Paul Blobel

The executions of agents, partisans, saboteurs, suspicious people, indulging in espionage and sabotage, and those who were of a detrimental effect to the German Army, were, in my opinion, completely in accordance with the Hague Convention.

Paul Blobel (August 13, 1894 – June 8, 1951) was a German SS-Standartenführer (Colonel) and a member of the SD. Blobel was primarily responsible for the Babi Yar massacre at Kiev. Owing to health reasons brought about mostly by his alcoholism, he was dismissed from his command on January 13, 1942. In 1943, he conducted Aktion 1005, the task of eliminating traces of mass murder and massacre carried out by the Germans in the Soviet Union. This was carried out by exhuming the bodies from mass graves and burning them, a task that Blobel optimized with techniques he had developed: alternating layers of bodies with firewood or the use of rails as grills. He was later sentenced to death by the U.S. Nuremberg Military Tribunal in the Einsatzgruppen trial and was hanged at Landsberg Prison on June 8, 1951.

Quotes

• Our men taking part in the executions suffered more from nervous exhaustion than those who were to be shot.
  • Quoted in "Minister of death: the Adolf Eichmann story" - Page 131 - by Quentin James Reynolds, Zwy Aldouby - 1960.

• The nervous strain was far heavier in the case of our men who carried out the executions than in that of their victims. From the psychological point of view they had a terrible time.
  • Quoted in "Echoes from the Holocaust: Philosophical Reflections on a Dark Time" - Page 26 - by Alan Rosenberg, Gerald Eugene Myers - History - 1988.

• The executions of agents, partisans, saboteurs, suspicious people, indulging in espionage and sabotage, and those who were of a detrimental effect to the German Army, were, in my opinion, completely in accordance with the Hague Convention.
  • Quoted in "The Eichmann Kommandos" - Page 153 - by Michael Angelo Musmanno - 1961.

• Every spy and saboteur knew what he had to expect when he was arrested.
  • Quoted in "The Eichmann Kommandos" - Page 154 - by Michael Angelo Musmanno - 1961.

Our men taking part in the executions suffered more from nervous exhaustion than those who were to be shot.

• Out of the total number of the persons designated for the execution, fifteen men were led in each case to the brink of the mass grave where they had to kneel down, their faces turned towards the grave. When the men were ready for the execution one of my leaders who was in charge of this execution squad gave the order to shoot. Since they were kneeling on the brink of the mass grave, the victims fell, as a rule, at once into the mass grave.
  • Quoted in "The Eichmann Kommandos" - Page 157 - by Michael Angelo Musmanno - 1961.

• I have always used rather large execution squads, since I declined to use men who were specialists for shots in the neck (Genickschussspezialisten). Each squad shot for about one hour and was then replaced. The persons who still had to be shot were assembled near the place of the execution, and were guarded by members of those squads, which at the moment did not take part in the executions.
  • Quoted in "The Eichmann Kommandos" - Page 157 - by Michael Angelo Musmanno - 1961.

• After each firing order, when the shots were addressed, somebody looked at the victims, because the victims were then put into the grave when they did not fall into the grave themselves, and these tasks were in the field of tasks of the men of the individual Kommandos. The edge of the grave had to be cleaned, for instance. Two men who had spades dealt with this. They had to clean it up and then the next group was led there.
  • Quoted in "The Eichmann Kommandos" - Page 158 - by Michael Angelo Musmanno - 1961.

• I would not say that they were happy. They knew what was going to happen to them. Of course, they were told what was going to happen to them, and they were resigned to their fate, and that is the strange thing about these people in the East.
  • Quoted in "The Eichmann Kommandos" - Page 162 - by Michael Angelo Musmanno - 1961.

• Here lie my thirty-thousand Jews.
  • at Babi Yar

• I die in the faith of my people. May the German people be aware of its enemies!
  • Blobel's last words