The "Final Solution" refers to the Third Reich's campaign to exterminate the Jews during World War 2, an operation that is otherwise known as the Holocaust.

A phase before the campaign involved the concentration of all the Jews in Poland and other territories occupied by Germany in the East in ghettos. This period lasted approximately until the beginning of 1942. The Final Solution lasted until October 1944.

Paramilitary SS Hauptsturmfuhrer Dieter Wisliceny detailed in the Nuremberg trial his association with SS Jewish expert Adolf Eichmann and the latter's role in deporting the Jews to their deaths. When did he learn of an order for the "Final Solution?" Wisliceny claimed he heard of it from Eichmann, in the summer of 1942.

"Eichmann told me he could show me this order in writing if it would soothe my conscience. He took a small volume of orders from his safe, turned the pages, and showed me a letter from Himmler to the Chief of the Security Police and the SD," he testified.

The letter stated, "The Führer has ordered the Final Solution of the Jewish question; the Chief of the Security Police and the SD and the Inspector of Concentration Camps were entrusted with carrying out this so-called Final Solution. All Jewish men and women who were able to work were to be temporarily exempted from the so-called Final Solution and used for work in the concentration camps."

"It was clear to me that this order spelled death to millions of people," Wisliceny later told the court.

"I said to Eichmann, 'God grant that our enemies never have the opportunity of doing the same to the German people,' in reply to which Eichmann told me not to be sentimental; it was an order of the Führer's and would have to be carried out."

Among the relatively few witnesses the Soviet prosecutors presented were several Jews who told of horrifying events.

Chief Counsellor L.N. Smirnov called Abram Suzkever, a Jewish writer from Vilna. Prompted by Smirnov, Suzkever recounted the terrorization and massacre of one of the leading Jewish communities of Eastern Europe.

Suzkever said: "When the Germans seized my city, Vilna, about 80,000 Jews lived in the town. Immediately, the so-called Sonderkommando was set up on 12 Vilenskaia Street, under the command of Schweichenberg and Martin Weiss. The man-hunters of the Sonderkommandos, or as the Jews called them, the 'Khapun,' broke into the Jewish houses at any time of day or night, dragged away the men, instructing them to take a piece of soap and a towel, and herded them into certain buildings near the village of Ponari, about 8 kilometers from Vilna. From there, hardly one returned."