Hans Krueger (also spelled Krüger) (1 July 1909 – 8 February 1988) was a German captain of the Gestapo in occupied Poland during World War II,[1] involved in organizing the string of massacres after the commencement of Operation Barbarossa behind the Curzon Line.

[2] Krueger (also spelled Kreger, Krüger) was known as the right man for the job due to his Nazi fanaticism which earned him the seat of a city commandant in 1941 but also his brutality exhibited through hands-on participation in the killings.

After the Nazi rise to power in January 1933, Krueger was appointed head of the Oranienburg concentration camp political division and distinguished himself by his ruthlessness.

His long Nazi past helped him acquire a position with the Kommandateur der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD (KdS) as the director of the Sipo-SD School in the resort town of Zakopane,[3] where the Polish Tatra Confederation members were tortured.

[1][3] Krueger became a member of the Einsatzkommando killing squad on 29 June 1941, a week after the start of Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union.

Appointed Chief of the local Gestapo Office in Stanisławów,[3] Krueger organized the execution of six hundred intellectuals on 2 August 1941 only one day after his arrival there.

[9] On 6 October 1941 in nearby Nadworna some 2,000 Jews: men, women and children were murdered on Krueger's orders,[2] marking the beginning of the Final Solution in the General Government months before the Wannsee Conference near Berlin put it in motion in 1942.

[2][11] "Over the span of sixteen months (wrote historian Dieter Pohl), this small police station – its staff at times numbering only twenty-five – organized and implemented the shooting of some 70,000 Jews and the deportation of another 12,000 to death camps.

[3][12] Krueger was picked up in the Netherlands at the end of World War II and held in custody, but lied about his past and was released by the Dutch in November 1948 for lack of evidence.

Poland's official request for a separate trial was denied by the German prosecution on the grounds that Krueger had already received a life sentence and no extension was possible.