Police Regiment Centre

Police Regiment Centre
Polizei-Regiment Mitte
Active1941–1942
Country Nazi Germany
RoleParticipation in the Holocaust
Nazi security warfare
SizeRegiment
Part ofOrder Police under SS command, reporting directly to Higher SS and Police Leader, Central Russia
Commanders
Notable
commanders		Max Montua [de]
Walter Schimana
Wehrmacht propaganda photograph of Jewish women and children in Mogilev, July 1941. Six thousand Mogilev Jews were murdered by SS forces and Police Regiment Centre's Police Battalions 316 and 322 in October 1941.[1]

The Police Regiment Centre (Polizei-Regiment Mitte) was a formation of the Order Police (uniformed police) during the Nazi era. During Operation Barbarossa, it was subordinated to the Schutzstaffel (SS) and deployed in German-occupied areas, specifically the Army Group Centre Rear Area, of the Soviet Union. In mid-1942, its three constituent battalions were reassigned and the unit was re-designated as the 13th Police Regiment.

Alongside detachments from the Einsatzgruppen and the SS Cavalry Brigade, it perpetrated mass murders and was responsible for large-scale crimes against humanity targeting civilian populations in the course of the Nazi security warfare. The scope of the regiment's operations was known to British intelligence since July 1941 but, for reasons of national security, information pertaining to their activities was not released until 1993.

  1. ^ Megargee 2009, p. 1642.