Wilhelm Kube

Wilhelm Kube (13 November 1887 - 22 September 1943) was a German politician and Nazi official.

Kube was born in Glogau (Głogów), Prussian Silesia, and studied history, economics and theology. He was active in the Völkisch movement as a student, and was an early member of the Nazi Party. In 1924 was one of the first group of Nazi members elected to the Weimar Republic Reichstag. In 1928 he was appointed Gauleiter of Brandenburg and Nazi leader in the Prussian Landtag (state legislature). Following the German conquest of Poland in 1939 his domain was extended to include Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia and Reichsgau Wartheland. He remained an active Christian despite being a zealous Nazi, and in 1932 was elected superintendent of the Lutheran Church in the Berlin-Brandenburg area and head of the Berlin synod of the Church. When the Nazis came to power he was active in the German Christian group which sought to "Nazify" the Lutheran Church. [Biographical information from Ernst Klee, "Das Personen-lexikon zum Dritten Reich" (Fischer Verlag 2005), 346]

Kube joined the SS in 1934 and attained the rank of Rottenführer (corporal). In 1940 he served for a period at the concentration camp at Dachau. In July 1941, in the wake of the German occupation of the western parts of the Soviet Union, he was appointed General-Commissar for White Russia (now known as Belarus), with his headquarters in Minsk. In this role he oversaw the extermination of the large Jewish population of this area. The historian Martin Gilbert records that Kube participated in an atrocity on 2 March 1942 in the Minsk ghetto. During a search of the ghetto by German and White Russian policeman a group of children were seized and thrown into pits of deep sand to die. "At that moment, several SS officers, among them Wilhelm Kube, arrived, whereupon Kube, immaculate in his uniform, threw handfuls of sweets to the shrieking children. All the children perished in the sand." [Gilbert, M: "The Holocaust", page 297. Fontana/Collins, 1987.]

On 22 September 1943 Kube was assassinated in his Minsk apartment. His death was caused by a bomb hidden in a hot water bottle, which was placed in his bed by a maid, Yelena Mazanik. In retaliation, the SS killed more than 1,000 male citizens of Minsk, though SS leader Heinrich Himmler reportedly said the assassination was a "blessing" since Kube did not support some of the harsh measures mandated by the SS. [Reidlinger 1960 p.157 as quoted in Turonek 1989 p.118.] Mazanik escaped the reprisals and joined the partisans. She was later awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union.

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