Max Krahner, SS-Hauptsturmführer

Max Hermann Richard Krahner (*8 March 1904 in Neustadt an der Orla, †1997) was a member of the Schutzstaffel (SS) and the Sicherheitsdienst (SD). From autumn 1943, as head of the "Sonderkommando 1005-Mitte", he was involved in the removal of traces of the mass murders of mainly Jewish people in Maly Trascjanec and in the murder of forced labourers used in "Aktion 1005".

No portraits of Max Krahner were available at the time of compiling this exhibition; therefore he must remain "faceless" as the only perpetrator of this exhibition.

Krahner grew up in Neustadt an der Orla, where he first attended elementary school and then high school. Max Krahner completed his vocational training in the trades and initially worked in his father's business before he was later hired by a leather dealer in Jena.¹

Early, on 1 January 1931, Krahner became a member of the NSDAP and on 15 May 1931 of the Schutzstaffel (SS). Five years later, in November 1936, he joined the Sicherheitsdienst of the Reichsführer SS. In the course of his work, he became head of the SD branch office in Jena at the end of 1937. He attained the rank of officer (SS-Obersturmführer) at the end of 1937 and was promoted to SS-Hauptsturmführer on 1 September 1940.² In mid-1943, Krahner volunteered for a foreign assignment. He first came to Konotop (in today's Ukraine) and was transferred to Minsk in Belarus in November 1943, where he took over the leadership of "Sonderkommando 1005-Mitte" in Maly Trascjanec. His deployment there ended in the summer of 1944.³

Arrest warrant against Max Krahner dated 22 February 1960

In August 1944, Krahner was transferred to Lodz and became part of the new Sonderkommando "Iltis" under the leadership of Paul Blobel. In October of the same year, the command was transferred to Salzburg and placed under the direction of the SD commander there. Here Max Krahner was put in charge of a sub-commando that was used to fight partisans.⁴ On 8 May 1945, Krahner was taken prisoner of war by the English near Villach and imprisoned in a prison camp near Taranto, from which he was released in June 1948.⁵ After his release, Krahner worked as an unskilled labourer for a demolition company. Living in Cologne-Zollstock until 1954, he became a commercial employee in the production of office supplies in the mid-1950s.⁶

In 1960, the Hamburg Regional Court issued an arrest warrant for Krahner. In the foreground was his participation in "Aktion 1005".