Editing Volksdeutsche (section)

===Volksdeutsche in Romania===
After Romania acquired parts of Soviet Ukraine, the Germans there came under the authority of the [[Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle]], which deployed SS personnel to several settlements. They eventually contained German mayors, farms, schools and ethnic German paramilitary groups functioning as police called ''[[Selbstschutz]]'' ("Self-protection"). German colonists and ''Selbstschutz'' forces engaged in extensive acts of [[ethnic cleansing]], massacring [[Jewish people|Jewish]] and [[Romani people|Roma]] populations.

In the German colony of Shonfeld, Romas were burned in farms. During the winter of 1941/1942, German ''Selbstschutz'' units participated in the shooting, together with [[Ukrainian People's Militia]] and Romanian [[gendarme]]s, of some 18,000 [[Jews]]. In the camp of [[Bogdanovka concentration camp|Bogdanovka]], tens of thousands of Jews were subject to mass shootings, barn burnings and killing by hand grenades.

[[Heinrich Himmler]] was sufficiently impressed by the Volksdeutsche communities and the work of the Selbstschutz to order that these methods be copied in Ukraine.<ref>Moses, Dirk A. (editor) ''Empire, Colony, Genocide: Conquest, Occupation and Subaltern Resistance in World History'', Berghahn Books, 2009, {{ISBN|978-1845457198}}, p. 389</ref>