Wilhelm Harster

Wilhelm Harster was a German lawyer, police official and convicted war criminal. An SS-Gruppenführer in the Schutzstaffel (SS), he commanded German security police and intelligence services in Kraków, the Netherlands and northern Italy during the Second World War. A Holocaust perpetrator, he was convicted by a Dutch court and sentenced to 12 years imprisonment. After an early release, he returned to Germany and was employed by the state government of Bavaria as a civil servant but was dismissed after a public outcry, though he retained his full pension. He was again tried, convicted and sentenced to 15 years for complicity in the murder of 83,000 Dutch Jews.