On
this date, 3 February 1946, Nazi War Criminal, Friedrich Jeckeln was executed
by hanging at Riga. I will post information about him from Wikipedia.
Friedrich Jeckeln |
Born
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2 February 1895
Hornberg, Baden |
Died
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3 February 1946
(aged 51)
Riga |
Allegiance
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Service/branch
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Waffen-SS
|
Years of service
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1914–1945
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Rank
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Obergruppenführer
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Commands held
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V SS Mountain Corps
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Battles/wars
|
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Awards
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Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves
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Other work
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Responsible for Rumbula, Babi Yar, and other massacres.
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Friedrich August Jeckeln (2 February 1895, Hornberg, Baden
– 3 February 1946) was an SS-Obergruppenführer
who served as an SS and Police
Leader in the occupied Soviet Union during World War II. Jeckeln was
the commanding SS General over one of the largest collection of Einsatzgruppen and was personally
responsible for ordering the deaths of over 100,000 Jews, Slavs, Romani, and
other "undesirables" of the Third Reich.
Early
years
Jeckeln
was born in Hornberg, Baden. Upon the outbreak of World War I, Jeckeln was
commissioned a Leutnant, serving from 1914 to 1918 first as an artillery
officer and then as a pilot trainee. During his World War I service, Jeckeln
was awarded the Wound Badge and the Iron Cross 2nd Class.
Joins
Nazi party and becomes SS member
After
being discharged following Germany's defeat, Jeckeln worked as an engineer
before joining the Nazi Party on October 1, 1929. In December 1930, Jeckeln
applied to join the Schutzstaffel (SS) and was accepted as a member the
following month. Jeckeln was promoted to the rank of SS-Sturmbannführer
(major) in March 1931 and put in charge of the 1st Sturmbann (Battalion)
of the 12th SS-Standarte (Regiment) in the Allgemeine-SS. By the end of 1931, he
had been promoted again and was the Standartenführer (colonel) in charge
of the 17th SS-Standarte.
Promotions
following Nazi rise to power
By
July 1932, Jeckeln was serving as an SS-Abschnitt (Brigade) commander
and had been promoted to the rank of SS-Oberführer. He was also elected
as a member of the Reichstag that same year. In January 1933, when the Nazis
came to power in Germany, Jeckeln was put in charge of SS Group South. The next
month, he was promoted to SS-Gruppenführer (major general). Jeckeln
spent the next three years as an SS Group Commander and Political Police
Commissioner before being promoted to SS-Obergruppenführer (Lt general)
in 1936. He was then made the SS and Police Leader of Western Germany and also
served as commander of SS-Oberabschnitt (Division) West.
Jeckeln
was known to be ruthless, brutal, self-indulgent and hard. Political opponents,
especially members of the KPD, SPD and the unions, he pursued relentlessly
until their death. Together with party member Friedrich Alpers, Jeckeln was
primarily responsible for the Rieseberg murders in the summer of 1933. In
addition, he ordered the murder of a renegade SS man in Brunswick.
Photograph (mugshot)
of Nazi SS General Friedrich Jeckeln in Soviet custody.
|
World
War II mass murderer
Main
articles: Rumbula massacre, Babi Yar, and
Kamianets-Podilskyi Massacre
When
World War II began, Jeckeln was called up to active duty in the Waffen-SS.
As was the practice in the SS, Jeckeln took a lower rank from his Allgemeine
position and served as an officer in Regiment 2 of the Totenkopf Division. In
1941, however, his front line service was terminated and he was transferred by Reichsführer-SS
Heinrich Himmler to serve as Higher SS and Police Leader (HSSPF) of Eastern
Russia. In this role Jeckeln assumed direction and control of all SS-Einsatzgruppen
mass executions and anti-partisan operations in his district.
Jeckeln
developed his own methods to kill large numbers of people, which became known
as the "Jeckeln System". Jeckeln had staff which specialized in each
separate part of the process. As applied in the Rumbula massacre on November 30
and December 8, 1941, Jeckeln's system worked as follows:
- The Security Police (SD) rousted the people out of their houses in the Riga ghetto.
- The people to be murdered (typically Jews) were organized into columns of 500 to 1000 people and driven to the killing grounds about 10 kilometers to the south.
- The Order Police (Orpo) led the columns to the killing grounds.
- Three pits had already been dug where the killing would be done simultaneously.
- The victims were stripped of their clothing and valuables.
- The victims were run through a double cordon of guards on the way to the killing pits.
- The killers forced the victims to lie face down on the trench floor, or more often, on the bodies of the people who had just been shot.
- Each person was shot once in the back of the head with a Russian submachine gun. The shooters either walked among the dead in the trench, killing them from a range of two meters, or stood at the lip of the excavation and shot the prone victims below them. Anyone not killed outright was simply buried alive when the pit was covered up.
This
system was called "sardine packing" (Sardinenpackung). It was
reported that even some of the experienced Einsatzgruppen killers were
horrified by its cruelty. At Rumbula, Jeckeln watched on both days of the
massacre as 25,000 people were killed before him. Jeckeln proved to be an
effective killer who cared nothing about murdering huge numbers of unarmed and
even naked men, women, children, and elderly. One of the three survivors of the
Rumbala massacre, Frida Michelson, escaped by pretending to be dead as the
victims heaped shoes (later salvaged by Jeckeln's men) upon her:
A mountain of footwear was pressing down on me. My body was numb from cold and immobility. However, I was fully conscious now. The snow under me had melted from the heat of my body. ... Quiet for a while. Then from the direction of the trench a child's cry: 'Mama! Mama! Mamaa!'. A few shots. Quiet. Killed.
On
January 27, 1942, Jeckeln was awarded the "War Merit Cross (Kriegsverdienstkreuz
or KVK) with Swords" for killing 25,000 at Rumbula. In February 1945, now
a General der Waffen-SS und Polizei, Jeckeln was appointed to command
the SS-Freiwilligen-Gebirgs-Korps and also served as Commander of
Replacement Troops and Higher SS and Police Leader in Southwest Germany.
Friedrich Jeckeln
(standing, at left) SS war criminal and murder, on trial in 1946 in Riga.
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Jeckeln
was captured by Soviet troops near Halbe, in the vicinity of Forsthaus Hammer,
on April 28, 1945. Along with other Nazis who served in the Riga military
district, he was tried before a Soviet military court in Riga, Latvia from
January 26, 1946, to February 3, 1946. During the investigation, he was calm,
answering questions from investigators in essence, on the dock looked dull and
impartial. Jeckeln in his last word was restrained, he fully admitted his guilt
and agreed to bear full responsibility for the activities of subordinate
Police, SS and SD in Ostland. Concluding his speech, he said: "I have to
take full responsibility for what happened in the borders of Ostland, within
SS, SD and the Gestapo. Thereby increases much my fault. My fate is in the
hands of the High Court, and so I ask only to pay attention to mitigating
circumstances. I will accept a sentence in full repentance and I will consider
as worthy punishment." Jeckeln and the other defendants were found guilty,
sentenced to death and hanged at Riga on February 3, 1946 in front of some 4000
spectators. Against popular misconception, the execution did not happen in the
territory of the former Riga ghetto, but in Victory square (Uzvaras laukums).
In
fiction
Jeckeln
appears in Jonathan Littell's docudrama Les Bienveillantes.
Summary
of SS career
- SS-Anwärter: 1 December 1930
- SS-Mann: 5 January 1931
- SS-Sturmbannführer: 31 March 1931
- SS-Standartenführer: 22 June 1931
- SS-Oberführer: 20 September 1931
- SS-Gruppenführer: 4 February 1933
- SS-Obergruppenführer: 13 September 1936
- SS-Obergruppenführer und General der Polizei: 26 July 1940
- SS-Obergruppenführer und General der Waffen-SS und Polizei: 1 July 1944
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