Friedrich Jeckeln

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Friedrich Jeckeln
File:Jeckelnfr.jpg
AllegianceGerman Empire German Empire (to 1918)
Germany Weimar Republic (to 1933)
Nazi Germany Nazi Germany
Service/branchWaffen-SS
Years of service1914-1945
RankObergruppenführer
Commands heldV SS Mountain Corps
Battles/warsWorld War I, World War II
AwardsKnight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves
Other workResponsible for Rumbula, Babi Yar, and other massacres.

Friedrich Jeckeln[1] (2 February 1895 - 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 led one of the largest collection of Einsatzgruppen and was personally responsible for ordering the deaths of over 100,000 Jews, Slavs, Roma, and other "undesirables" of the Third Reich.

Early years

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 WWI 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 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

Friedrich Jeckeln in Soviet custody after World War II.

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, the month the Nazis came to power in Germany, Jeckeln was put in charge of SS Group South, and promoted to SS-Gruppenführer (major general) the next month. 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.

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 Heinrich Himmler to serve as Higher SS and Police Leader 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:

  1. The Security Police (SD) rousted the people out of their houses in the Riga ghetto.
  2. 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.
  3. The Order Police (Orpo) led the columns to the killing grounds.
  4. Three pits had already been dug where the killing would be done simultaneously.
  5. The victims were stripped of their clothing and valuables.
  6. The victims were run through a double cordon of guards on the way to the killing pits.
  7. The killers forced the victims to lie face down on the trench floor, or more often, on the bodies of the people had just been shot.
  8. 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 women, children, and old people.[2] One of the three or so 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.[3]

On January 27, 1942, Jeckeln was awarded a Nazi medal, the "War Merit Cross (Kriegsverdienst or KVK) with Swords" for killing 25,000 at Rumbula[4] 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.

Execution

Friedrich Jeckeln (on left, standing), at his trial for war crimes in Riga, 1946

Upon the war's conclusion, Jeckeln, along with other Nazis who served in the Riga military district, was captured by the Red Army and tried before a Soviet military court in Riga, Latvia from January 26, 1946, to February 3, 1946. Jeckeln and the other defendants were found guilty, sentenced to death and hanged at Riga on February 3, 1946.

In fiction

Summary of SS career

References

  1. ^ Some sources refer to him as Friedrich Jackeln.
  2. ^ Ezergailis, Andrew, The Holocaust in Latvia 1941-1944 -- The Missing Center, pages 239-270, Historical Institute of Latvia (in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) Riga 1996 ISBN 9984-9054-3-8
  3. ^ Michelson, Frida, I Survived Rumbula, at p. 93
  4. ^ Fleming, Gerald, Hitler and the Final Solution, University of California Berkeley 1984 ISBN 0-520-05103-3 at pages 99-100: "There can be no doubt that the Higher SS and Police Leader Friedrich Jeckeln received the KVK First Class with swords in recognition of his faithful performance: his organization of the mass shootings in Riga, 'on orders from the highest level' (auf höchsten Befehl).
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