Paul Blobel (of Aktion 1005) executed - June 7, 1951

On this day, Paul Blobel -- leader of the Aktion 1005 operation to get rid of evidence of Nazi mass murders -- was executed. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Greetings everyone, welcome to this Day in History Class,
where we bring you a new tidbit from history every day.
Today is June seven, nineteen. The day was June seventh,

(00:24):
nineteen fifty one. Paul blow Bill, a German s S
commander and war criminal in charge of Zonder Acton one
thousand five, was hanged at Landsburg Prison just after midnight.
The exact number of people killed under Nazi policies is unknown,
but there is no doubt that the death toll is
in the millions. Despite the lack of an official number

(00:48):
and the destruction of Nazi documents, the devastation and atrocity
of Nazi actions is well documented still. Once Western countries
began receiving reports of the atrocities Nazis perpetrated in Europe,
the Nazis began devising ways to conceal and destroy evidence
of so called Jewish Extermination. Actillon one thousand five or

(01:11):
zonder Acton one thousand five, was Nazi Germany's campaign to
destroy all evidence of the mass murder it had committed
during World War Two. Action means action. Actillon one thousand
five was overseen by Zonder Commando one thousand five, the
Security Service and the police force of Nazi Germany. Zonder

(01:34):
Commando euphemistically meant special unit. In March of nineteen forty two,
German s S official Reynard Hydra put SS Stan dartin
fire Paul Blobel at the head of the operation, but
the operation was delayed after Hydrich was killed in early June.

(01:55):
Later that month, head of the Gestapo, Hirach Mueller, gave
Blowbell the go ahead it The point of the operation
was to get rid of all evidence of Jewish genocide,
but evidence was also destroyed of non Jewish murders. Part
of the Nazi plan to get rid of the evidence
was to burn corpses. The first corpses were burned at Kelmno,

(02:19):
an extermination camp in Poland. At first, Blobel attempted to
use incendiary bombs to destroy bodies dug up from mass graves,
but that set nearby forests on fire, so instead Blowbell
decided to build pires of bodies on iron grills. He
layered corpses between firewood, soaks the pire and fuel, and

(02:43):
burned everything. Bones were crushed and reburied. The land was
then flattened, plowed, and replanted. Acting on one thousand five
officially begin at Sobibor, an extermination camp in Poland. Prisoner
is known as Liking Commando or Corps units were forced

(03:03):
to dig up bodies for mass graves and burn them.
Since the operation was a secret, the prisoners who were
forced to take part in the cover ups were killed.
German staff who had been sworn to secrecy were not
sent back to their units in nineteen forty two. In
nineteen forty three, corpses were also burnt in Treblinka, Belzec

(03:25):
and Auschwitz. By mid nineteen forty three, corpses were being
systematically destroyed and occupied Soviet Union, Poland and Yugoslavia. Extermination
camps that had crematoria, like Auschwitz and Belson did not
need acting on one thousand five commands, and the operation
went to the scenes of earlier mass killings at Bobby Yard, Ponary,

(03:49):
the ninth Fort and Rona Gora. As Soviet armies advanced
in nineteen forty four, s S official Wilhelm Coppa ordered
that each of the gain are all government five districts
set up as own units to get rid of evidence
of the mass murders quickly. The Gainerall Government was an

(04:09):
administrative unit that the Germans established made up of the
parts of Poland that were not incorporated into the Third Reich,
but Soviet troops reached some of those sites before all
the corpses could be destroyed. The operation continued until late
nineteen forty four. The Nuremberg Trials, conducted between nineteen forty
five and nineteen forty nine prosecuted Nazis for war crimes

(04:32):
and their participation in the Holocaust. The Ironst scrup In
trial took place from September nineteen forty seven to April
nineteen forty eight. Ms At Scrubbing were units of the
s S Security Police and Order Police that carried out
mass killings during the German invasions of Poland and the
Soviet Union. In this trial, a U S military tribunal

(04:56):
tried and convicted Paul Blowbell for crimes against humanity, war crimes,
and membership and criminal organizations. On June seven, ninete, Paul
Blowbill was executed along with other Nazi criminals. The destruction
of the remains of victims of Nazi killings through acting
on one thousand five contributed to Holocaust denial. I'm Eves

(05:20):
Jeffcote and hopefully you know a little more about history
today than you did yesterday. If you feel like correcting
my pronunciation or my accent on anything that I've said
in the show, feel free to leave a very kind
comment on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook at t d i
h C podcast. If you want to learn even more

(05:43):
about history, you can listen to a podcast I host
called Unpopular. Unpopular is a podcast about people in history
who challenged the status quo. They rebelled, and they resisted
the conventions of the day, and sometimes they were persecuted
for it. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you tomorrow.

(06:14):
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