Kurt Graaf

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Kurt Graaf (born January 8, 1909 in Kiel , † September 2, 1972 in Schleswig ) was a German SS leader. Graaf was a leading member of the SD , at times leader of the sub-command 1c of the Einsatzgruppe A in the Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and the SD and achieved the rank of SS-Sturmbannführer in the SS (1939).

Live and act

After attending the Oberrealschule and the II boys' middle school in Kiel, Graaf began a commercial apprenticeship at the Ernst S Hansen company in Kiel, continued this at the Andreas Hussfeldt company and was additionally trained at the commercial school. After completing his apprenticeship on April 1, 1928, he worked as an assistant at the Hussfeldt company until September 1, 1928.

From September 15, 1928, Graaf worked for the Dralle company (representative of Heinrich G. Müller) in Kiel until he was sentenced to two months' imprisonment for political reasons and released. Instead, he got work for a company in the operating materials industry in Schleswig, which he had to leave on February 1, 1932 due to work restrictions.

Graaf joined the NSDAP on January 1, 1930 ( membership number 183.351). After being a member of the SA from 1929 to 1932 , he transferred to the SS on July 27, 1932 (SS no. 36.179).

In 1933 Graaf was assigned to the security service of the Reichsführer SS (SD). In September 1933 he married Hedwig Horn. The marriage resulted in a son and two daughters. Another child died shortly after birth.

Since 1934 Graaf was active in the SD Upper Section East. According to Heinrich Orb , who calls him Kurt Graf, Graaf murdered the Catholic leader and Ministerial Director in the Reich Ministry of Transport Erich Klausener on June 30, 1934 as part of the Röhm affair . Later, however, the SS-Sturmführer Kurt Gildisch was convicted of this murder, so that Graaf can at best be the unrecognized accomplice of Gildisch, whose presence during the murder of Klausener was confirmed by an official from the Ministry of Transport and Gildisch himself later in court. The identity of this man could never be clarified, because Gildisch had seen this man from Reinhard Heydrich to accompany him, without Heydrich having introduced him or himself. In contrast, the writer Harry Schulze-Wilde claims to have learned after the war that the Berlin SD chief Hermann Behrends carried out the Klausener murder.

In the following years Graaf worked at the SD main office in Berlin. In 1937 he was a staff leader in the SD subsection in Wiesbaden. After the establishment of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) he worked in Department A 5b of Office I.

After the beginning of the Second World War , Graaf initially continued to work in the Reich Security Main Office. Almost a year after the start of the German-Soviet War , Graaf was posted to the Eastern Front: From August to November 1942, he led the sub-command 1c of Einsatzgruppe A of the security police and SD . In this function, Graaf was responsible for the murder of several thousand people classified as undesirable by the Nazi leadership - in particular Jews and political commissars of the SU - who shot or otherwise killed by his command in the area assigned to him. Graaf then worked as an organizational clerk in the staff of the Einsatzkommando before he took over the leadership of Jagdkommando 13.

In the spring of 1943, Graaf was reprimanded for having a sexual relationship with a Russian woman and was transferred back to Germany on March 24, 1943. The chief of the security police and the SD Ernst Kaltenbrunner punished Graaf - who justified himself by claiming that he had considered the woman to be a " Volksdeutsche ", i.e. Russian of German descent - later with fourteen days of room arrest, while SS chief Heinrich Himmler gave him his Had "disapproval" communicated. Instead, as Graaf's superior Erich Isselhorst stated in a report on the matter that was preserved in Graaf's SS files, on his, Isselhorst's orders, the woman was given " special treatment ", that is, shot or deported to an extermination camp for gassing .

After his return to Germany, Graaf was assigned to the SD-Leitabschnitt Schwerin. After a few weeks of informational work, he took on the task of setting up a branch in Neustettin . He then worked for the SD main office and SD in Schwerin until the end of the war .

After the Second World War Graaf lived in the Federal Republic.

Promotions

  • March 29, 1932: SS man
  • September 1, 1932: SS squad leader
  • February 1, 1933: SS troop leader
  • September 1, 1933: SS-Oberstruppführer
  • April 1, 1934: SS-Untersturmführer
  • 4th July 1934: SS-Obersturmführer
  • January 30, 1936: SS-Hauptsturmführer
  • April 20, 1941: SS-Sturmbannführer

Awards

Archival material

  • Federal Archives: SSO inventory, Kurt Graaf personal file.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 194.
  2. ^ Heinrich Orb: National Socialism. 13 Years of Power Intoxication , 1945, p. 181.
  3. ↑ HS Hegner: Die Reichskanzlei, 1933-1945 , Munich 1966, p. 178.
personal data
SURNAME Graaf, Kurt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS-Sturmbannführer
DATE OF BIRTH January 8, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Kiel
DATE OF DEATH 2nd September 1972
Place of death Schleswig