Otto Rasch - Brutal Nazi Einsatzgruppen Commander
& Organizer of Babi Yar Massacre - Holocaust - WW2

23 September 2022

Category: High Ranking Nazi Representatives

Otto Rasch was born on the 7th of December 1891 in Friedrichsruh then part of the German Empire. The First World War began on the 28th of July 1914 and Rasch enlisted in the Imperial German Navy as a lieutenant. The First World War ended on the 11th of November 1918 when the German leaders signed the armistice in the Compiègne Forest in France. On the 1st of October 1931 Otto Rasch joined the Nazi Party and in March 1933 he joined the SS.

In 1933, after Hitler and the Nazi Party came into power, Otto Rasch was successively appointed mayor of a small town of Radeberg, followed shortly in 1935 by becoming lord mayor of Wittenberg. On the 1st of October 1937 Rasch assumed leadership of the State Police – STAPO - in Frankfurt am Main and in March 1938, after Adolf Hitler annexed the Federal State of Austria into the German Reich, Rasch became director of security for Upper Austria which was based in Linz. On the 15th of March 1939, Nazi Germany invaded and occupied the remaining parts of Czechoslovakia and Otto Rasch was appointed chief of the Security Police and SD in Prague. The Second World War began on the 1st of September, 1939 when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. On the 27th the same month, Heinrich Himmler established a new agency - Reich Security Main Office. During the German invasion of Poland, Otto Rasch suggested and oversaw the liquidation of the civilians, mostly the Polish intelligentsia.

Rasch as the commander of the Einsatzgruppe C

On Sunday, the 22nd of June 1941 started Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union. The 3,000 personnel of four Einsatzgruppen were sent to the Eastern Front and Reinhard Heydrich appointed Rasch the commander of the Einsatzgruppe C.

On the 19th of September 1941, German forces entered the city of Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. Along with a large part of German-occupied Ukraine, the city was incorporated into the Reichskommissariat Ukraine which had been established on the 1st of September with Erich Koch as administrator. On the 29th and 30th of September 1941, SS and German police units and their auxiliaries, under the guidance of the members of Einsatzgruppe C, murdered a significant number of the Jewish population who remained in Kyiv. This massacre which belongs to one of many mass shootings perpetrated by the Nazi Germans beginning in 1941, occurred at a ravine called Babi Yar or Babyn Yar which at the time, was located just outside the city.

33,771 Jews were massacred during this two-day period. By October 1941, when Rasch was discharged from his position, his Einsatzgruppe C reported approximately 80,000 "specially treated", meaning those who had been murdered. However, killings at Babi Yar continued. In all, some 100,000 people, Jews and non-Jews, were killed at Babi Yar.

With the Red Army approaching Kyiv, Germans embarked on a cover-up operation to conceal what had been happening in Babi Yar. Paul Blobel, who had been in control of the mass murders in Babi Yar two years earlier, supervised the action. For this operation, the Germans used prisoners who were being held at the Syrets concentration camp located close to the Babi Yar ravine.

Between 1942 and 1945, Otto Rasch served as the director of Continental Oil, Inc. in Berlin. The company had a number of private shareholders but a leading role in the consortium was held by Deutsche Bank and IG Farben company which is perhaps best known for its role in producing the poison gas Zyklon B. After the end of the war, Otto Rasch was then finally to face justice and pay for his crimes. During the Einsatzgruppen trial which started on the 29th of September 1947, Otto Rasch was one of the main defendants.

Only 22 defendants tried in Einsatzgruppen trial

However, while 24 defendants had been indicted, only 22 were tried. Emil Hausmann committed suicide in July 1947, and Otto Rasch was deemed too ill to stand trial. The case against him was discontinued on the 5th of February 1948 due to his mental and physical instability as he had Parkinson's disease and associated dementia.

At the Einsatzgruppen trial, which lasted until the 10th of April 1948 , 14 of Rasch’s fellow Nazi colleagues, convicted of war crimes, crimes against humanity and membership in criminal organizations, were sentenced to death by hanging. Otto Rasch was 56 years old when he died on the 1st of November 1948.

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