work=Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, Volume 16 | year= 2003 | accessdate=May 12, 2011 | author=[[Alexander B. Rossino]], historian at the [[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]] in [[Washington, D.C.]] | quote= Cited by [[Bogdan Musiał]] in: ''"Konterrevolutionäre Elemente sind zu erschiessen": Die Brutalisierung des deutsch-sowjetischen Krieges im Sommer 1941'', (Berlin: Propyläen, 2000), pp. 32, 62.
On February 5–12, 1943, the first group of approximately 10,000 Białystok Jews were sent to their deaths [[Holocaust train|in cattle trucks]] at the [[Treblinka extermination camp]]. Up to 2,000 victims were shot on the spot for insubordination among those too weak or sick to run for the wagons.<ref name="bialystok1" /> Approximately 7,600 inmates were put in a new central transit camp within the city for their further selection. Those fit to work were sent to the [[Majdanek]] camp. In Majdanek, after another screening for ability to work, they were transported to the [[Poniatowa concentration camp]], Blizyn, as well as Auschwitz labor and extermination camp. Those deemed too weak to work were murdered at Majdanek. More than 1,000 Jewish children were sent first to the [[Theresienstadt concentration camp|Theresienstadt]] ghetto in [[Bohemia]], and then to [[Auschwitz concentration camp|Auschwitz-Birkenau]], where they were killed. Only a few months later, as part of [[Aktion Reinhard]], on August 16, 1943 the ghetto was raided by regiments of the German SS with Ukrainian, Estonian, Latvian and Belorussian auxiliaries (''[[Hiwi (volunteer)|Hiwi]]s''), known as [[Trawniki-men]] aiming at the ghetto's final destruction.<ref name="Datner" />
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