Wilhelm Kube

Germany state institutions Fascists and Nazis Counter-revolutionary forces 1887–1943 ✕ Assassinated

Nazi Generalkommissar of occupied Belarus who took part in the Holocaust and was assassinated by a Soviet partisan

On 22 September 1943 he was killed in his Minsk apartment by a time bomb hidden in his mattress, planted by Yelena Mazanik, a Belarusian Soviet partisan who had been hired in his household as a maid.

Born in Glogau and raised in Berlin, he was active in the völkisch and antisemitic movement from his student days. He joined the German National People’s Party in 1919 and became its Berlin general secretary, then moved to the more radical German Völkisch Freedom Party in 1923. Joining the Nazi Party in 1927, he became Gauleiter of the Ostmark in 1928 and built the party into the largest group in the Prussian Landtag. Stripped of his posts after a scandal in 1936, he was appointed Generalkommissar for White Ruthenia in Minsk in July 1941 and took part in the Holocaust. On 22 September 1943 he was killed by a bomb hidden in his mattress by Yelena Mazanik, a Belarusian partisan working in his household as a maid.