14. Heinrich Seetzen committed suicide after being arrested for the mass murder of over 100,000 civilians in Eastern Europe
Heinrich Seetzen (b. 1906) was a SS-Standartenführer and police lieutenant, in the capacity of which he participated in the Holocaust and was responsible for the mass murder of civilians in Ukraine and Belarus. Electing to study law at the University of Marburg and the University of Kiel Seetzen was politically active during his student years, joining the “Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten” – the paramilitary wing of the conservative German National People’s Party. In May 1933 Seetzen joined the Nazi Party, and in February 1935 the SS.
Unemployed and failing in a bid to become mayor of Eutin, Seetzen joined the Gestapo in 1935. Rising quickly to the position of Chief within the Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police) and SD in Aachen by 1938, Seetzen also served in Vienna, Stettin, and Hamburg between 1940-1942, Kassel (1942), Breslau (1943), and finally in 1944 as Commander of the Security Police in Prague.
Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, Seetzen, in his role as commander of Sonderkommando 10a, followed Army Group South into Soviet territory. Of this work Austrian police officer Robert Barth, an accomplice of Seetzen’s, later stated that Seetzen “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).” Between April and August 1944 Seetzen served as commander of of Einsatzgruppe B, responsible for the mass murder of more than 134,000 people in Minsk and Smolensk and for which Seetzen was rewarded with a promotion to SS-Standartenführer and made Commander of the Security Police and SD in Belarus.
After the end of the war Seetzen resided with a female friend under the assumed identity of “Michael Gollwitzer”. During this time Seezten allegedly expressed remorse for his actions, claiming “he was heavily burdened by guilt, that he was a criminal, and that he had essentially forfeited his life.” Predicting he would eventually be caught Seezten made plans to swallow cyanide immediately upon capture, and on September 28 1945, after arrest by British military police in Hamburg-Blankenese, Seetzen ingested the fatal poison.