Heinrich Seetzen

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Heinrich Otto Seetzen , called Heinz Seetzen , (born June 22, 1906 in Rüstringen ; † September 28, 1945 in Hamburg-Blankenese ( suicide )) was a German lawyer who was promoted to SS-Standartenführer and colonel of the police at the time of National Socialism has been. Seetzen was responsible for mass murders of civilians in Ukraine and Belarus .

Life

Seetzen was born as the only child of a delicatessen owner in Rüstringen, which is now part of Wilhelmshaven . He joined the Jungstahlhelm as a schoolboy . Seetzen studied law at the Philipps University in Marburg and at the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel . After the legal traineeship, he worked part-time in various law firms.

On May 1, 1933, he joined the NSDAP ( membership number 2,732,725) and the SA . On February 1, 1935, he became a member of the SS (SS No. 267.231). After an unsuccessful application for the position of mayor in Eutin , the unemployed Seetzen accepted a job as a temporary worker with the Eutin regional president, the SA brigad leader Johann Heinrich Böhmcker . In 1935 he successfully applied for admission to the Prussian Gestapo .

After his promotion to the Higher Government Council he was successively employed as chief of the security police and the SD in Aachen (1935-1938), Vienna , Stettin and Hamburg (January 1940 to July 1941 and absent until August 1942). From August 1942 he was inspector of the Security Police and the SD in Kassel and then from spring 1943 in Breslau . In 1944 he finally became the commander of the security police in Prague.

After the attack on the Soviet Union, Seetzen was in command of Sonderkommando 10a , which followed Army Group South and was responsible for mass murders in the south of the Soviet Union . An accomplice in mass murder, the Austrian police officer Robert Barth, said of Seetzen:

“The commando leader […] Zeezen [sic] […] was described as particularly brutal. He is said to have boasted that his commandos shot most of the Jews. It was also said that when he was in command, when the ammunition ran out when Jews were shot, the Jews were thrown alive into a well about 30 m deep. "

From April 28, 1944 to August 1944, as commander of Einsatzgruppe B, he was responsible for mass murders in Belarus . This murder unit was responsible for the deaths of more than 134,000 people in the Minsk and Smolensk area. After his promotion to SS-Standartenführer and colonel of the police, he became the commander of the security police and the SD (KdS) in Belarus in April 1944 .

Heinz Seetzen was married to Ellen Knickrehm.

After 1945

After the end of the war , Seetzen hid under the false name of Michael Gollwitzer with a friend. This reported that Seetzen was "morally completely exhausted". He would have told her “that he was seriously guilty [...] was a criminal and had forfeited his life. He [...] said openly that he had cyanide with him so that if he was caught, he could commit suicide at the right moment. "

After his arrest by the British military police in Hamburg-Blankenese, Seetzen committed suicide on September 28, 1945 using a hydrocyanic acid capsule . He was not identified and was buried as "Michael Gollwitzer". That is why the Denazification Chamber dealt with Seetzen in 1949 and classified him "in the event that the person concerned is still alive" in group 3 of the "less burdened".

literature

  • Lawrence D. Stokes : Heinz Seetzen - Chief of the Sonderkommando 10a. In: Klaus-Michael Mallmann, Gerhard Paul (Ed.): Careers of violence. National Socialist perpetrator biographies . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2004, ISBN 3-534-16654-X .
  • Lawrence D. Stokes: From law student to Einsatzgruppe commander: The career of a Gestapo officer. In: Canadian Journal of History , April 2002.
  • Linde Apel, Hamburg Authority for Culture, Sport, Media, in collaboration with the Research Center for Contemporary History in Hamburg and the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial (ed.): Sent to death - The deportations of Jews, Roma and Sinti from Hamburg, 1940 to 1945 . Metropol Verlag, Hamburg 2009.
  • Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Updated 2nd edition. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Linde Apel, Hamburg Authority for Culture, Sport, Media, in collaboration with the Research Center for Contemporary History in Hamburg and the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial (ed.): Sent to death - The deportations of Jews, Roma and Sinti from Hamburg, 1940 until 1945 . Metropol Verlag, Hamburg 2009. DVD for the exhibition, Die Gestapo , p. 8.
  2. ^ Report by Robert Barth from October 8, 1943 (Nuremberg Document NO-3663), quoted in: Stokes, Seetzen , p. 199. Robert Barth defected to the British in Italy in October 1943 and made a statement about Seetzen.
  3. ↑ statement from Seetzens acquaintance of 26 October 1962 cited in: Stokes: SEETZEN , S. 203rd
personal data
SURNAME Seetzen, Heinrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Seetzen, Heinrich Otto (full name); Seetzen, Heinz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German administrative lawyer, member of the NSDAP and the SS, commander of the Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and the SD, Sonderkommando 10a and Einsatzgruppe B
DATE OF BIRTH June 22, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Rüstringen-Wilhelmshaven
DATE OF DEATH September 28, 1945
Place of death Hamburg-Blankenese