Rudolf Lange (SS member)

Rudolf Lange (born April 18, 1910 in Weißwasser , district of Rothenburg (Ob. Laus.) , Prussia ; † February 23, 1945 in Posen ) was a prominent National Socialist police officer.

He took part in the Wannsee conference and served as SS-Standartenführer , commander, later commander of the security police and the SD (KdS or BdS) in Riga, Latvia, where he was largely responsible for implementing the extermination of the Jewish population. Task Force A killed over 250,000 people in less than six months.

Life

Rudolf Lange was born in Weißwasser as the son of a Reichsbahn construction inspector. After studying law, he initially worked as a trainee lawyer in Staßfurt and at the Naumburg Higher Regional Court . During his legal traineeship, he received his doctorate from the University of Jena with a thesis on the employer's right to direct . In the summer semester of 1928 he became a member of the Jenaische Burschenschaft Germania . Lange completed his preparatory service in 1933 at the Gestapo in Halle . In the same year he joined the SA . In 1936 he worked in the Secret State Police Office in Berlin and then returned to Halle.

On October 11, 1936, he joined the SS ; He became a member of the NSDAP on November 15, 1937. Between 1938 and June 1939, Lange was at the Gestapo headquarters in Vienna. It was probably there that he met Walther Stahlecker , who later became his superior in Riga. His professional path led him to Berlin in 1940 via the Gestapo offices in Stuttgart, Weimar, Erfurt and Kassel. Until then, Lange's area of ​​responsibility was “fighting opponents”. For many years, Lange was one of the "middle level" Gestapo officers who guaranteed the functioning of the terrorist apparatus.

When the Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and the SD were formed under the command of Reinhard Heydrich to murder the Jews in the Soviet Union , Lange became the head of the group staff of Einsatzgruppe A. In the Baltic States , he temporarily headed Einsatzkommando 2, which until December 1941 about 60,000 murdered Latvian Jews and Jews deported to Latvia . As the commander of the security police and the SD in Latvia, Lange personally commanded mass shootings on the outskirts of Riga . He was the driving force behind the construction of the camp in Salaspils . On January 19, he was 70 to 80 young men from the second Theresienstadt -Transportation to forced labor in Salaspils select , more than 900 Jews, including 450 able-bodied, shoot and then flew on behalf Stahlecker to Berlin. Lange was one of the participants in the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942, and was the "experienced practitioner" of the mass executions. After his return, he directed a mass shooting of Jews who had arrived in Berlin on January 30, 1942 and against Viennese Jews on January 31, 1942. There are no precise records of this. The first major selection took place in the Riga ghetto in February 1942 . In March and April around 4,800 people were shot in the forest of Biķernieki in the Dünamünde operation .

During inspections, Lange shot prisoners several times for trivial reasons. In the testimony of Jewish survivors, he is portrayed as bossy and brutal.

From the winter of 1944 on, Lange was in charge of the three mobile commandos in Latvia that were supposed to cover up the traces of the murders in special campaign 1005 . From January 1945, Lange was in command of the Security Police and SD in the Warthegau . While fighting for Posen, Lange was wounded and committed suicide to avoid capture. There are no valid arguments for any doubts raised about his death.

Fonts

• The employer's right of direction . Nolte, Düsseldorf 1933. Dissertation Univ. Jena 1932.

literature

• Peter Klein : Dr. Rudolf Lange as commander of the security police and the SD in Latvia. Aspects of his daily work. In Wolf Kaiser (ed.): Perpetrators in the war of extermination. The attack on the Soviet Union and the genocide of the Jews. Propylaen-Verlag, Berlin 2002, pp. 125-136, ISBN 3-549-07161-2 .

Web links

• Biography and picture of Lange at Associazione Olokaustos (Italian)
• Rudolf Lange , short biography in tabular form at: House of History Baden-Württemberg, Virtual History Location Hotel Silber

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Mark Roseman : The Wannsee Conference. How the bureaucracy organized the Holocaust. Munich / Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-548-36403-9 , p. 95.
2. ^ Claus-Dieter Köhler: Directory of all members of the fraternity Germania zu Jena. Jena 2005, p. 48.
3. ^ Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 , p. 356.
4. ↑ Peter Klein: Echo on the decision that has been made , in: Norbert Kampe , Peter Klein (ed.): The Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942: documents, research status, controversies . Böhlau-Verlag, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2013, ISBN 978-3-412-21070-0 , p. 197.
5. ^ Memorial and Educational Center House of the Wannsee Conference (Ed.): The Wannsee Conference and the Genocide of European Jews (catalog). Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-9808517-4-5 , p. 104.
6. ↑ Peter Klein: Echo on the decision that has been made , in: Norbert Kampe , Peter Klein (ed.): The Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942: documents, research status, controversies . Böhlau-Verlag, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2013, ISBN 978-3-412-21070-0 , p. 199.
7. ↑ Peter Klein: Dr. Rudolf Lange as Commander , 2002, p. 125.
8. ^ Andrej Angrick: Heydrich's motives and strategy for the Wannsee Conference , in: Norbert Kampe , Peter Klein (Ed.): The Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942: documents, research status, controversies . Böhlau-Verlag, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2013, ISBN 978-3-412-21070-0 , p. 257.
9. ↑ Andrej Angrick , Peter Klein: The "Final Solution" in Riga. WBG, Darmstadt 2006, ISBN 3-534-19149-8 , p. 453 f.