Paul Blobel | |
|---|---|
 Blobel in 1947 | |
| Born | (1894-08-13)13 August 1894 |
| Died | 7 June 1951(1951-06-07) (aged 56) |
| Cause of death | Execution by hanging |
| Known for | |
| Criminal status | Executed |
| Motive | Nazism |
| Convictions | Crimes against humanity War crimes Membership in a criminal organization |
| Trial | Einsatzgruppen Trial |
| Criminal penalty | Death |
| Details | |
| Victims | 60,000+ |
Span of crimes | June 1941 – 1944 |
| Country | Poland,Ukraine, andYugoslavia |
| SS career | |
| Allegiance | Nazi Germany |
| Branch | Schutzstaffel |
| Rank | SS-Standartenführer |
| Unit | Einsatzgruppe C |
| Commands | Sonderkommando 4a Sonderaktion 1005 |
Paul Wilhelm Hermann Blobel[1] (13 August 1894 – 7 June 1951) was a GermanSicherheitsdienst (SD) commander and convicted war criminal who played a leading role inthe Holocaust. He organised theBabi Yar massacre, the largest massacre of theSecond World War atBabi Yar ravine in September 1941, pioneered the use of thegas van, and, following re-assignment, developed thegas chambers for the extermination camps. From late 1942 onwards, he ledSonderaktion 1005, wherein millions of bodies were exhumed at sites across Eastern Europe in an effort to erase all evidence of the Holocaust and specifically ofOperation Reinhard. After the war, Blobel was tried at theEinsatzgruppen trial and sentenced to death. He was executed in 1951.
Blobel was born inPotsdam into aProtestant family of small tradeartisans, who moved toRemscheid in 1899. He graduated schooling there withoutAbitur and between 1908 and 1911, Blobel completed training as a carpenter and bricklayer. In 1913, he began attendingBarmen'sKunstgewerbeschule (a precursor to theUniversity of Wuppertal), studyingarchitecture.[1]
DuringWorld War I, Blobel enlisted in theImperial German Army, becoming part of a pioneer battallion deployed on theWestern Front, learning the use offlamethrowers,Minenwerfer, and incendiary explosives.[1] By the time he was discharged in 1918 to the military command inLennep, he had reached the rank ofVizefeldwebel orUnteroffizier and was highly decorated,[1][2] having received anIron Cross first class.[3]
After the war, Blobel finished his studies and around 1920, he gained a position as construction manager in theSolingen office of Franz Perlewitz, with a focus on industrial and residential buildings. Blobel married in 1921 and in late 1922, he began studying atKunstakademie Düsseldorf. Upon his graduation in 1925, Blobel became a freelance architect, building a house for his family in Solingen's Schaberg district the following year.[1][3]
During theGreat Depression, Blobel, by then a father of two sons, stopped receiving commission work, and received welfare while registered as unemployed between 1930 and 1933, although he had temporary employment at Solingen's administrative office.[1][3]
Blobel joined theSturmabteilung (SA), the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party in May 1931. Despite stating during his later post-war trial that he joined theSocial Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in October 1931, claiming that the SA at the time was "not political" but rather considered a "social club, whose goals [he] did not find contrary to the SPD",[1] records showed that he had in fact joined the Nazi Party on 1 October of the same year[4] and become a member of theSchutzstaffel (SS) by 1 December.[5] Additionally, he was already known to have ties with theSicherheitsdienst (SD), the Nazi Party's intelligence service, shortly after entering the SS, while the organisation was still in its early stages, contributing to his rapid promotions within the SD.[4]
In March 1932, Blobel became deputy SD district leader in the Solingen-Remscheid-Wuppertal triangle ofGau Düsseldorf. In August 1933, he was put in charge of the 20.SS-Standarte in western Gau Düsseldorf, an area equivalent to the modern-dayRegierungsbezirkDüsseldorf. Through this position, Blobel became a policeman ofDüsseldorf's Gestapo office [de], initially only as an honorary title, but he eventually started going on patrols as anauxiliary police officer. His SD personnel file highlighted Blobel's loyalty and zeal toNazism, making mention of an incident in which Blobel sustained heavy cranial injuries after getting into a fight with "public enemies" during an ID check. In mid-1934, Blobel received leadership of sector V in the upper Düsseldorf-West area, and a promotion fromOberscharführer toHauptsturmführer. He was responsible for data collection in the region on Jewish organisations for the regionalJudenkartei [de], which came into use in themass arrest of Jews following the 1938November pogroms.[4]
In early 1941, shortly beforeOperation Barbarossa,[4] theReich Security Main Office assigned Blobel as the leader ofSS-Sonderkommando 4a ofEinsatzgruppe C to take part in the invasion inReichskommissariat Ukraine. Along with theOrder Police battalions, theEinsatzgruppen were responsible for massacres of Jews behind theWehrmacht lines in theSoviet Union.[5] The murder campaign included all political and racial undesirables. In August 1941, Blobel was put in charge of creating aNazi ghetto inZhytomyr to enclose around 3,000 Jews who were murdered a month later.[6]
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On 10 or 11 August 1941,Friedrich Jeckeln ordered him, on behalf ofAdolf Hitler, to exterminate the entire Jewish population.[7] On 22 August 1941, the SS-Sonderkommandomurdered Jewish women and children at Bila Tserkva with the consent of Field MarshalWalther von Reichenau, commander of the6th Army. SS-Obersturmführer August Häfner testified at his own trial in the 1960s:[8]
The Wehrmacht had already dug a grave. The children were brought along in a tractor. The Ukrainians were standing around trembling. The children were taken down from the tractor. They were lined up along the top of the grave and shot so that they fell into it. The Ukrainians did not aim at any particular part of the body. ... The wailing was indescribable.[8]: 217
Blobel, in conjunction with Reichenau's andFriedrich Jeckeln's units, organised theBabi Yar massacre in late September 1941 inKyiv,[9] where 33,771 Jews were murdered.[10] In November 1941, Blobel received and activated the firstgas vans atPoltava.[8]: 234
Blobel was officially relieved of his command on 13 January 1942 for health reasons due toalcoholism, although this was an elaborate cover. Whilst in the hospital, Blobel was visited byReinhard Heydrich and tasked with a top secret Reich matter that was presumably suspended upon the fatal shooting of Heydrich inPrague by British-trained Czech partisans. During this time, according toDieter Wisliceny, Blobel developed the concept of the gas chambers for the extermination camps in Poland. In June 1942 Blobel was contacted byHeinrich Müller, Chief of the Gestapo and secretly placed in charge ofSonderaktion 1005 with his official cover being SD Chief of the City ofNuremberg. This secret task consisted of the destruction of the evidence of all Nazi atrocities inEastern Europe, beginning atChelmno and continuing on toSobibor Extermination Camp,Auschwitz, the camps in theIndependent State of Croatia, theBaltic States,Serbia and eventually back to the site of theBabi Yar Massacre in Ukraine. This entailed exhumation of mass graves, then incinerating the bodies. Blobel developed efficient disposal techniques such as alternating layers of bodies with firewood on a frame of iron rails.[8]
In October 1944 was assigned toSlovenian Styria to combatYugoslav partisans as part ofBandenbekämpfung.Gitta Sereny related the conversation about Blobel she once had with one-time Chief of the Church Information Branch at theReich Security Head Office,Albert Hartl.
Hartl had told me of a summer evening—that same hot summer in 1942—in Kyiv when he was invited to dine with the local Higher SS Police Chief and Brigadeführer,Max Thomas. A fellow guest, SS Colonel Paul Blobel, had driven him to the general's weekend dacha. "At one moment—it was just getting dark," said Hartl, "we were driving past a long ravine. I noticed strange movements of the earth. Clumps of earth rose into the air as if by their own propulsion—and there was smoke; it was like a low-toned volcano; as if there was burning lava just beneath the earth. Blobel laughed, made a gesture with his arm pointing back along the road and ahead, all along the ravine—the ravine of Babi Yar—and said, 'Here lie my thirty-thousand Jews.'"[11]
Blobel went on sick leave in December 1944, spending three months at a hospital inMarburg an der Drau until April 1945, when he was ordered to report toErnst Kaltenbrunner's office in Berlin for further commands. He was briefly stationed inSalzburg before being captured with his unit inRastatt in May 1945.[2]
Over 59,018 killings are attributable to Blobel, however he personally estimated to have killed 10,000–15,000 people.[2] He was later sentenced to death by the U.S.Nuremberg Military Tribunal in theEinsatzgruppen trial. He was hanged atLandsberg Prison shortly after midnight on 7 June 1951.[12]
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