The SS Commander Behind the Babi Yar Massacre: Otto Rasch
Einsatzgruppen Leaders: Faces of Nazi Genocide
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On September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland — and behind the advancing Wehrmacht marched the Einsatzgruppen, mobile death squads led by men like Otto Rasch.
An educated lawyer turned SS officer, Rasch helped design the blueprint for Nazi mass murder — from the secret executions of Polish intellectuals to the slaughter of tens of thousands of Jews in the ravine of Babi Yar near Kyiv.
Under his command, over 80,000 people were “specially treated” — a Nazi euphemism for extermination.
When the war ended, Rasch escaped justice, declared too ill to stand trial at Nuremberg.
His story is that of an intellectual killer — a man who turned ideology into genocide.
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