Karl Martin Sandberger (17 August 1911 – 30 March 2010) was a German SS functionary during the Nazi era and a convicted Holocaust perpetrator. He was the commander of Sonderkommando 1a of Einsatzgruppe A, as well as of the Sicherheitspolizei and SD at the time of Nazi German occupation of Estonia during World War II. Sandberger perpetrated mass murder of the Jews in German-occupied Latvia and Estonia. As the Gestapo chief in Verona, he was also responsible for the arrest of Jews in Italy, and their deportation to Auschwitz concentration camp. Sandberger was the second-highest official of the Einsatzgruppe A to be tried and convicted. He was also the last-surviving defendant from the Nuremberg Military Tribunals.
Martin Sandberger was born in Charlottenburg, Berlin as a son of a director of IG Farben. Sandberger studied law at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, the University of Cologne, the University of Freiburg, and the University of Tübingen.
At the age of 20, he joined the Nazi Party and the SA. From 1932 to 1933, Sandberger was a Nazi student activist and student leader in Tübingen. On 8 March 1933, Sandberger and fellow student Erich Ehrlinger raised the Nazi flag in front of the main building at the University of Tübingen. (Like Sandberger, Ehrlinger would take charge of an Einsatzkommando in 1941, and in so doing, commit thousands of murders.)
By 1935, he had obtained his doctor of law degree. As a functionary of the Nazi student League, he eventually became a university inspector. In 1936. he became an enlisted member of the SS and came under the command of Gustav Adolf Scheel for the SD in Württemberg.
He began a career with the SD and, by 1938, he had risen to the rank of SS-Sturmbannführer (major). Sandberger worked as an assistant judge for the Interior Ministry of Württemberg and was appointed as a Regierungsrat (government councilor) in 1937.
Activities during the Second World War
Following the German invasion and occupation of Poland in September 1939, Heinrich Himmler embarked on a program, known as Heim ins Reich (approximate translation: Return to the Nation) which involved driving out the native population in areas of Poland and replacing them with ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) from various countries, such as the Baltic states and Soviet-occupied eastern Poland. On 13 October 1939 Himmler appointed Sandberger the chief of the Northeast Central Immigration Office (Einwandererzentralstelle Nord-Ost) and tasked with the "racial evaluation" (rassische Bewertung) of the various Volksdeutsche immigrants. Sandberger also performed this task in western Prussia, deporting Jews from Schneidemühl (today, Piła) to Lublin to enable Baltic Germans to be settled there. In May 1940, he was transferred to Alsace after the fall of France to perform the same function. In April 1941, Himmler assigned him to coordinate the removal of Slovenes from northern Slovenia following the German defeat of Yugoslavia.
In June 1941, Sandberger was appointed chief of Sonderkommando 1a of Einsatzgruppe A. During the first two weeks of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, which began on 22 June 1941, Sandberger traveled with Franz Walter Stahlecker, the commander of Einsatzgruppe A. Sandberger was involved since March 1941 in the distribution of a business plan for the RSHA and a director of the curriculum organization of the schools (Lehrplangestaltung der Schulen).
The Nazi organization most responsible for carrying out The Holocaust in the Baltic states was the Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst), generally referred to by its initials SD. The SD, which organized the Einsatzgruppen, conducted itself in accordance with the understanding that a fundamental order, sometimes called a Führer Order (Führerbefehl) existed to kill the Jews. Sandberger received his knowledge of the Führer order from Bruno Streckenbach, an official with Department IV of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA). According to Sandberger's testimony as an accused in the Einsatzgruppen trial after the war, Streckenbach gave a speech (at the Gestapo headquarters in Berlin on Prince Albertstrasse) about the Führer order, which Sandberger attended. Streckenbach also gave Sandberger explicit instructions in a personal conversation:
Streckenbach personally informed me about the Führer order, which said that, in order to secure the Eastern territory permanently, all Jews, Gypsies, and communist functionaries were to be eliminated, together with all other elements who might endanger security.
Sandberger entered Riga with Einsatzkommando 1a and 2. These organizations then engaged in
destruction of synagogues, the liquidation of 400 Jews, and the setting up of groups for the purpose of fomenting pogroms. After the war, when on trial for war crimes, Sandberger's effort to evade responsibility was rejected by the tribunal: "Although it has been demonstrated that not only he was in Riga at the time they occurred, but he actually had a conversation about them with the Einsatzgruppe Chief Stahlecker before he left Riga."
In early July 1941, Sandberger was sent to Estonia on the orders of Stahlecker. According to Sandberger's later testimony, Stahlecker made it clear that Sandberger was being sent to Estonia to carry out the Führer order in that country. A variety of shooting actions of Jews, Romani, Communists and the mentally-ill began once Sandberger and his kommando entered Estonia. A report dated 15 October 1941 on executions in Ostland during Sandberger's tenure included one item under Estonia of 474 Jews and 684 Communists.
The arrest of all male Jews of over 16 years of age has been nearly finished. With the exception of the doctors and the elders of the Jews who were appointed by the special Kommandos, they were executed by the self-protection units under the control of the special detachment 1a. Jewesses in Pärnu and Tallinn of the age groups from 16 to 60 who are fit for work were arrested and put to peat-cutting or other labor.
At present a camp is being constructed in Harku in which all Estonian Jews are to be assembled, so that Estonia will be free of Jews in a short while.
Others were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Report No. 17, dated 9 July 1941 carried the item —
With the exception of one, all leading communist officials in Estonia have now been seized and rendered harmless. The sum total of communists seized runs to about 14,500. Of these about 1,000 were shot and 5,377 put into concentration camps. 3,785 less guilty supporters were released.
On 10 September 1941, Sandberger promulgated a general order for the internment of Jews which resulted in the internment of 450 Jews in a concentration camp at Pskov, Russia. The Jews were later executed.