Product Code Database
Rudolf Lange (18 April 1910 – 23 February 1945) was a German SS- Standartenführer and police official during the Nazi era. After the invasion of the Soviet Union, he served in Einsatzgruppe A before becoming a commander of the Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo) and Sicherheitsdienst (SD) forces in Riga, Generalbezirk Lettland (today, Latvia). He participated in the January 1942 Wannsee Conference, at which the genocidal Final Solution to the Jewish Question was planned, and was largely responsible for implementing the murder of Latvia's population during the The Holocaust. He died at the Battle of Poznań in the closing months of the Second World War in Europe.
In May 1938, just after the Anschluss with Austria, Lange was transferred to the new Gestapo office in Vienna to supervise the takeover of the Austrian police system. There, he met and worked with Franz Walter Stahlecker, who later became his commanding officer in Riga. Lange was commissioned an Untersturmführer on 6 July 1938 and, later the same year, he was promoted to Sturmführer. In Vienna, his duties involved "fighting the enemy", specifically Jews and the Catholic Church. He was involved in the persecution of Viennese Jews, including the brutal attacks, arrests and looting of property that occurred during the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 1938. In June 1939, Lange was transferred to Stuttgart as the deputy head of the Gestapo regional headquarters.
In September 1939, the security and police agencies of Nazi Germany (with the exception of the Ordnungspolizei) were consolidated into the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) of the SS, headed by Reinhard Heydrich. The Gestapo became Amt IV (Office IV) of the RSHA and Heinrich Müller became the Gestapo chief under Heydrich. Lange's career continued to advance in the new RSHA organization. In April 1940, he was promoted to Hauptsturmführer. From May to July 1940, he served as the acting head of the state police offices in Weimar and Erfurt. This was followed by an appointment as the deputy head of the office of the Inspector of the SiPo and SD in Wehrkreis (military district) IX, headquartered in Kassel. On 17 September 1940, Lange was assigned as the deputy head of the Gestapo in Berlin under Walter Blume. On 20 April 1941, he was promoted to SS- Sturmbannführer.
From the very beginning, the goal of EK2 was that radical solution of the Jewish problem by killing all Jews.
On 3 December 1941, he was promoted as commander of EK2, replacing Eduard Strauch. At the same time, he was also made the commander of the SiPo and SD in the newly established Generalbezirk Lettland, with the title Kommandanteur des Sicherheitspolizei und SD (KdS). He was in charge of Department IV of the SD. The department was the "hub of the whole SD organization in Latvia, the other departments served it." Matters of formal rank and titles were never clear in the Nazi occupation regime for Latvia, as the lines of authority within agencies and the relationship between one agency and others were "ambiguous, overlapping, and unclear". Nevertheless, Lange is widely recognized as one of the primary perpetrators of the Holocaust in Latvia.
His headquarters were in Riga, on Reimersa Street. From the beginning of his involvement in Latvia, Lange gave orders to squads of Latvians, such as the Arajs Kommando, that the Germans had organised to carry out massacres in the smaller cities. According to one historian, Viktors Arājs was "held on a short leash" by Lange. Another local organisation receiving orders from Lange was the Vagulāns Kommando, which was responsible for the Jelgava massacres in July and August 1941. Lange also personally supervised executions conducted by the Arājs commando. He appears to have ordered that all the SD officers should personally participate in the killings.
After the Nazi regime decided to deport Jews from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia to the east, Lange was in charge of receiving the deportees coming to Riga. In this connection, on 8 November 1941, he issued detailed instructions to Hinrich Lohse, who was Reichskommissar Ostland, regarding the transport of 50,000 Jews to the east, with 25,000 going to Riga and 25,000 to Belarus. At the same time, Lange was organising the construction of the Salaspils concentration camp, originally intended to accommodate these deportees. Because the Salaspils camp would not be ready by the time the Jews would arrive, Lange decided to send the transports to an abandoned estate near Riga called Jungfernhof or Jumpravmuiza, which would be set up as Jungfernhof concentration camp.
In November 1941 Lange was involved in the planning and carrying out the murder of 24,000 Latvian Jews from the Riga ghetto which occurred on 30 November and 8 December 1941. This crime has come to be known as the Rumbula massacre. In addition to the Latvian Jews, another 1,000 Jews from Germany were also murdered. They had been brought to Latvia on the first train of deportees, which arrived on 29 November 1941. Following the 29 November train, more rail transports of Jews began arriving in Riga from Germany, starting on 3 December 1941. The Jews on the first few transports were not immediately housed in the ghetto, but were left at Jungfernhof concentration camp. In May 1942, Lange issued orders to SS- Obersturmführer Günter Tabbert to kill the surviving Jews in the Daugavpils ghetto. Only about 450 Jews survived in Daugavpils after this action, which involved killing of the sick, children, infants and hospital workers. In addition to Tabbert, the Arajs Kommando of native Latvians was responsible for a major part of these killings.
Lange was promoted to SS- Obersturmbannführer in November 1943. During the war years, he was awarded the Iron Cross, 1st and 2nd class. He remained the commander of the SiPo and SD in Latvia until January 1945. During his tenure, he continued killing operations against Jews, partisans and political opponents, some of which involved in the use of gas vans. One of his last actions in Riga was in Sonderaktion 1005, the operation that used prisoners to exhumation mass graves and burn the bodies of the victims of Nazi atrocities in an attempt to prevent the advancing Soviet Union forces from discovering them.
As far as Lange is concerned, he was the biggest murderer I have ever known. To write a book about him would definitely not be enough. As he is dead, it is no use talking about him. I would, however, mention that he was one of the most notorious anti-Semites in the 20th century. He hated Jews so much that he could not look at them; one never wanted to pass him either in the motor pool or anywhere else.
Lange made himself one of the most feared officials among those responsible for the Riga ghetto. He supervised the arrival of the transports, aided by SS- Obersturmbannführer Gerhard Maywald, whom historian Gertrude Schneider, a survivor of the Riga ghetto, describes as Lange's "sidekick". Lange personally shot a young man, Werner Koppel, who he felt was not opening a railway car door fast enough. Schneider described Lange's appearance:
Even though he was somewhat smaller and darker than the blond, blue-eyed Maywald, he looked very handsome in his fur-collared uniform coat and seemed every inch an officer and a gentleman. It never occurred to the newcomers to suspect such a man of being a murderer.
| 6 July 1938 | SS- Untersturmführer |
| 9 November 1938 | SS- Obersturmführer |
| 20 April 1940 | SS- Hauptsturmführer |
| 20 April 1941 | SS- Sturmbannführer |
| 9 November 1943 | SS- Obersturmbannführer |
| 30 January 1945 | SS- Standartenführer |
|
|
