Adolf Rübe, SS-Hauptscharführer

Adolf Rübe

Adolf Rübe (*18 May, 1896 in Karlsruhe, † 23 June, 1974 ibid.) was responsible for a section of the Minsk ghetto and was involved in "Aktion 1005" in the Minsk area.

Rübe grew up in Karlsruhe and attended elementary school up to the 8th grade. He then completed an apprenticeship in the decorative craft from 1910 and passed the journeyman's examination in 1913. From 1914 to 1918 he took part in World War I: first as a soldier in a field artillery regiment and at the end of 1915 at the front. In 1917 he became a corporal and assistant clerk in his regiment. In a military hospital, Rübe met a Jewish cantor's daughter. He wanted to marry her, but she turned him down.¹ In 1920 he joined the Lörrach gendarmerie. Here he first worked in field service and quickly climbed the career ladder: in 1923 Rübe moved to the Baden Regional Police Office in Karlsruhe, where he was promoted to police assistant in 1926 and police secretary in 1929. As a result of a restructuring of the agency, Rübe became secretary of crime in 1933. Allegedly at the urging of his superiors, he joined the NSDAP in 1933.²

After the outbreak of war in 1939, Adolf Rübe temporarily entered service with the Criminal Investigation Office (Kriminaldauerwache) and from 1940 until his transfer he worked for the Department for Planned Crime Surveillance.³ On 15 November 1942, Adolf Rübe was transferred to the "Commander of the Security Police and SD Weißruthenien" in Minsk SS-Obersturmführer Eduard Strauch. It is possible that Rübe was already aware at this point that the police in the East were involved in shootings and executions, or that he was afraid of the war: however, his request to have another officer assigned to the East in his place was denied. Several requests based on medical certificates to be withdrawn from the Eastern mission again failed.⁴

Photograph of Jewish people in the Minsk Ghetto

In Minsk, Adolf Rübe was initially assigned to Department V "Criminal Police" and carried out criminal investigations against the civilian population. He played a leading role in the liquidation of the inmates of the Slutsk ghetto on 8 February 1943. In March 1943, Rübe was assigned to Department IV B "Jewish Affairs", to which he belonged until the end of the year. In addition, Adolf Rübe was involved in the fight against partisans.⁵

In the Minsk ghetto, Adolf Rübe acted as a "referent" of the camp commander SS-Hauptsturmführer Otto Müller and was particularly responsible for the "German ghetto", in which about 15,000 Jews from Hamburg, Frankfurt am Main, Düsseldorf, Bremen, Berlin and Vienna resided from November 1941. Adolf Rübe punished alleged wrongdoings by executions in the ghetto cemetery. He was instrumental in the murder of patients of the ghetto hospital in 1943. In addition to the ghetto, Rübe was also responsible for supervising an SS labour camp and the Jewish people there.⁶

After the dissolution of the ghetto in Minsk in November 1943, Rübe was assigned to the "Sonderkommando 1005-Mitte" and took part in the exhumation of mass graves and the burning of the corpses of Jewish people in Blahaǔščyna. After completing his duties, Adolf Rübe returned to the police service in Baden in 1944 and met the end of the war in Karlsruhe.⁷

Responsible for content: Frank Wobig, Johanna Schweppe