Gerhard Bast (January 12, 1911 – March 9, 1947) was an Austrian lawyer, a Sturmbannführer in the Gestapo and a leader of a task force of the Einsatzgruppen.

After graduation, Bast worked at the county court in St. Pölten, but lost his job shortly afterwards due to his membership of the Nazi Party.

[2] After the German Reich's Anschluss with Austria, on March 20, 1938, Bast joined the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) and Gestapo.

In August 1940, Bast moved to the Gestapo in Koblenz; then from January 1941, he headed the state police control center in Linz on behalf of Humbert Achamer-Pifrader.

In this position, he was heavily involved in the deportation of Jews out of Germany and took part in the executions of Polish forced laborers.

However, as he could "prove his worth" on the Eastern Front, Bast did not have to serve his sentence, yet suffered a severe blow for his NS career as he was ordered, as punitive measure, into the field and away from his desk job if he wished to stay within the SS system.

Later, he was deployed with his special unit in the "Einsatzgruppe H" under lead of "BdS (Commander of the security police and SD) Pressburg" to fight partisans.

[7] From Poland Bast's battalion moved to Slovakia, where they committed other war crimes: "In the small village of Bully (Donovaly) [sk], members of the Special Command [Sonderkommando] 7a found a group of Jews hiding in the hut of a poor farmer's wife.