Friedrich Jeckeln

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Friedrich Jeckeln bigraphy, stories - German politician

Friedrich Jeckeln : biography

2 February 1895 – 3 February 1946

Friedrich August JeckelnSome sources refer to him as Friedrich Jackeln. (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, Roma, and other "undesirables" of the Third Reich.

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

Citations

World War II mass murderer

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:

  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 who 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 men, women, children, and elderly.Ezergailis, Andrew, The Holocaust in Latvia 1941–1944 – The Missing Center, Historical Institute of Latvia (in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) Riga, 1996, pp. 239–270, ISBN 9984-9054-3-8 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:

On January 27, 1942, Jeckeln was awarded the "War Merit Cross (Kriegsverdienst or KVK) with Swords" for killing 25,000 at Rumbula.Fleming, Gerald, Hitler and the Final Solution, University of California Berkeley, 1984, pp. 99–100, ISBN 0-520-05103-3: "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). 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.