Paul Blobel

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Paul Blobel (1948)

Paul Blobel (born August 13, 1894 in Potsdam , † June 7, 1951 in Landsberg am Lech ) was a German SS officer who, as the special command leader of the Einsatzgruppen, played a leading role in the murder of the Soviet Jews . Blobel headed a. a. the massacre in the Babyn Yar Gorge , in which his troops murdered 33,000 Jews within two days . As leader of Sonderkommando 1005 , he was central to the attempt to cover up the crime. After the war he was sentenced to death by hanging in the Einsatzgruppen trial in 1948 and executed in 1951.

Life

Origin and education

Paul Blobel grew up in Remscheid , where he attended school and trained as a bricklayer and carpenter until 1912. From 1912 to 1913 he studied architecture at the Kgl. Prussian building trade school in Barmen / Elberfeld and worked as a carpenter until the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. During the First World War he was a frontline soldier in a pioneer unit . At the end of the war, Blobel was dismissed with the rank of Vice Sergeant . Blobel was unemployed until 1919 and lived in Remscheid again. He continued his architecture studies at the now state building trade school and finished it in August 1920 with a "good" certificate. From 1921 Blobel was employed by various companies; In 1924 he started his own business as an architect in Solingen . As a result of the global economic crisis in 1929, he no longer had any jobs and was registered as unemployed in Solingen from 1930 to 1933. On December 1, 1931, Blobel joined the NSDAP ( membership number 844.662), and in January 1932 also the SS (SS number 29.100).

Career in National Socialism

From 1933 to the spring of 1935, Blobel worked as an office worker for the city administration of Solingen. Blobel joined the SS security service in June 1935 and quickly made his career up to the SD section leader of Düsseldorf. In 1938 he worked as the coordinator for securing materials from destroyed synagogues in Solingen, Wuppertal and Remscheid .

With the beginning of the war against the Soviet Union , Blobel was appointed SS-Standartenführer in June 1941 to lead the Sonderkommando 4a (SK 4a) of Einsatzgruppe C , which was deployed behind the front in the operational area of Army Group South . By January 1942, SK 4a murdered approx. 60,000 people, including approx. 30,000 Jews, on September 29 and 30, 1941 in the Babi Yar gorge near Kiev . Blobel led the Sk 4a until January 1942. In the corresponding " incident reports USSR " from this period, Einsatzgruppe C reported the following executions for the special command 4a or its sub-commandos:

  • from June 22 to July 29, 1941 at Zhitomir : "2,531 people",
  • from June 27 to June 29, 1941 near Sokal and Lutsk : "300 Jews and 317 communists",
  • in July or August 1941 in Fastow : "all Jews between the ages of 12 and 60",
  • in September or October 1941 on the march between Wіrna ( Вірна ) and Dederow ( Дедеров ): "32 gypsies ",
  • on September 29 and 30, 1941 in Kiev together with the staff of Einsatzgruppe C and police units: "33,771 Jews",
  • on October 8, 1941 in Jagotin : "125 Jews",
  • From June 22nd to October 12th, 1941 in the operational area of ​​the Sonderkommando: "more than 51,000 people", (summary report that contains the cumulative number of victims previously reported)
  • and on November 23, 1941 in Poltava : "1,538 Jews".
Paul Blobel delivering his verdict during the Einsatzgruppen trial, 1948

After being replaced as leader of SK 4a on January 13, 1942 - officially because of unspecified health problems behind which his alcoholism was hidden - he was entrusted in June 1942 by the chief of the Gestapo , group leader Heinrich Müller , with the task of tracing the Crimes committed by the Einsatzgruppen, d. H. to eliminate the mass graves . It was about the so-called special campaign 1005 , which was also known as the "Enterdungsaktion". The corresponding order was only given orally. Any correspondence regarding this order was prohibited. Work units had to open the mass graves and burn the corpses in pits and on stakes. The aim of the action was, in addition to covering up traces of the mass murders of the task forces, to contain the health risks posed by the masses of buried bodies. This was only partially successful due to the rapid advance of the Red Army .

Process and aftermath

In the Einsatzgruppen trial against Otto Ohlendorf et al. (Case 9 of the Nuremberg Succession Trials) Blobel was charged with (1) crimes against humanity , (2) war crimes, and (3) membership in a criminal organization . Specifically, he was accused of murdering 60,000 people under his responsibility between June 1941 and January 1942. In his defense, Blobel submitted that the Sonderkommando 4a under his leadership had not shot 60,000, but a maximum of 10,000 to 15,000 people. In addition, the "execution of agents, partisans, saboteurs, elements suspected of espionage and sabotage and those who harmed the German army" are covered by the Hague Convention . The court did not follow his remarks, but found him guilty on all three counts. The sentence was on the April 10, 1948 death by the train set. In addition to Blobel, 13 other high-ranking task force leaders were sentenced to death in the process.

On June 7, 1951, Blobel was executed in the Landsberg am Lech prison. The place of burial of Blobel's body is disputed. On the same day in Landsberg were three other convicts from the Einsatzgruppen Trial ( Otto Ohlendorf , Erich Naumann and Werner brown ), which in Pohl process condemned Oswald Pohl and two convicts from the Dachau Trials ( Georg Schallermair and Hans-Theodor Schmidt ) executed. These seven executions were the last uses of the death penalty on the territory of the Federal Republic of Germany. Other accomplices were sentenced to long prison terms in the 1968 Callsen trial .

The factual novel " The Well-intentioned " by the writer Jonathan Littell from 2006 combines a fictional biography with various real events and people of the Holocaust - including the events in Babi Yar - with the person of Paul Blobel. In the multi-part film " Holocaust - The History of the Weiss Family " from 1978, Blobel is played by Irish actor Thomas Patrick McKenna .

literature

  • Yitzhak Arad (Ed.): The Einsatzgruppen reports: Selections from the dispatches of the Nazi Death Squads' campaign against the Jews, July 1941 - January 1943. Holocaust Library, New York 1989, ISBN 0-89604-057-7 .
  • Hilary Earl: The Nuremberg SS-Einsatzgruppen Trial, 1945–1958: Atrocity, Law, and History . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2009, ISBN 978-0-521-45608-1 .
  • Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10. (PDF; 56.9 MB) , Vol. IV: United States of America vs. Otto Ohlendorf, et al. (Case 9: “Einsatzgruppen Case”). United States Government Printing Office , District of Columbia 1950. (Volume 4 of the 15-volume "Green Series" on the Nuremberg successor processes).
  • Jens Hoffmann: “You can't tell that”. "Aktion 1005" - How the Nazis removed the traces of their mass murders in Eastern Europe. KVV Konkret, Hamburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-930786-53-4 .
  • Michael Okroy : Paul Blobel, architect from Solingen, and his "special tasks in the east" . In: Romerike Berge . Vol. 46, No. 3 (1996), ISSN  0485-4306 , pp. 20-27.
  • Michael Okroy: 50 years ago in Nuremberg. The task force process and Paul Blobel . In: grandstand. Journal for the Understanding of Judaism . Vol. 36, No. 142 (2nd quarter 1997), pp. 21-32, ISSN  0041-2716

Web links

Commons : Paul Blobel  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10. , Vol. IV: United States of America vs. Otto Ohlendorf, et al. (Case 9: “Einsatzgruppen Case”). District of Columbia 1950, pp. 211-213.
  2. ↑ Einsatzgruppen reports , Einsatzgruppe C, exhibits (C) to (J). In: Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10. , Vol. IV. District of Columbia 1950, pp. 18-19. The corresponding pieces of evidence of the prosecution - a total of 253 "Exhibits" - were the " Event Reports USSR " and the "Activity and Situation Reports" from June 1941 to April 1942, the " Jäger Report " from December 1, 1941, the first and second " Stahlecker Report ”(December 1941 and January 1942) and the statements of the defendants. In: Hilary Earl: The Nuremberg SS-Einsatzgruppen Trial . Cambridge 2009, SS 179-180.
  3. ^ Indictment against Einsatzgruppe C, count (C). In: Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10. , Vol. IV. District of Columbia 1950, p. 18.
  4. ^ Indictment against Einsatzgruppe C, count (E). In: Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10. , Vol. IV. District of Columbia 1950, pp. 18-19.
  5. ^ Indictment against Einsatzgruppe C, count (F). In: Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10. , Vol. IV. District of Columbia 1950, p. 19. This charge is based as evidence on the activity and situation report of the Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and the SD in the USSR No. 80 of September 11, 1941. In: Yitzhak Arad (Ed.): The Einsatzgruppen Reports . New York 1989, p. 129.
  6. ^ Indictment against Einsatzgruppe C, count (G). In: Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10. , Vol. IV. District of Columbia 1950, p. 19. This charge is based as evidence on the activity and situation report of the Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and the SD in the USSR No. 119 of October 20, 1941. In: Yitzhak Arad (Ed.): The Einsatzgruppen Reports . New York 1989, p. 198.
  7. ^ Indictment against Einsatzgruppe C, count (H). In: Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10. , Vol. IV. District of Columbia 1950, p. 19. This charge is based as evidence u. a. to the activity and situation report of the Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and the SD in the USSR No. 101 of October 2, 1941. In: Yitzhak Arad (Ed.): The Einsatzgruppen Reports . New York 1989, p. 168.
  8. ^ Indictment against Einsatzgruppe C, count (I). In: Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10. , Vol. IV. District of Columbia 1950, p. 19. This charge is based as evidence on the activity and situation report of the Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and the SD in the USSR No. 119 of October 20, 1941. In: Yitzhak Arad (Ed.): The Einsatzgruppen Reports . New York 1989, p. 198.
  9. ^ Indictment against Einsatzgruppe C, count (D). In: Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10. , Vol. IV. District of Columbia 1950, p. 18.
  10. ^ Indictment against Einsatzgruppe C, indictment (J). In: Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10. , Vol. IV. District of Columbia 1950, p. 19. This charge is based as evidence on the activity and situation report of the Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and the SD in the USSR No. 156 of January 16, 1942. In: Yitzhak Arad (Ed.): The Einsatzgruppen Reports . New York 1989, p. 281.
  11. ^ Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10. , Vol. IV: United States of America vs. Otto Ohlendorf, et al. (Case 9: “Einsatzgruppen Case”). District of Columbia 1950, pp. 526-529.
  12. ↑ According to a collection of materials (PDF; 8.2 MB) from a Landsberg citizens' initiative, Blobel was buried in the Spöttinger cemetery belonging to the Landsberg prison.
    According to a contemporary report in Der Spiegel, Blobel's body was transferred from his widow to her place of residence and buried there. Of the seven people executed on June 7, 1951, only Pohl and Naumann were buried in the Spöttinger cemetery. ( Mr. Brit has arrived . In: Der Spiegel . No. 24 , 1951, pp. 12 ( online - June 13, 1951 ). )
personal data
SURNAME Blobel, Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS officer and Einsatzgruppen commander
DATE OF BIRTH August 13, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Potsdam
DATE OF DEATH June 7, 1951
Place of death Landsberg am Lech