200 days of dread

The 200 days of dread (Hebrew: מאתיים ימי חרדה; matayim yamei kharada) was a period of 200 days (almost 7 months) in the history of the Yishuv in British Palestine, from the spring of 1942 to November 1942, when the German Afrika Korps under the command of General Erwin Rommel was heading east towards the Suez Canal and Palestine.

In 1942 a more serious threat emerged as the German Afrika Korps, under the command of Erwin Rommel, threatened to overrun British possessions in the Middle East.

Despite the word "Palestine" never being mentioned in the archival documents, the researchers state that the unit's objective was to go there in order to enact systematic mass murder of Jews.

Given its small staff of only 24 men, Mallmann and Cüppers theorize the unit would have needed help from local residents and from the Afrika Korps to complete their assignment.

[2] According to historian Haim Saadon, Director of the Center of Research on North African Jewry in World War II, there was no extermination plan: Documents of the SS commander in Tunisia, Walter Rauff, show that his foremost concern was assisting the Wehrmacht, and his plan for this was to place the Jews in forced labour camps.