Paul Blobel

Paul Blobel (13 August 1894 – 7 June 1951) was a German SS-Standartenführer (Colonel) and a member of the SD.

Born in the city of Potsdam, he fought in the First World War, in which by all accounts he served well, being decorated with the Iron Cross first class. After the war, Blobel studied architecture and practiced this profession from 1924 until 1931, when upon losing his job he joined the Nazi Party, the SA, and the SS (he had joined all of these by 1 December 1931).

In 1933 Blobel joined the police force in Düsseldorf. In June 1934 he was recruited into the SD. In June 1941 he became the commanding officer of Sonderkommando 4a of Einsatzgruppe C that was active in Ukraine. Following Wehrmacht troops into Ukraine, the Einsatzgruppen were responsible for murdering (sometimes called liquidating) political and racial undesirables. In August 1941 Blobel decided to create a ghetto in Zhytomyr to trap 3,000 Jews who were murdered a month later. On 10 or 11 August 1941, Friedrich Jeckeln ordered him, on behalf of Adolf Hitler, to exterminate the whole Jewish population. On 22 August 1941 the Sonderkommando murdered Jewish women and children at Bila Tserkva with the consent of Field Marshal Walther von Reichenau, commander of the 6th Army. SS-Obersturmführer August Häfner testified at his own trial:

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.

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