Friedrich Jeckeln: Difference between revisions

Browse history interactively ← Previous edit Next edit →Content deleted Content addedVisual WikitextInline

Revision as of 23:33, 5 May 2019

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
Find sources: "Friedrich Jeckeln" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (January 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Friedrich Jeckeln
Jeckeln in Soviet custody, 1946
Born	(1895-02-02)2 February 1895 Hornberg, Grand Duchy of Baden, German Empire
Died	3 February 1946(1946-02-03) (aged 51) Riga, Latvian SSR, Soviet Union
Known for	Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre Babi Yar massacre Rumbula massacre

Criminal charge	War crimes
Trial	Riga Trial
Penalty	Death penalty


SS career
Allegiance	Nazi Germany
Service / branch	SS
Rank	SS-Obergruppenführer
Commands	Higher SS and Police Leader, Reichskommissariat Ostland
Awards	Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves

Friedrich Jeckeln (2 February 1895 – 3 February 1946) was a German SS commander during the Nazi era. He served as a Higher SS and Police Leader in the occupied Soviet Union during World War II. Jeckeln was the commander of one of the largest collection of Einsatzgruppen death squads and was personally responsible for ordering and organizing the deaths of over 100,000 Jews, Romani, and others designated by the Nazis as "undesirables". After the end of World War II, Jeckeln was convicted of war crimes by a Soviet military tribunal in Riga and executed in 1946.

SS career

Jeckeln served in World War I as an officer. After being discharged following Germany's defeat, Jeckeln worked as an engineer before joining the Nazi Party on 1 October 1929. In January 1931, he was accepted into the Schutzstaffel (SS). By the end of 1931 he was placed in charge of a regiment and then a brigade. In 1932, Jeckeln was elected as a member of the Reichstag. In January 1933, when the Nazi Party came to power in Germany, Jeckeln was put in charge of SS Group South. In 1936, he was appointed SS and Police Leader and later promoted to SS-Obergruppenführer.

Jeckeln was known for ruthlessness and brutality. Political opponents, especially members of the KPD, SPD and the unions, were pursued relentlessly until their death. Together with party member Friedrich Alpers, Jeckeln was primarily responsible for the Rieseberg Murders in the summer of 1933.

Holocaust perpetrator

Main articles: Rumbula massacre, Babi Yar, and Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre

After the Second World War began, Jeckeln was transferred to the Waffen-SS. As was the practice in the SS, Jeckeln took a lower rank from his Allgemeine-SS position and served as an officer in Regiment 2 of the Totenkopf Division. In 1941, he was transferred by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler to serve as Higher SS and Police Leader (HSSPF) of Southern, then later in 1941, of Northern Russia. In this role Jeckeln assumed control of all SS-Einsatzgruppen mass killings and security operations in his district.

Jeckeln developed his own methods of killing large numbers of people, which became known as the "Jeckeln System". He had staff which specialized in each separate part of the process. As applied in the Rumbula massacre on 30 November and 8 December 1941, Jeckeln's system worked as follows:

The Security Service (SD) men rousted the people out of their houses in the Riga ghetto.
The people to be murdered (typically Jews) were organised into columns of 500 to 1,000 people and driven to the killing grounds about 10 kilometres 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 metres, 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 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. Jeckeln proved to be an effective killer who cared nothing about murdering huge numbers of men, women, children and the 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.
— Frida Michelson, I Survived Rumbula (p. 93)

By the end of August 1941, while commanding the Kommandostab SS First Brigade in the Western Ukraine, Jeckeln had personally supervised the murder of more than 44,000 people, the largest total of Jews murdered that month. The combined killing events constitutes one of the largest death tolls during the "holocaust by bullets."

On 27 January 1942 Jeckeln was awarded the War Merit Cross with Swords for killing 25,000 at Rumbula "on orders from the highest level." 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.

Trial and conviction

Jeckeln was taken prisoner by Soviet troops near Halbe on 28 April 1945. Along with other German personnel, he was tried before a Soviet military tribunal in the Riga Trial in Latvia from 26 January 1946 to 3 February 1946. During the investigation, he was calm, answering questions from investigators in essence, on the dock looked dull and impartial.

Jeckeln in his last words 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 3 February 1946 in front of some 4,000 spectators. Against popular misconception, the execution did not happen in the territory of the former Riga ghetto, but in Victory Square (Uzvaras laukums).

Awards

Clasp to the Iron Cross (1939) 2nd Class (October 1941) & 1st Class (12 May 1942)
German Cross in Gold on 19 December 1943 as SS-Obergruppenführer and General of the Polizei in Kampfgruppe Jeckeln
Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves
- Knight's Cross on 27 August 1944 as SS-Obergruppenführer and General of the Waffen-SS, Höherer SS- and Polizei and leader of the Höhere SS- und Polizeiführer Northern Russia, leader of Kampfgruppe Jeckeln (lett. Polizei) in the 18. Armee.
- Oak Leaves on 8 March 1945 and SS-Obergruppenführer and General of the Waffen-SS and commanding general of the V. SS-Gebirgskorps

References

Citations

^ Sydnor, Charles W. (21 May 1990). "Soldiers of Destruction: The SS Death's Head Division, 1933-1945". Princeton University Press. Retrieved 11 April 2018 – via Google Books.
Ezergailis 1996, pp. 239–270.
Fleming 1984, pp. 99–100.
Thomas 1997, p. 327.
Patzwall & Scherzer 2001, p. 209.
^ Scherzer 2007, p. 419.

Bibliography

Ezergailis, Andrew (1996). The Holocaust in Latvia 1941–1944 – The Missing Center, Historical Institute of Latvia (in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) Riga. ISBN 9984-9054-3-8.
Fleming, Gerald (1984) Hitler and the Final Solution, University of California Berkeley. ISBN 0-520-05103-3.
Mallmann, Klaus-Michael (2001). Der qualitative Sprung im Vernichtungsprozeß: das Massaker von Kamenez-Podolsk Ende August 1941 [The jump in quality of the extermination process: the Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre, end of August 1941] (in German). Vol. 10. pp. 239–264. ISBN 3-593-36722-X. {{cite book}}: |journal= ignored (help)
Patzwall, Klaus D.; Scherzer, Veit (2001). Das Deutsche Kreuz 1941 – 1945 Band II [The German Cross 1941 – 1945 Volume 2] (in German). Norderstedt, Germany: Verlag Klaus D. Patzwall. ISBN 978-3-931533-45-8.
Scherzer, Veit (2007). Die Ritterkreuzträger 1939–1945 [The Knight's Cross Bearers 1939–1945] (in German). Jena, Germany: Scherzers Militaer-Verlag. ISBN 978-3-938845-17-2.
Thomas, Franz (1997). Die Eichenlaubträger 1939–1945 Band 1: A–K [The Oak Leaves Bearers 1939–1945 Volume 1: A–K] (in German). Osnabrück, Germany: Biblio-Verlag. ISBN 978-3-7648-2299-6.

External links

Media related to Friedrich Jeckeln at Wikimedia Commons
Media related to The Holocaust in Latvia at Wikimedia Commons
Official website: Jewish Community in Latvia Joint project of Latvia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Latvian Jewish Community, and the Democracy Commission of the US Embassy; available in English, Latvian and Russian languages.

Portal:

Biography

v t e The Holocaust in Latvia
Main article The Holocaust Related articles by country Belarus Estonia Lithuania Norway Poland Russia Ukraine
Crimes	Burning of the Riga synagogues Dünamünde Action Jelgava Pogulianski Rumbula Liepāja (Šķēde)
Victims	Jewish people of Latvia Gypsies Joseph Carlebach Simon Dubnow Else Hirsch
Perpetrators	Alois Brunner Rudolf Batz Fritz Dietrich Otto-Heinrich Drechsler Erich Ehrlinger Karl Jäger Friedrich Jeckeln Heinz Jost Konrāds Kalējs Ernst Kaltenbrunner Wolfgang Kügler Rudolf Lange Hinrich Lohse Friedrich Panzinger Hans-Adolf Prützmann Eduard Roschmann Alfred Rosenberg Martin Sandberger Albert Sauer Walther Schröder Rudolf Joachim Seck Franz Walter Stahlecker Eduard Strauch
Nazi occupation and organizations	Einsatzgruppen Reichskommissariat Ostland Rollkommando Hamann
Collaborators	Individuals Viktors Arājs Herberts Cukurs Kārlis Lobe Organizations Arajs Kommando Latvian Auxiliary Police Schutzmannschaft
Ghettos and camps	Daugavpils Ghetto Jungfernhof concentration camp Kaiserwald concentration camp Riga Ghetto Salaspils concentration camp
Documentation	Generalplan Ost Jäger Report
Concealment	Sonderaktion 1005
War crimes investigations and trials	Einsatzgruppen trial Riga Trial Extraordinary (Soviet) State Commission
Righteous Among the Nations	Jānis Lipke Paul Schiemann Roberts Seduls and Johanna Sedule
Memorials	Bikernieki Memorial
Related articles	The Holocaust The Mover Occupation of Latvia by Nazi Germany

Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzkommandos

People

Director	Reinhard Heydrich Ernst Kaltenbrunner
Commanders of Einsatzgruppen	Humbert Achamer-Pifrader Walther Bierkamp Horst Böhme Erich Ehrlinger Wilhelm Fuchs Heinz Jost Bruno Müller Erich Naumann Arthur Nebe Otto Ohlendorf Friedrich Panzinger Otto Rasch Heinrich Seetzen Franz Walter Stahlecker Bruno Streckenbach
Commanders of Einsatzkommandos, Sonderkommandos	Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski Gerhard Bast Rudolf Batz Ernst Biberstein Wolfgang Birkner Helmut Bischoff Paul Blobel Walter Blume Friedrich-Wilhelm Bock Otto Bradfisch Werner Braune Karl Brunner Friedrich Buchardt Ernst Damzog Gerhard Flesch Ludwig Hahn Erich Isselhorst Karl Jäger Friedrich Jeckeln Waldemar Klingelhöfer Wolfgang Kügler Walter Kutschmann Rudolf Lange Josef Meisinger Gustav Adolf Nosske Hans-Adolf Prützmann Walter Rauff Martin Sandberger Emanuel Schäfer Hermann Schaper Karl Eberhard Schöngarth Erwin Schulz Franz Six Eugen Steimle Eduard Strauch Martin Weiss Udo von Woyrsch
Other members	August Becker Lothar Fendler Joachim Hamann Emil Haussmann Felix Landau Heinz Schubert Albert Widmann
Collaborators	Viktors Arājs Herberts Cukurs Antanas Impulevičius Konrāds Kalējs Algirdas Klimaitis

Groups

German	Schutzstaffel (SS) Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA) Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo) Sicherheitsdienst (SD) Ordnungspolizei (Orpo) 8th SS Cavalry Division Florian Geyer Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz Sonderdienst
Non-German	Schutzmannschaft (Belarusian, Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Ukrainian) Arajs Kommando Lithuanian Security Police Rollkommando Hamann TDA Ypatingasis būrys

Crimes

Belarus	Łachwa Ghetto Minsk Ghetto Slutsk Affair
Estonia	Kalevi-Liiva
Latvia	Burning of the Riga synagogues Dünamünde Action Jelgava Pogulianski Rumbula Liepāja (Šķēde)
Lithuania	Ninth Fort Kaunas June 1941 Kaunas 29 October 1941 Ninth Fort November 1941 Ponary
Poland	Operation Tannenberg Intelligenzaktion AB-Aktion
Russia	Gully of Petrushino Zmievskaya Balka
Slovakia	Kremnička and Nemecká
Ukraine	Babi Yar Drobytsky Yar Drohobycz Kamianets-Podilskyi Lviv pogroms Mizocz Ghetto Odesa

Records

v t e Wehrmacht Army Group Rear Areas during the German–Soviet War, 1941–45
Army Group Rear Area Command	North Centre South
Commanding organisations	Army High Command Kommandostab Reichsführer-SS Army Group North Army Group Centre Army Group South
Commanders	Erich Friderici Ludwig Kübler Kuno-Hans von Both Franz von Roques Karl von Roques Edwin von Rothkirch Max von Schenckendorff Joachim Witthöft
Security Divisions	201st 203rd 207th 213th 221st (Police Battalion (PB) 309) 281st 285th 286th 403rd 444th 454th 707th
HSS-PF	Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski Friedrich Jeckeln Hans-Adolf Prützmann
Order Police and SS Detachments	Einsatzgruppen (PB 9) Police Regiment North Police Regiment Centre (PB 307, PB 316, PB 322) Police Regiment South (PB 45, PB 303, PB 314) Police Regiment Special Purpose (PB 304, PB 315, PB 320) SS Cavalry Brigade 1st SS Infantry Brigade 2nd SS Infantry Brigade
Milestones	Hunger Plan Hitler's speech of 30 March 1941 Criminal orders (Barbarossa Decree * Commissar Order * Guidelines for the Conduct of the Troops in Russia) Mogilev conference Nazi security warfare
Major crimes	Babi Yar Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre Persecution of Soviet prisoners of war
War crimes trials	High Command Trial Kharkov Trial Krasnodar Trial Minsk Trial Riga Trial Ukase 43
Related articles	The Holocaust War of annihilation War crimes of the Wehrmacht Myth of the clean Wehrmacht
Historiography	Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945 Hitler’s Bandit Hunters Hitler's Generals on Trial Hitler's War in the East 1941−1945 Marching into Darkness: The Wehrmacht and the Holocaust The Wehrmacht: History, Myth, Reality

Categories:

Revision as of 23:28, 5 May 2019 editGizzyCatBella (talk \| contribs)Extended confirmed users, Pending changes reviewers, Rollbackers17,604 edits Clean upTag: Visual edit ← Previous edit		Revision as of 23:33, 5 May 2019 edit undoGizzyCatBella (talk \| contribs)Extended confirmed users, Pending changes reviewers, Rollbackers17,604 edits →Holocaust perpetrator: Clean upTag: Visual edit Next edit →
Line 37:		Line 37:
	After the ] began, Jeckeln was transferred to the ]. As was the practice in the SS, Jeckeln took a lower rank from his ''Allgemeine-SS'' position and served as an officer in Regiment 2 of the ].<ref name="auto">{{cite web\|url=https://books.google.ie/books?id=QYU4QJsUWLYC&pg=PA331&lpg=PA331&dq=Friedrich+Jeckeln&source=bl&ots=-FmH-BudiL&sig=Hw_XM9itMYzLXTpkDewo7iW7S2I&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj96ITDo6jZAhWGXMAKHSZrBVM4HhDoAQgtMAE#v=onepage&q=Friedrich+Jeckeln&f=false\|title=Soldiers of Destruction: The SS Death's Head Division, 1933-1945\|first=Charles W.\|last=Sydnor\|date=21 May 1990\|publisher=Princeton University Press\|accessdate=11 April 2018\|via=Google Books}}</ref> In 1941, he was transferred by '']'' ] to serve as ] (HSSPF) of Southern, then later in 1941, of Northern Russia.<ref name="auto"/> In this role Jeckeln assumed control of all SS-'']'' mass killings and ] in his district.		After the ] began, Jeckeln was transferred to the ]. As was the practice in the SS, Jeckeln took a lower rank from his ''Allgemeine-SS'' position and served as an officer in Regiment 2 of the ].<ref name="auto">{{cite web\|url=https://books.google.ie/books?id=QYU4QJsUWLYC&pg=PA331&lpg=PA331&dq=Friedrich+Jeckeln&source=bl&ots=-FmH-BudiL&sig=Hw_XM9itMYzLXTpkDewo7iW7S2I&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj96ITDo6jZAhWGXMAKHSZrBVM4HhDoAQgtMAE#v=onepage&q=Friedrich+Jeckeln&f=false\|title=Soldiers of Destruction: The SS Death's Head Division, 1933-1945\|first=Charles W.\|last=Sydnor\|date=21 May 1990\|publisher=Princeton University Press\|accessdate=11 April 2018\|via=Google Books}}</ref> In 1941, he was transferred by '']'' ] to serve as ] (HSSPF) of Southern, then later in 1941, of Northern Russia.<ref name="auto"/> In this role Jeckeln assumed control of all SS-'']'' mass killings and ] 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 ~~specialised~~ in each separate part of the process. As applied in the ] on 30 November and 8 December 1941, Jeckeln's system worked as follows:		Jeckeln developed his own methods of killing large numbers of people, which became known as the "Jeckeln System". He had staff which specialized in each separate part of the process. As applied in the ] on 30 November and 8 December 1941, Jeckeln's system worked as follows:

	# The ] (SD) men rousted the people out of their houses in the ].		# The ] (SD) men rousted the people out of their houses in the ].
Line 48:		Line 48:
	# 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 metres, 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.		# 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 metres, 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. Jeckeln proved to be an effective killer who cared nothing about murdering huge numbers of ~~unarmed and even naked~~ men, women, children and the elderly.<ref name = Ezer>Ezergailis 1996, pp. 239–270.</ref> One of the three survivors of the Rumbala massacre, ], escaped by pretending to be dead as the victims heaped shoes (later salvaged by Jeckeln's men) upon her:		This system was called "sardine packing" (''Sardinenpackung''). It was reported that 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. Jeckeln proved to be an effective killer who cared nothing about murdering huge numbers of men, women, children and the elderly.<ref name = Ezer>Ezergailis 1996, pp. 239–270.</ref> One of the three survivors of the Rumbala massacre, ], escaped by pretending to be dead as the victims heaped shoes (later salvaged by Jeckeln's men) upon her:
	{{quote \|text= 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. \|author= ] \|source= ''I Survived Rumbula'' (p. 93)}}		{{quote \|text= 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. \|author= ] \|source= ''I Survived Rumbula'' (p. 93)}}

Line 57:		Line 57:
	==Trial and conviction==		==Trial and conviction==
	]		]
	Jeckeln was taken prisoner by Soviet troops near ] on 28 April 1945. Along with other German personnel, he was tried before a Soviet military tribunal in the '']'' in ] from 26 January 1946 to 3 February 1946. During the investigation, he was calm, answering questions from investigators in essence, on the dock looked dull and impartial.		Jeckeln was taken prisoner by ] near ] on 28 April 1945. Along with other German personnel, he was tried before a Soviet military tribunal in the '']'' in ] from 26 January 1946 to 3 February 1946. During the investigation, he was calm, answering questions from investigators in essence, on the dock looked dull and impartial.

	Jeckeln in his last words was restrained, he fully admitted his guilt and agreed to bear full responsibility for the activities of subordinate police, SS and SD in ]. Concluding his speech, he said:		Jeckeln in his last words was restrained, he fully admitted his guilt and agreed to bear full responsibility for the activities of subordinate police, SS and SD in ]. Concluding his speech, he said:
	<blockquote>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.</blockquote>		<blockquote>''"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."''</blockquote>
	Jeckeln and the other defendants were found guilty, sentenced to death and hanged at Riga on 3 February 1946 in front of some 4,000 spectators. Against popular misconception, the execution did not happen in the territory of the former Riga ghetto, but in Victory Square (Uzvaras laukums).		Jeckeln and the other defendants were found guilty, sentenced to death and hanged at Riga on 3 February 1946 in front of some 4,000 spectators. Against popular misconception, the execution did not happen in the territory of the former Riga ghetto, but in Victory Square (Uzvaras laukums).