Alexandru Birkle

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Alexandru Birkle (also: Bircle, * 1896 ; † 1986 in New York ) was a Romanian forensic doctor .

He was a member of two international medical commissions whose members autopsied victims of the Katyn and Vinnitsa massacres at the invitation of the German occupiers in 1943 , and was therefore later persecuted by the Soviet secret police NKVD .

Life

Pre-war period

Birkle's ancestors had emigrated to Bucharest from Austria . In 1916 he volunteered for the Romanian armed forces during World War I and was taken prisoner by Austria .

From 1919 to 1925 he studied in Bucharest medicine and specialized in this case on forensic medicine . After a first job in Brașov , he was appointed to the Forensic Medicine Institute in Bucharest.

In World War II

After his habilitation , he took over the management of the institute in 1942 and was therefore directly subordinate to the Romanian Ministry of Justice .

In April 1943, the Ministry of Justice assigned him to the International Medical Commission , which, at the invitation of Reich Health Leader Leonardo Conti, examined the mass graves of more than 4,000 Polish officers and ensigns in the Katyn forest . He signed the final report edited by the Hungarian medical professor Ferenc Orsós , which dated the mass executions to spring 1940, thus indirectly attributing the perpetrators to the Soviet secret police NKVD .

Besides Orsós, Birkle was the only member of the Katyn Commission who took part in the investigation of mass graves of Ukrainian victims near Vinnitsa in July 1943. Here, too, the international experts came to the conclusion that it was a crime of the NKVD; the mass executions had taken place during the Great Purges of 1937/38.

Because of his participation in both commissions, Birkle was wanted by the NKVD after the Red Army marched into Bucharest at the end of August 1944. He hid with friends for several months. The Romanian secret police Securitate took his wife and daughter for a month in custody , but they did not give the hiding place award.

post war period

In the summer of 1945, his relatives bought a forged passport that he could use to travel to Western Europe . Via France he reached Argentina , from there he moved on to Peru , in Lima he accepted a professorship in forensic medicine. In 1946 a military court sentenced him in absentia "for collaboration " to 20 years in a labor camp .

In early 1952 he testified anonymously behind a screen in front of the Madden Commission , the American House of Representatives ' commission of inquiry into the Katyn massacre. But the Romanian authorities found out about it; a court in Bucharest sentenced his wife and daughter to five years of forced labor each for “collaborating with the public enemy” . After Stalin's death on March 5, 1953, her sentence was halved.

In the summer of 1952 Birkle was seriously injured in a traffic accident in the USA , the cause could not be clarified. After his recovery, he stayed in the United States and ran a practice as a psychiatrist . He died in New York in 1986 without seeing his family again.

After his death, a Securitate employee who posed as his daughter stole his legacy in the USA. The real daughter found out about this when she was able to inspect her Securitate files after the end of the communist system in Romania . Together with her mother, she was rehabilitated by the Romanian authorities in 1992.

literature

  • Ion Constantin: Rolul medicului legist Alexandru Birkle în apărarea si sustinerea adevărului cu privire la masacrele de la Katyń , in: Polska i Rumunia: od historycznego sąsiedztwa do europejskiego partnerstwa; materiały z sympozjum / Polonia si Romania, de la vecinatate istorica la parteneriatul european. Materialele simpozionului. Ed. St. Iachimovschi. Suceava 2009, pp. 259-264.
  • Florian Stanescu: Le médecin légiste Alexandre Bircle: devoir, sacrifices et souffrances sur la vérité sur Katyn , in: Katyn et la Suisse. Experts et expertises médicales dans les crises humanitaires. Ed. D. Debons et al. Geneva 2009, pp. 172-176.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biographical information, unless otherwise stated, according to: Florian Stanescu, Le médecin légiste Alexandre Bircle: devoir, sacrifices et souffrances sur la vérité sur Katyn, in: Katyn et la Suisse. Experts et expertises médicales dans les crises humanitaires. Ed. D. Debons et al. Genève 2009, pp. 172-176.
  2. ↑ Andrzej Przewoźnik / Jolanta Adamska: Katyń. Zbrodnia prawda pamięć. Warsaw 2010, p. 290.
  3. ↑ Claudia Weber : War of the perpetrators. The Katyn mass shootings. Hamburg 2015, p. 215.
  4. ↑ a b ion Constantin: Rolul medicului legist Alexandru Birkle în apararea si sustinerea adevărului cu privire la masacrele de la Katyń , in: Polska i Rumunia: od Historycznego sąsiedztwa do Europejskiego partnerstwa; materiały z sympozjum. Suceava 2009, p. 262.
  5. ↑ Tomasz Wolsza: "To co wiedziałem przekracza swją grozą najśmielsze fantazje". Wojenne i powojenne losy Polaków wizytujących Katyń w 1943 roku. Warsaw 2015, p. 71.
personal data
SURNAME Birkle, Alexandru
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bircle, Alexandru; Birkle, Alexander
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Romanian coroner
DATE OF BIRTH 1896
DATE OF DEATH 1986
Place of death new York