Rudolf Joachim Seck
Rudolf Joachim Seck was an SS-Oberscharführer during World War II. During the war, Seck committed many atrocities for which he was later sentenced to serve life in prison by a West German court.
Activities during World War II
Seck held the SS ranks of Unterscharführer and later Oberscharführer. He was the commander of Jungfernhof concentration camp, near Riga, Latvia. His office was at the Gestapo headquarters in Riga on Reimerstrasse.According to Joseph Berman, a Jewish man from Ventspils and a survivor of The Holocaust in Latvia, who was assigned to the work detail cleaning Seck's automobile, Seck was closely associated with Rudolf Lange, the main SS leader in occupied Latvia. Seck made it a habit to meet, at the Šķirotava Railway Station, trains of Jews deported from Germany, Austria, or Czechoslovakia. Theoretically these Jews were to be sent to the Riga Ghetto or the Jungfernhof or Salaspils concentration camps, but usually this did not occur, as Seck would instead take them to Biķernieki or Rumbula forests, near Riga, and shoot them.
Seck also traveled about Latvia, the Baltic states and Belarus with Nazi convoys to fight partisans or liquidate various camps and ghettos. The Gestapo maintained a clothing depot in Riga, on Peterholm Street, where the belongings of murdered Jews would be collected. Seck was seen at the clothing depot appropriating for himself suitcases of new clothing and jewelry. Seck personally beat and maltreated prisoners on a regular basis.
Seck was responsible for selecting between 1600 and 1700 Jews from among the Jungfernhof concentration camp inmates to be transported, on 26 March 1942, to the Biķernieki forest to be murdered in what became known as the Dünamünde Action.
Convicted of crimes against humanity
Following the war, Seck was arrested by the British and sent to an internment camp. He was supposed to be tried by a British military court for atrocities in Latvia, albeit the trial was cancelled. Seck was released in January 1949, but re-arrested in May 1949. In July 1949, a denazification court classified him as a major offender years in prison. In 1951, Seck was convicted for his atrocities in Latvia sentenced to life in prison. Among his crimes were his personal murder of eight Jews, including seven in Jungfernhof. The court described these murders as follows:Seck was released from prison in 1964, and died in 1974.