English source-aligned edition

Werner Braune

sentenced to death in the Einsatzgruppen Trial and executed at Landsberg in 1951 1909–1951

Werner Braune served as commander of Sonderkommando 11b of Einsatzgruppe D. The profile reconstructs the person’s function in southern Ukraine and Crimea through documented office, decisions, supervision or operational conduct. It does not assign every crime committed by an institution or region to one individual.

Crimes against humanity

Confirmed findings

Braune was a trained lawyer who served in the SD and Gestapo before taking command of Sonderkommando 11b.
He commanded the unit from October 1941 into 1942 during systematic mass shootings in southern Ukraine and Crimea.
His unit directed the murder of approximately 14,300 Jews in Simferopol in December 1941.

Place in the chain of responsibility

Braune exercised direct operational command over a unit whose killing actions and reports were documented. His responsibility is tied to that command and to specified operations, while the wider record of Einsatzgruppe D involved other commands and participants.

Key events and mechanisms

In October 1941 he assumed command of Sonderkommando 11b.
From 11 to 13 December 1941 the unit murdered approximately 14,300 Jews in Simferopol.
On 7 June 1951 he was executed by hanging in Landsberg prison.

No victim-count ranking

The circle records authority, function and agency. Several profiles may describe different parts of the same persecution chain, so profile-level totals must not be added together.

Postwar accountability

A United States military tribunal convicted Braune of crimes against humanity, war crimes and membership in criminal organisations and sentenced him to death in April 1948. Appeals and clemency requests failed, and the sentence was carried out in 1951.

Limits of the evidence

The Simferopol figure is a documented operation-level total. Broader estimates for killings across southern Ukraine and Crimea concern the work of several Einsatzgruppe D units and should not be assigned to Braune without narrower evidence.

Sources

The source set combines institutional, archival, trial or scholarly material from at least two independent publishers.