Erwin Schulz

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Erwin Wilhelm Schulz (27 November 1900 – 11 November 1981) was a German member of the Gestapo and the SS in Nazi Germany. He was the leader of Einsatzkommando 5, part of Einsatzgruppe C, which was attached to the Army Group South during the planned invasion of Soviet Union in 1941, and operated in the occupied territories of south-eastern Poland and Ukrainian SSR committing mass killings of civilian population, mostly men of Jewish ethnicity, under the command of SS-Brigadeführer Otto Rasch. Schulz is notable for demonstrating that service in the Einsatzgruppen was voluntary. He did not volunteer for the job, nor did he turn it down. Previously, he'd expressed opposition to the mass shootings of Jews. Under orders, Schulz would participate in the mass executions of Jewish men despite "serious misgivings" about his actions. After being ordered to kill Jewish women and children, however, he protested. When he was unable to get the order retracted, he asked if he could stop. The request was granted within days, with Schulz being discharged on the orders of Reinhard Heydrich himself. Schulz not only faced no consequences for stopping, but was promoted shortly after. By the end of the war, he'd reached the rank of SS-Brigadeführer, the SS equivalent of a brigadier general.