Alfred Schöneberg

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Alfred Schöneberg (born September 28, 1921 in Bendorf ; † October 7, 2006 ), also spelled Schönenberg or Schoenenberg on various occasions , was an SS-Unterscharfuhrer and a war criminal convicted in Italy. On June 22, 2005, he was sentenced - in absentia - to life imprisonment for the massacre of Sant'Anna di Stazzema with nine other SS men. About 560 civilians were killed in this massacre on August 12, 1944.

Military career

After the beginning of the Second World War , Schöneberg was drafted into the Waffen SS and assigned to the 4th regiment of the SS “Totenkopf” division. This division was headed by Max Simon , also a convicted war criminal. Schöneberg took part in the fighting in northern France and from 1941 in the north of the Soviet Union. Schöneberg was wounded twice in September 1941 and spent a long time in a hospital because of these wounds. In March 1942 he was transferred to Warsaw. On September 30, 1943, 60 other leaders and subordinates of the Warsaw Battalion 60 were transferred to the SS escort battalion. From the SS escort battalion he was assigned to Italy to the 16th SS Panzer Grenadier Division "Reichsführer SS" , which had been formed in autumn 1943 by the Reichsführer SS command staff from the 3rd SS Panzer Division Totenkopf and the SS escort battalion. These two aforementioned units "are considered (according to Martin Cüppers ) as pioneers of the Shoah ", which began the extermination of the Jews in the Soviet Union .

Schöneberg had been assigned from Warsaw to the 2nd Battalion of the SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 35 from SS-Hauptsturmführer Anton Galler . This battalion of the 16th SS Panzer Grenadier Division was instrumental in the massacre of Sant'Anna di Stazzema on August 12, 1944.

When Schöneberg was taken prisoner towards the end of the war, he tried to disguise his SS membership and stated that he belonged to the 364th Infantry Division of the Army.

His last known place of residence was Düsseldorf.

Late legal work-up

Trial in Italy

For decades, the files on the massacre were stored unnoticed in the basement of the military prosecutor's office in Rome . They were found by chance in a cupboard of shame with the doors facing the wall in the mid-1990s . In April 2004 the trial began in the La Spezia Military Tribunal . After more than a year of negotiation, the verdict was announced on June 22, 2005: All ten defendants including Schöneberg Gerhard Sommer , Karl Gropler , Werner Bruß , Heinrich Schendel , Ludwig Heinrich Sonntag , Georg Rauch , Ludwig Göring , Alfred Mathias Concina and Horst Richter were absent Sentenced to life imprisonment.

Investigations in Germany

Since 2002 the public prosecutor's office in Stuttgart has been investigating nine of the people convicted in Italy, plus another five who were not indicted in La Spezia . The proceedings were closed in 2011. A reopening of the investigation was rejected by the Stuttgart public prosecutor.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b 1933-1945 biographies , on Tenhumberg. Retrieved October 2, 2019
  2. ↑ Convicted 60 years later, Die Zeit No. 26/2005
  3. ↑ a b Historical report in the preliminary investigation of the Stuttgart public prosecutor's office against members of the 16th SS-Pz.Gren.Div. "Reichsführer-SS" for murder in Sant'Anna di Stazzema on August 12, 1944, written by Dr. Carlo Gentile (PDF; 1 MB), accessed on October 2, 2019. p. 47
  4. ^ Carlo Gentile : Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS in Partisan War: Italy 1943–1945 . Schöningh, Paderborn 2012, ISBN 978-3-506-76520-8 . P. 200
  5. ^ Elisabeth Zimmermann: German war crimes in Italy, part 1: 60 years since the massacre of Sant 'Anna di Stazzema on September 3, 2004, on WSWS. Retrieved October 3, 2019
  6. ↑ Nazi war crimes: proceedings on SS massacre in Italy discontinued , October 1, 2012, on Spiegel Online . Retrieved October 3, 2019
  7. ↑ Felix Bohr: German Justice rejects the reopening of the investigation , from May 21, 2013, on Spiegel Online . Retrieved October 3, 2019
personal data
SURNAME Schöneberg, Alfred
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schönenberg, Alfred
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS officer and convicted war criminal
DATE OF BIRTH September 28, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Bendorf
DATE OF DEATH October 7, 2006