Origins and family Erich Julius Eberhard von dem Bach-Zelewski was born as Erich Julius Eberhard von Zelewski in
Lauenburg on 1 March 1899 to Polish-
Kashubian parents, Otto Johannes von Zelewski (1859–1911) and Elżbieta Ewelina Szymańska (born 1862 in Polish family in
Thorn city from Kujawy region). His father, an officer and farmer, was of an impoverished Polish-Kashubian family of
landed gentry with roots in Seelau. Erich's family came from the Polish nobility with their own coat of arms (Żelewski). Erich von Żelewski's grandfather was Franciszek von Żelewski, who married Ewa Kętrzyńska. His uncle,
Emil von Zelewski, died in 1891 as commanding officer of the
Schutztruppe of
German East Africa while fighting the
Hehe. The Zelewski family had originally spoken
Kashubian and Polish at home and for generations was connected with the Roman Catholic church in
Linde, but as an adult Zelewski joined a Protestant church. Since his father had to pay off several siblings, he sold the manor he inherited and became a traveling salesman. Zelewski and his six siblings therefore grew up in relative poverty in
Bialla in
East Prussia, where he attended an elementary school. When he was twelve, his father died, and the children were placed in foster families. Zelewski was taken in as the foster son of a landowner named Schickfuss in
Trebnig. Zelewski attended several high schools, in
Neustadt,
Strasburg, and
Konitz.
First World War The outbreak of the First World War came during the school summer holidays of 1914, while Zelewski was staying with his mother in Bialla. He was only fifteen, but in December 1914 he succeeded in enlisting in the
Prussian Army, gaining some renown as its youngest volunteer. He served throughout the
First World War. In 1915, he was wounded by a bullet in the shoulder and in 1918 suffered a poison gas attack. He was awarded the
Iron Cross, First Class. By the end of the war he had been promoted to
Leutnant.
Interwar period Following the armistice of November 1918, Zelewski remained in the
Reichswehr and fought against the Polish
Silesian Uprisings. In 1924, he resigned his army commission (or was discharged) and returned to his farm in Düringshof (now
Bogdaniec in the
Gorzów Wielkopolski county of Poland). He became a member of the German veterans' organization
Der Stahlhelm and also joined the
Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund, the largest, most active and most influential
antisemitic organization in the
Weimar Republic. Zelewski enrolled with the border guards (
Grenzschutz) the same year. Zelewski legally added "von dem Bach" to his family name on 23 October 1925. On 28 November 1940, he removed the "Zelewski" part of his surname because of its Polish-sounding origin. Bach-Zelewski manipulated his genealogy numerous times in his career to impress his superiors. A source of considerable embarrassment for him was that all three of his sisters had married
Jewish men. After the war, he claimed under interrogation that this had ruined his reputation in the army, forcing him to leave the
Reichswehr. In July 1930, Bach-Zelewski left the
Grenzschutz, and joined the
Nazi Party (membership number 489,101). Bach-Zelewski joined the
Schutzstaffel (SS) as member number 9,831 on 15 February 1931. He rose rapidly in the ranks and was promoted to SS-
Brigadeführer on 15 December 1933. During this period he reportedly quarreled with his staff officer,
Anton von Hohberg und Buchwald, Bach-Zelewski provided the initial impetus for the building of
Auschwitz concentration camp at the former Austrian and later Polish military barracks in the
Zasole suburb of
Oświęcim due to overcrowding of prisons. The location was scouted by his subordinate
Oberführer Arpad Wigand. The first transport arrived at KL Auschwitz on 14 June 1940, and two weeks later Bach-Zelewski personally visited the camp.
Occupied Soviet Union in 1943 On 22 June 1941 at the launch of
Operation Barbarossa, Bach-Zelewski was appointed as HSSPF for
"Russsland-Mitte", chiefly in the territory of
Belarus. From July to September 1941, he oversaw the murder of Jews in
Riga and
Minsk by the
Einsatzgruppe B, led by
Arthur Nebe, also visiting other sites of mass killings such as
Białystok,
Grodno,
Baranovichi,
Mogilev, and
Pinsk. Bach-Zelewski regularly cabled to headquarters on the extermination progress; for example, the 22 August message stated: "Thus the figure in my area now exceeds the thirty thousand mark". At the end of 1941 the forces under Bach-Zelewski numbered 14,953 Germans, mostly officers and
unteroffiziere, and 238,105
local "volunteers" (most war crime victims were murdered by local collaborators under German command). In February 1942, Bach-Zelewski was hospitalized in Berlin for treatment of "intestinal ailments" stemming from opium abuse, and was described as suffering from "hallucinations connected with the shooting of Jews". Before resuming his post in July, Bach-Zelewski petitioned
Heinrich Himmler for reassignment to anti-partisan warfare duty. He was promoted to SS-
Obergruppenführer and General of Police on 9 November 1941. In June 1942,
Reinhard Heydrich, acting Reich-
Protector of
Bohemia and Moravia, was
assassinated in Prague. Hitler chose Bach-Zelewski as his replacement, but Himmler protested that he could not be spared due to the prevailing military situation. Hitler relented and appointed
Kurt Daluege to the position. Through 1943, Bach-Zelewski remained in command of "anti-
partisan" units on the central front, a special command created by Hitler. He was the only HSSPF in the occupied
Soviet territories to retain genuine authority over the police after
Hans-Adolf Prützmann and
Friedrich Jeckeln lost theirs to the civil administration.
Genocidal tactics In June 1943, Himmler issued the
Bandenbekämpfung (bandit fighting) order, simultaneously announcing the existence of the
Bandenkampfverbände (bandit fighting formations), with Bach-Zelewski as its chief. Employing troops primarily from the SS police and
Waffen-SS, the
Bandenkampfverbände had four principal operational components: propaganda, centralized control and coordination of security operations, training of troops, and battle operations. Once the Wehrmacht had secured territorial objectives, the
Bandenkampfverbände first secured communications facilities, roads, railways, and waterways. Thereafter, they secured rural communities and economic installations such as factories and administrative buildings. An additional priority was securing agricultural and forestry resources. The SS oversaw the collection of the harvest, which was deemed critical to strategic operations. Any Jews in the area were rounded up and murdered. Communists and people of Asian descent were murdered presumptively under the assumption that they were Soviet agents. Under Bach-Zelewski, the formations were responsible for the
mass murder of 35,000 civilians in
Riga and more than 200,000 in
Belarus and eastern
Poland. Bach-Zelewski's methods produced a high civilian death toll and relatively minor military gains. In fighting irregular battles with the partisans, his units slaughtered civilians in order to inflate the figures of "enemy losses"; indeed, far more fatalities were usually reported than weapons captured. The German troops would encircle areas controlled by the partisans in a time-consuming manner, allowing real partisans to slip away. After an operation was completed, no permanent military presence was maintained, which gave the partisans a chance to resume where they had left off. Even when successful in pacification actions, Bach-Zelewski usually accomplished little more than to force the real enemy to relocate and multiply their numbers with civilians enraged by the massacres. Bach-Zelewski told
Leo Alexander:I am the only living witness but I must say the truth. Contrary to the opinion of the
National Socialists, that the Jews were a highly organized group, the appalling fact was that they had no organization whatsoever. The mass of the Jewish people were taken complete by surprise. They did not know at all what to do; they had no directives or slogans as to how they should act. This is the greatest lie of anti-Semitism because it gives the lie to that old slogan that the Jews are conspiring to dominate the world and that they are so highly organized. In reality, they had no organization of their own at all, not even an information service. If they had had some sort of organization, these people could have been saved by the millions, but instead, they were taken completely by surprise. Never before has a people gone as unsuspectingly to its disaster. Nothing was prepared. Absolutely nothing. It was not so, as the anti-Semites say, that they were friendly to the Soviets. That is the most appalling misconception of all. The Jews in the old Poland, who were never communistic in their sympathies, were, throughout the area of the Bug eastward, more afraid of Bolshevism than of the Nazis. This was insanity. They could have been saved. There were people among them who had much to lose, business people; they didn't want to leave. In addition there was love of home and their experience with pogroms in Russia. After the first anti-Jewish actions of the Germans, they thought now the wave was over and so they walked back to their undoing.In July 1943, Bach-Zelewski received command of all anti-partisan actions in Belgium, Belarus, France, the
General Government, the
Netherlands, Norway,
Ukraine,
Yugoslavia, and parts of the
Bialystok District. In practice, his activities remained confined to Belarus and contiguous parts of Russia. In early 1944, he took part in front-line fighting in the
Kovel area, but in March he had to return to Germany for medical treatment. Himmler assumed all his posts.
Warsaw Uprising showing the bodies of women and children killed during the Warsaw Uprising, August 1944. Bach-Zelewski was designated a
General of the
Waffen-SS on 1 July 1944. On 2 August 1944, he took command of all German troops fighting
Bor-Komorowski's
Home Army that had staged the
Warsaw Uprising. The German forces were made up of 17,000 men arranged in two battle groups: under , and under
Heinz Reinefarth – the latter included the
SS-Sonderregiment Dirlewanger, consisted of probationary troops, and convicted criminals. This command group was named after Bach-Zelewski, as
Korpsgruppe Bach. Units under his command murdered approximately 200,000 civilians (more than 65,000 in mass executions) and an unknown number of prisoners of war, in
numerous atrocities throughout the city. Bach-Zelewski was awarded the
Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on 30 September 1944. On 4 October 1944, he accepted the surrender of General
Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski. Incidentally, during the slaughter and razing of Warsaw, he is alleged to have personally saved
Fryderyk Chopin's heart, by taking it for his own collection of curiosities.
The recovered heart is held at Warsaw's
Holy Cross Church.
Last months of the war In October 1944, he was sent by Hitler to the Hungarian capital
Budapest, where he participated in the fall of Regent
Miklós Horthy and his government, and its replacement by the fascist and highly antisemitic
Arrow Cross Party with their leader
Ferenc Szálasi. In particular, he was involved in the persecution of the Hungarian Jews. In December 1944, he became commander of the
XIV SS Corps in the Baden-Baden region and between 26 January and 10 February 1945 of the
X SS Corps in Pomerania, where his unit was annihilated after less than two weeks. He then commanded from 17 February 1945, the Oder Corps under
Army Group Vistula.
Postwar After the war in Europe ended, Bach-Zelewski went into hiding and tried to leave the country. US military police arrested him on 1 August 1945. In exchange for his testimony against his former superiors at the
Nuremberg trials, Bach-Zelewski was not
extradited to Poland or to the
USSR and never faced trial for any
war crimes. During his testimony at the Nuremberg trials, Bach-Zelewski stated that he disapproved of Himmler's aim to exterminate 30 million Slavs, but explained it thus: "when, for years, for decades, the doctrine is preached that the Slav is a member of an inferior race and that the Jew is not even human, then such an explosion is inevitable." In saying so, Bach-Zelewski effectively linked the facts of mass murder on the ground to Nazi ideology, and established the connection between the Wehrmacht and the actions of the
Einsatzgruppen in the Soviet Union, which turned out to be of great value to interrogators and prosecutors at the Nuremberg Trials. Bach-Zelewski left prison in 1949. In 1951, Bach-Zelewski claimed that he helped
Hermann Göring commit
suicide in 1946. As evidence, he produced
cyanide capsules to the authorities with serial numbers not far removed from the one used by Göring. The authorities never verified Bach-Zelewski's claim, and did not charge him with aiding Göring's death. Most modern historians dismiss Bach-Zelewski's claim and agree that a
U.S. Army contact within the Palace of Justice's prison at
Nuremberg most likely aided Göring in his suicide.
Trials and convictions In 1951, Bach-Zelewski was sentenced to 10 years in a labor camp for the murder of political opponents in the early 1930s; however, he was not imprisoned until February 1961, when he was convicted of the
manslaughter of
Anton von Hohberg und Buchwald, an SS officer, during the Night of the Long Knives. He was sentenced to 4 years and 6 months imprisonment. In November 1961, he was sentenced to another six months in prison for perjury. In 1962, Bach-Zelewski was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of seven German
Communists in the early 1930s. None of the sentences referred to his role in Poland, in the Soviet Union or his participation in the
Holocaust, although he openly denounced himself as a mass murderer. == Personal life ==