Paul Blobel (13 August 1894 – 7 June 1951) was a German Sicherheitsdienst (SD) commander and convicted war criminal who played a leading role in the Holocaust.

From late 1942 onwards, he led Sonderaktion 1005, wherein millions of bodies were exhumed at sites across Eastern Europe in an effort to erase all evidence of the Holocaust and specifically of Operation Reinhard.

Born in the city of Potsdam, Blobel fought in the First World War as an engineer as part of a pioneer battalion, in which by all accounts he served well,[citation needed] being decorated with the Iron Cross first class.

During World War II, following Operation Barbarossa, in June 1941 Blobel became the commanding officer of Sonderkommando 4a of Einsatzgruppe C, active in Reichskommissariat Ukraine.

[3] On 22 August 1941, the Sonderkommando murdered Jewish women and children at Bila Tserkva with the consent of Field Marshal Walther von Reichenau, commander of the 6th Army.

[4]: 217 Blobel, in conjunction with Reichenau's and Friedrich Jeckeln's units, organised the Babi Yar massacre in late September 1941 in Kyiv,[5] where 33,771 Jews were murdered.

Gitta Sereny related the conversation about Blobel she once had with one-time Chief of the Church Information Branch at the Reich Security Head Office, Albert Hartl.

Blobel laughed, made a gesture with his arm pointing back along the road and ahead, all along the ravine—the ravine of Babi Yar—and said, 'Here lie my thirty-thousand Jews.