Albert Rapp

Albert Rapp (born November 16, 1908 in Schorndorf ; † September 18, 1975 in Hohenasperg ) was a German lawyer and SS-Obersturmbannführer . From 1940 Rapp was head of the " Umwandererzentralstelle " in Poznan and later head of Sonderkommando 7a in the Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and the SD .

Early years

Rapp completed secondary and latin school in his hometown, which he completed in 1924 with the upper secondary qualification. He then did internships in the building trade and continued his education at the higher building school in Stuttgart, which he left in 1926 as a construction technician. At the secondary school in Schwabisch Gmund gained Rapp 1928, the High School and then studied until 1933 at the universities of Munich and Tübingen Law . After his legal clerkship, he passed the assessor examination in 1936.

Rapp was already politically active in a right-wing radical youth group during his youth and in 1925 he joined the National Socialist Freedom Movement in Württemberg and the Bund Oberland . He became a member of the NSDAP ( membership number 774.433) in December 1931 and joined the SA in October 1932. Even during his studies in Tübingen, Rapp had taken part in parades and battles with Nazi-minded fellow students. a. Erich Ehrlinger , Martin Sandberger and Eugen Steimle .

After completing his legal clerkship in 1936 with the assessor exam, Rapp became a full-time consultant in Karlsruhe at the SD subsection in Baden. At the same time he became a member of the SD and switched from the SA to the SS (SS no. 280.341). In 1937, Rapp was transferred to the SD Upper Section East under Erich Naumann as the main department head . At the beginning of 1939, Rapp acted as a staff leader in the Central Department II / 2 in the SD main office in Berlin .

Second World War

Deportation of Poles and Jews from the Reichsgau Wartheland

After the beginning of the Second World War , Rapp became SD leader in Einsatzgruppe VI under Erich Naumann in the course of the attack on Poland . From Posen he then headed the SD-Leitabschnitt and was subordinate to the Higher SS and Police Leader Warthegau Wilhelm Koppe . In this function he directed the deportation of Jews from the Warthegau to the Generalgouvernement . According to him, around 80,000 people were resettled in November / December 1939. From April 1940 he headed the SD section south in Munich . With the SS Rapp rose to SS-Obersturmbannführer in January 1941.

Between mid-February 1942 and the end of January 1943, Rapp was the leader of Sonderkommando 7a in Einsatzgruppe B, where he directed the mass shooting of Jews. Due to an injury, Rapp then became inspector of the Security Police and the SD (IdS) in Braunschweig and had to undergo SS disciplinary proceedings in 1943. The trigger for this procedure were gunshots that Rapp had fired at an SS accommodation while he was drunk when he was on duty in Russia. Because of the danger to members of the commando, Rapp was banned from going out for 14 days. However, due to the war, he did not have to serve this sentence. From the beginning of November 1944 until the spring of 1945 Rapp was employed as a group leader in Hauptamt VI C of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) and became the last head of the Zeppelin company . In the course of the Battle of Berlin , Rapp and other RSHA staff, led by Otto Ohlendorf, left for Flensburg .

post war period

After the end of the war , Rapp went into hiding with his secretary and put papers on the false name Alfred Ruppert. He kept in touch with his wife through his secretary. At first, Rapp worked as a casual worker in agriculture in a village in Lower Saxony. From 1949 he worked as a freelancer in a sales department for trade magazines and from 1950 worked successfully for a publishing house in Essen . He became editor of the magazine Der Innenarchitekt, which he founded, and was a press officer at the Association of German Architects and a member of the board there.

process

In a preliminary investigation against a former administrative manager of the SK 7a, the investigating public prosecutor from the central office of the state justice administrations came across in 1960 u. a. also on his boss at the time, Rapp, who has now also been investigated. On February 21, 1961, Rapp was arrested and initially taken into custody. Due to the overwhelming evidence against him, Rapp tried to suicide in the spring of 1963 , but survived. The main hearing in the trial against Rapp opened on October 12, 1964. Against Rapp, former members of the SK 7a who had come into the focus of the judiciary testified that “Rapp's arrival caused the mass shootings in the winter of 1942”. The jury court at the Essen regional court sentenced Rapp to life imprisonment on March 29, 1965, on the basis of the charge of collective murder for low motives of at least 1,180 people. The jury found Rapp's crimes that these acts, carried out "on his own initiative" and with "zeal", fulfilled all criteria for murder and that he himself was not an assistant but an accomplice. A request for revision by Rapp's defense lawyer was rejected by the Federal Court of Justice on July 1, 1966. In 1975 he died in custody.

literature

• Kerstin Freudiger: The legal processing of Nazi crimes . Mohr-Siebeck , Tübingen 2002. ISBN 3-16-147687-5 .
• Klaus-Michael Mallmann : Life sentence. How the chain of evidence was forged against Albert Rapp . In: Klaus-Michael Mallmann / Andrej Angrick (ed.): The Gestapo after 1945. Careers, conflicts. Constructions. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft WBG, Darmstadt 2009, ISBN 978-3-534-20673-5 , pp. 255-269.
• Christian Ingrao : Hitler's Elite. The pioneers of the National Socialist mass murder. Translated by Enrico Heinemann & Ursel Schäfer. Propylaeen, Berlin 2012 ISBN 9783549074206 ; again Federal Agency for Civic Education BpB, Bonn 2012 ISBN 9783838902579 (first Paris 2010).
• LG Essen, March 29, 1965 . In: Justice and Nazi crimes . Collection of German convictions for Nazi homicidal crimes 1945–1966, Vol. XX, edited by Irene Sagel-Grande, HH Fuchs, CF Rüter . Amsterdam: University Press, 1979, No. 588, pp. 715–815 Subject matter of the proceedings: At least 24 mass shootings of Jews, Gypsies, suspected partisan civilians, communists, prisoners of war and the mentally ill who had previously been able to evade Einsatzkommando 8, which was wandering around Klincy and the surrounding area

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Klaus-Michael Mallmann: Lifelong. How the chain of evidence was forged against Albert Rapp . In: Klaus-Michael Mallmann / Andrey Angrick (eds.): The Gestapo after 1945. Careers, conflicts. Constructions. , Darmstadt 2009, p. 256.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Albert Rapp on http://www.dws-xip.pl/
3. ↑ ^{a b} Kerstin Freudiger: The legal processing of Nazi crimes , Tübingen 2002, 74 f.
4. ↑ ^{a b} Kerstin Freudiger: The legal processing of Nazi crimes , Tübingen 2002, 75
5. ^ ^{A b} Klaus-Michael Mallmann: Lifelong. How the chain of evidence was forged against Albert Rapp . In: Klaus-Michael Mallmann / Andrey Angrick (eds.): The Gestapo after 1945. Careers, conflicts. Constructions. , Darmstadt 2009, pp. 258f.
6. ↑ Klaus-Michael Mallmann: Life sentence. How the chain of evidence was forged against Albert Rapp . In: Klaus-Michael Mallmann / Andrey Angrick (eds.): The Gestapo after 1945. Careers, conflicts. Constructions. , Darmstadt 2009, pp. 259ff.
7. ↑ Klaus-Michael Mallmann: Life sentence. How the chain of evidence was forged against Albert Rapp . In: Klaus-Michael Mallmann / Andrey Angrick (eds.): The Gestapo after 1945. Careers, conflicts. Constructions. , Darmstadt 2009, p. 265.
8. ↑ Klaus-Michael Mallmann: Life sentence. How the chain of evidence was forged against Albert Rapp . In: Klaus-Michael Mallmann / Andrey Angrick (eds.): The Gestapo after 1945. Careers, conflicts. Constructions. , Darmstadt 2009, p. 263.
9. ↑ Klaus-Michael Mallmann: Life sentence. How the chain of evidence was forged against Albert Rapp . In: Klaus-Michael Mallmann / Andrey Angrick (eds.): The Gestapo after 1945. Careers, conflicts. Constructions. , Darmstadt 2009, p. 255.