Karl Jäger ( Schaffhausen , 20 of September of 1888 - Hohenasperg , 22 of June of 1959 ) was an official Swiss of the SS , and commander of Einsatzkommando 3 Einsatzgruppen A during the Nazi occupation of Lithuania in World War II .
Early years and career
Jäger was born in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. As a young man he participated in World War I and was awarded the First Class Iron Cross . He joined the NSDAP in 1923 (member number 359269) and the Schutzstaffel (SS) in 1932 (member number 62823.). He was assigned to Ludwigsburg , then in 1935 to Ravensburg , and to Münster in 1938 , where he was appointed head of the local office of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD).
Mass killings in Eastern Europe
From July of 1941 until September 1943 , Jäger was assigned commander of Einsatzkommando 3 in Kaunas , Lithuania , responsible for the extermination of the Jews of Lithuania. Reassigned again to Germany towards the end of 1943, Jäger was appointed commander of the SD in Reichenberg (now Liberec ) in the Sudetenland .
Escape, capture and suicide
Jäger escaped capture of the Allies when the war ended. He assumed a false identity, and worked as a farmer on a farm near Heidelberg until his report was discovered in March 1959, which allowed him to begin his search, locate and stop him in April of the same year. On June 22 , 1959 Jäger committed suicide by hanging himself in his cell at Hohenasperg Prison while awaiting trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity .
The Jäger Report
As commander of the Einsatzkommando 3, reports of mass murders were routinely subjected to their superiors. Some of these reports survived the war and are known today. One of these Nazi documents detailing the Holocaust is the ” Jäger Report “. The document by Jäger provides a detailed description of the Nazi massacres in Lithuania. This document describes the operation of the Einsatzkommando 3 carried out during five months in Lithuania and includes a detailed list summarizing each operation. In total, the sum of its victims amounts to 137,346 people in the Baltic states. In it can be read a sentence which details:
I can confirm today that Einsatzkommando 3 has reached the goal of solving the Jewish problem in Lithuania. There are no Jews in Lithuania.