Bruno Streckenbach

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Bruno Streckenbach (February 7, 1902 – October 28, 1977) holding the rank of SS-Brigadeführer, was head of the RSHA's Amt I: Personnel.

He served in the last year of World War I and was a member of the Freikorps{See [[1]]}.

Streckenbach had been chosen back in 1933 to run the Hamburg political police after it had been swallowed by the Gestapo. He was then transferred to Poland after the Nazi occupation(1939); being concerned with the arrest of the professors at Cracow University and had been one of the architects of the effective implementation of the Extraordinary Pacification Action.

When Streckenbach's work was finished in Poland, he was ordered to return to Berlin for administrative duties.

Without warning, Streckenbach received a top secret order to proceed immediately to the police barracks at Pretzsch on the Elbe. He was met there by hand-picked members of the SD, the Gestapo and the police .

Bruno Streckenbach was tasked to train and indoctrinate these men before the onset of the Russian campaign. Veterans of many a Polish atrocity became members of one of four newly constituted Einsatzgruppen destined for Soviet Russia.

Streckenbach detailed the mission of the Einsatzgruppe was to seize and destroy all political and radical enemy groups such as Bolsheviks,gypsies,partisans and Jews. In addition, the Einsatzgruppe were to report and evaluate material gained in every field of Russian operations and collect information from agents and spies from the Russian population.

SS-Brigadeführer Streckenbach further ordered that all enemies of the Third Reich were to be deported to concentration camps and execution. Jews were especially singled out for 'special' treatment, which meant either destruction or ghettos.

In 1952 he was senteneced by USSR to prision for 25 years; he was released in 1955; Postwar attempts by West Germans to bring him to justice were delayed because of reports of his "Ill-health".