Wilhelm Kube Wilhelm Kube ( 13 November 1887 - 22 September 1943 ) was a German politician and Nazi official . He was an important figure in the German Christian movement during the early years of Nazi rule . During the war he became a senior official in the occupying government of the Soviet Union , achieving the rank of Generalkommissar for Weissruthenien ( Belarus ) . He was assassinated in Minsk in 1943 , triggering brutal reprisals against the citizens of Minsk . Early life . Kube was born in Glogau ( today ' s Głogów ) , Prussian Silesia , and studied history , economics and theology . He was active in the Völkisch movement as a student , and was an early member of the Nazi Party . In 1924 he was one of the first group of Nazi members elected to the Weimar Republic Reichstag . In 1928 he was appointed Gauleiter of Brandenburg and speaker of the tiny Nazi party fraction ( 6 seats ) in the Prussian Landtag ( Prussian state legislature ) . Nazification of Christianity . Kube remained an active Christian despite being a zealous Nazi , and in 1932 he organised the list of candidates of the Faith Movement of the German Christians for the ordinary election of presbyter s and synodals within the Evangelical Church of the old - Prussian Union on 13 November that year . The German Christians then gained about a third of all seats in presbyteries and synod s . Kube was elected as one of the presbyters of the congregation of Gethsemane Church in Berlin - Prenzlauer Berg . The presbyters elected him from their midst as synodal into the competent deanery synod ( ; Berlin then comprised 11 deaneries altogether ) , and these synodals again elected him a member of " deanery synodal board " ( ) . When in 1933 the Nazis came to power he remained active in the German Christian movement which sought to " Nazify " the 28 Protestant church bodies in Germany . For 23 July 1933 Hitler ordered an unconstitutional , premature re - election of all presbyters and synodals , with the German Christians now gaining 70 - 80 % of the seats , so Kube could then further advance as head of the Berlin synod of the old - Prussian Church . Following the German conquest of Poland in 1939 his Nazi party domain was extended to include Reichsgau Danzig - West Prussia and Reichsgau Wartheland . Denunciation of Buch . In 1936 it was claimed in an anonymous letter that Party Judge Walter Buch , the father - in - law of Martin Bormann , was married to a half - Jew . In the course of a Gestapo investigation it came to light that the letter had been written by Kube , whom Buch had investigated owing to concerns over his private life and his leadership style in the Gau . Buch saw to it that Kube was removed from all his posts . Only on Hitler ' s orders was he allowed to remain a Gauleiter , albeit without his own Gau . SS career . Kube joined the SS in 1934 and attained the rank of " Rottenführer " ( Private First Class ) . In 1940 he served for a period at the concentration camp at Dachau . In July 1941 , in the wake of the German occupation of the western parts of the Soviet Union , he was appointed Generalkommissar for Weissruthenien ( now known as Belarus ) , with his headquarters in Minsk . In this role Kube oversaw the extermination of the large Jewish population of this area . He was nevertheless outraged by the Slutsk Affair in October 1941 , when " Einsatzgruppen " ( death squads ) of the SS massacred Jews without the authorization from the local Nazi civil administration and Security SS authorities . Non - Jewish local Belarusians were also killed , creating great resentment among the population . Kube wrote in protest to his supervisor and Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler : The town was a picture of horror during the action . With indescribable brutality on the part of both the German police officers and particularly the Lithuanian partisans , the Jewish people , but also among them Belarusians , were taken out of their dwellings and herded together . Everywhere in the town shots were to be heard and in different streets the corpses of shot Jews accumulated . The Belarusians were in greatest distress to free themselves from the encirclement . The letter concluded : I am submitting this report in duplicate so that one copy may be forwarded to the Reich Minister . Peace and order cannot be maintained in Belarus with methods of that sort . To bury seriously wounded people alive who worked their way out of their graves again is such a base and filthy act that the incidents as such should be reported to the Fuehrer and Reichsmarschall . Despite these misgivings , Kube participated in an atrocity on 2 March 1942 in the Minsk ghetto . During a search of the ghetto by German and Belarusian policeman a group of children were seized and thrown into pits of deep sand to die . " At that moment , several SS officers , among them Wilhelm Kube , arrived , whereupon Kube , immaculate in his uniform , threw handfuls of sweets to the shrieking children . All the children perished in the sand . " Assassination . At 1 : 20am on 22 September 1943 Kube was assassinated in his Minsk apartment as per Operation Blow - up . His death was caused by a time bomb hidden in his mattress ; the bomb was placed by Soviet partisan Yelena Mazanik ( 1914 - 1996 ) , a Belarusian woman who had managed to find employment in Kube ' s household as a maid in order to assassinate him . The bomb went off forty minutes early , purportedly due to higher air temperature than that during bomb testing . In retaliation , the SS killed more than 1 , 000 male citizens of Minsk . Despite this , SS leader Heinrich Himmler reportedly said the assassination was a " blessing , " since Kube did not support some of the harsh measures mandated by the SS . Mazanik escaped the reprisals , and carried on with the partisans . She was later awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union . After the war she went on to became deputy director of the Fundamental Library of the Belarusian Academy of Sciences .