Lazar Berenzon

Major-General Lazar Izrailevich Berenzon (; 12 August 1898 – 1956) was a Soviet military commander of the Soviet security services, principally the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, or the NKVD. He served with the state's security organs for almost thirty years, rising to the rank of major general and overseeing the NKVD's financial affairs on major prison labour projects, including the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal and the Baikal–Amur Mainline. Between 1940 and 1941, he was deputy head of the entire Gulag system.

Early life and Russian Civil War Berenzon was born into a middle-class Jewish family in 1898. After graduating from junior high school, he studied at the Law Department of Moscow State University. He joined the Red Army in 1918 and served during the Russian Civil War until 1920 as a private and later platoon commander.

Berenzon was reduced to the reserves in 1946, and retired fully in 1948. He died in Moscow in 1956 and was buried in the Donskoye Cemetery. Over his career he had received the title of 27 February 1933; the Order of the Red Star on 4 August 1933; the Order of the Red Banner on 3 November 1944; the Order of Lenin on 20 February 1945; and the Order of the Red Banner of Labour on 23 February 1945.