Otto Bradfisch

Appointed a government adviser on 4 November 1938, Bradfisch stayed there until his assignment as leader of Einsatzkommando (EK) 8, attached to Einsatzgruppe (EG) B of the Security Police and the Sicherheitsdienst in June 1941.

This Einsatzgruppe was led by SS-Brigadeführer (major general) Arthur Nebe, Chief of the Kripo, and was subdivided into Einsatzkommandos 8 and 9, and the Sonderkommandos 7a and 7b, as well as the Vorkommando Moskau.

The Einsatzgruppen tasks were established by oral Führer order and a written directive from Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA) Chief Reinhard Heydrich on 2 July 1941, to secure areas to the advancing army's rear and the performance of standard police tasks until the establishment of a civil administration in the conquered eastern areas, and the "special handling of potential opponents", i.e. their elimination.

Heydrich identified these in order: "all Comintern functionaries (all professional Communist politicians), the higher, middle and radical lower functionaries of the Party, the Central Committee and the regional and area committees, people's commissars, Jews in Party and state posts, various radical elements (saboteurs, propagandists, snipers, assassins, agitators, and so on)".

With the onset of the Russian Campaign on 22 June 1941, the EK 8 followed Army Group Middle through Białystok and Baranavičy in late 1941 to Minsk.

On 9 September 1941 they reached Mahilyow where, given the slowdown that the German offensive had suffered, and the forthcoming winter, plans were made for a lengthy stay.

As to the ways of doing things whereby the EK 8 fulfilled the tasks that it was ordered to do, and which were more or less the same for every Einsatzkommando, the Munich State Court I in their ruling of 21 July 1961 at the Einsatzgruppe Trial portrayed them as follows: In carrying out the order to annihilate the Jewish eastern population as well as other population groups considered to be racially inferior, and functionaries of the Russian CP, the EK 8, after crossing the demarcation line between the German Reich and the Soviet Union established in the year 1939, conducted ongoing shooting campaigns, in which mainly Jews were killed.

Already in these so-called "through-combing actions" ("Durchkämmungsaktionen") it came to bodily mishandling and in the odd case even to killing old and sick people who could not walk, and who were thus shot in their dwellings or right nearby.

After they had first given up their things of value and pieces of clothing that were in good condition, unless this had already happened when they were taken prisoner, they then had to lay themselves with their faces to the ground, and were then killed with shots to the back of the head.

In the course of the deployment, there was an ever greater changeover from shooting with rifle salvos to killing the intended people with single shots or machine pistols.

The grounds for this lay in the claim that shooting with rifle salvos took a relatively long time, and moreover, the force of the shots delivered from the shortest distance was so violent that the shooting squad and sundry other persons participating in the action were sprayed with the killed people's blood and bits of brain, a circumstance which raised the mental burden of the men on the execution squad, which was already extraordinary anyway, that often there were misses and therefore the victims' suffering was prolonged.

The execution places were each sealed off by Einsatzkommando members or police officials subordinate to them, so that for the people right near the shooting pit waiting for their deaths there was no possibility of escaping their doom.

In fact, they had the opportunity – this circumstance demonstrates a particular intensification of their suffering – to hear the crack of rifle salvos or machine pistol shots and in the odd case to observe the shootings to which neighbours, friends and kin fell victim.

As the Red Army closed in, Bradfisch managed to escape westwards, procuring for himself a Wehrmacht pay book with junior officer Karl Evers's name on it.

Bradfisch and his wife, who were married on 23 November 1932, had three children, the youngest of whom, a girl born in Łódź, died as they were fleeing the Soviet army advance.