Herbert Lange
- Birth Date:
- 29.09.1909
- Death date:
- 20.04.1945
- Length of life:
- 35
- Days since birth:
- 41857
- Years since birth:
- 114
- Days since death:
- 28870
- Years since death:
- 79
- Extra names:
- Herbert Lange
- Categories:
- Nazi, Officer, Policeman, WWII participant , War criminal
- Nationality:
- german
- Cemetery:
- Set cemetery
Herbert Lange (September 29, 1909 – April 20, 1945) was an SS-Sturmbannführer (major) and the commandant of Chełmno extermination camp until April 1942; leader of the SS Special Detachment Lange conducting the extermination of Jews from the Łódź Ghetto. He was responsible for numerous crimes against humanity including the murder of mental patients in Poland and in Germany during the Action T4 of mid-1940.
Background
Born in Menzlin village near Anklam, Western Pomerania, Lange studied law, but failed to obtain a degree and he subsequently joined the NSDAP (Nazi Party) on May 1, 1932. He enlisted in the Sturmabteilung (SA) three months later, and the following year, he joined the SS. He subsequently joined the police force, becoming a deputy commissioner in 1935.
Crimes against humanity
On November 9, 1939, following the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, Lange was promoted to the rank of SS-Untersturmführer (2nd lieutenant) in occupied Poland and posted in charge of the Posen (Poznań) Gestapo. In the beginning of 1940 he assumed command of an SS-Sonderkommando (Kommando Lange) tasked with the extermination of mentally ill in Wartheland area (Wielkopolska). Lange served with Einsatzgruppe VI during Operation Tannenberg. Already by mid-1940, he and his men were responsible for the murder of about 1,100 patients in Owińska, 2,750 patients at Kościan, 1,558 patients and 300 Poles at Działdowo, and hundreds of Poles at Fort VII where the mobile gas-chamber (Einsatzwagen) was invented. Their earlier hospital victims were usually shot in the back of the neck. The unit, equipped with a gas van, shuttled between hospitals, picking up patients and killing them with carbon monoxide.
After his promotion to SS-Obersturmführer (1st lieutenant) on April 20, 1940, his unit was permanently stationed at the Soldau concentration camp. In one particular case, Wilhelm Rediess hired Kommando Lange to kill 1,558 mental patients from East Prussia for ten Reichsmark a head. By December 1941 Lange was a SS-Hauptsturmführer (captain) and was appointed commander of the Chełmno extermination camp by then SS-Standartenführer Ernst Damzog, chief of the Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo) and Sicherheitsdienst (SD) in Posen. He held that position until March 1942.
In 1942, Lange's services were needed at the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Main Security Office) and he was transferred. He served under Arthur Nebe as a Kriminalrat (Criminal Investigator) and in 1944, he aided in catching the conspirators of the attempt on Hitler's life (the July 20 Plot), leading to his promotion to SS-Sturmbannführer.
Lange was killed in action during the Battle of Berlin.
Source: wikipedia.org
No places
No relations set
08.12.1941 | Created Chełmno extermination camp
Chełmno extermination camp (German: Vernichtungslager Kulmhof) built during World War II, was a Nazi German extermination camp situated 50 kilometres (31 mi) north of the metropolitan city of Łódź, near the Polish village of Chełmno nad Nerem (Kulmhof an der Nehr in German). Following the invasion of Poland in 1939 Germany annexed the area into the new territory of Reichsgau Wartheland aiming at its complete "Germanization"; the camp was set up specifically to carry out ethnic cleansing through mass killings. It operated from December 8, 1941 parallel to Operation Reinhard during the most deadly phase of the Holocaust, and again from June 23, 1944 to January 18, 1945 during the Soviet counter-offensive. Polish Jews of the Łódź Ghetto and the local inhabitants of Reichsgau Wartheland (Warthegau) were exterminated there. In 1943 modifications were made to the camp's killing methods because the reception building was already dismantled.