Heinrich Seetzen

Heinrich Otto Seetzen, called Heinz Seetzen (22 June 1906, in Rüstringen, Duchy of Oldenburg – 28 September 1945, in Blankenese), was a German jurist, SS-Standartenführer and police colonel. Seetzen was a perpetrator of the Holocaust, responsible for the mass murder of civilians in Ukraine and in Belarus.

Life

Seetzen was born in 1906 as the only child of a

. After his law examination he worked, helping out in various law firms. Heinz Seetzen was married to Ellen Knickrem.

On 1 May 1933, he joined the

.

Seetzen was promoted to Chief of the

After the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, Seetzen was commander of Sonderkommando 10a, which followed Army Group South and was responsible for mass killings in the south of the Soviet Union. Austrian police officer Robert Barth, an accomplice in the mass murder, said about Seetzen:

"A particularly brutal Kommandoführer [...]. He is said to have boasted that his Kommando would shoot the most Jews. I was also told that, at his command, once the ammunition for the shootings of Jews ran out, the Jews were cast alive into a well with a depth of approximately 30 meters (98 ft)."^[2]

From 28 April to August 1944, he served as commander of

and police colonel, he was made Commander of the SiPo and SD in Belarus in April 1944.

Post-war; arrest and suicide

After the war, Seetzen stayed with a female acquaintance, hiding his identity by using the false name "Michael Gollwitzer". His acquaintance reported that Seetzen was remorseful and completely finished from a moral perspective. He told her "that he was heavily burdened by guilt, that he was a criminal, and that he had essentially forfeited his life." He also openly admitted that he would commit suicide by taking potassium cyanide the moment he was captured.^[3]

After his arrest by the British military police in

classified Seetzen as a "lesser offender" (Group 3- Minderbelasteten) in 1949, adding the stipulation, "in the event that the person concerned is still alive".

References

Bibliography

• Lawrence D. Stokes: Heinz Seetzen - Chef des Sonderkommandos 10a. In: Klaus-Michael Mallmann, Gerhard Paul (eds.): Karrieren der Gewalt. Nationalsozialistische Täterbiographien
  ISBN 3-534-16654-X
• Lawrence D. Stokes: From law student to Einsatzgruppe commander: The career of a Gestapo officer. Canadian Journal of History, April 2002.
• Linde Apel, Hamburg Ministry of Culture, Sports and Media, in cooperation with the Research Center for Contemporary History in Hamburg and the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial (eds.): In den Tod geschickt - Die Deportationen von Juden, Roma und Sinti aus Hamburg, 1940 bis 1945, Metropol Verlag, Hamburg 2009
• ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8
  . (revised second edition)