Arnold Strippel

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Arnold Strippel
Arnold Strippel

Arnold Georg Strippel (born June 2, 1911 in Unshausen ; † May 1, 1994 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German war criminal, mass murderer and SS-Obersturmführer who worked in concentration camps .

resume

After attending elementary school from 6 to 14 years of age in Unshausen, Strippel completed a three-year apprenticeship as a carpenter in his uncle's construction business, then worked there as a journeyman carpenter and later in his parents' farm. Strippel married in May 1940, and the marriage had at least one son.

Activity as concentration camp guard and protective custody camp leader

In the spring of 1934, out of interest in professional soldiers, he successfully applied for employment with the SS and began his service as a security guard in the Sachsenburg concentration camp the following October . From 1937 Strippel was deployed in the Buchenwald concentration camp , where he quickly rose to become the rapport leader . From March to October 1941 Strippel worked as SS-Stabsscharführer in Natzweiler concentration camp in France and from October 1941 as deputy protective custody camp leader (promotion to SS-Untersturmführer) in Majdanek concentration camp in Poland. After a brief activity in the Ravensbrück concentration camp , from June 1943 he headed the Karlshagen II labor camp, which was subordinate to the Ravensbrück concentration camp, in the experimental series plant of the Peenemünde Army Research Center (from October 1, the series production of the V2 rocket should take place here) and finally became the protective custody camp manager from October 1943 Herzogenbusch concentration camp in Holland appointed. He was then employed at other stations and from May 1944 headed satellite camps of the Neuengamme concentration camp (including in Salzgitter-Drütte ), now with the rank of SS Obersturmführer. From December 1944 to the beginning of May 1945, Strippel was the base manager of all Hamburg sub-camps of the Neuengamme concentration camp and head of the Hammerbrook satellite camp .

post war period

After the end of the war, Strippel went into hiding, initially hiding with a former SS member in the vicinity of Rendsburg and then later working incognito as a farm worker in Hesse. In the autumn of 1948, Strippel, no longer incognito, surrendered to the US Army in the Darmstadt internment camp and was released without hesitation with proper papers. In mid-December 1948, Strippel was recognized by a former Buchenwald prisoner in downtown Frankfurt and then arrested. After being sentenced to multiple life imprisonment by the Frankfurt jury court in June 1949, Strippel began his imprisonment in the Butzbach correctional facility . In the Butzbach prison, Strippel had a preferential position in the prison hospital. After a retrial, the penalty was retrospectively reduced considerably. After his release from prison on April 21, 1969, he received compensation of DM 121,500 and worked as an accountant in a Frankfurt company. Strippel died on May 1, 1994 in Frankfurt am Main.

Crimes and trials

The trial before the Frankfurt jury court began on May 31, 1949, and on June 1 he was sentenced to 21 life-long sentences for collective murder in 21 cases, committed on November 9, 1939 in the Buchenwald concentration camp. In addition, he received an additional ten years' imprisonment for an indefinite number of serious physical injuries, also committed in Buchenwald concentration camp. The shooting of 21 Jewish prisoners on November 9, 1939 was a “retaliatory measure” for the failed bomb attack carried out by Georg Elser on Hitler in the Munich Bürgerbräukeller on November 8, 1939. The prisoners were selected by Strippel and ordered by camp commandant Karl Otto Koch by SS men shot . Strippel was also able to prove numerous mistreatment of concentration camp inmates, including flogging and the notorious tree binding .

Due to a retrial in 1967 regarding the mistreatment of detainees, the ten-year sentence for the serious bodily harm was retrospectively revised to five years. After the arrest warrant was lifted, Strippel was released from the Butzbach prison on April 21, 1969. In a further retrial in relation to the criminal offense of collective murder in 21 cases, the sentence on multiple life imprisonment in 1970 was also reversed retrospectively. Strippel has now been sentenced to 6 years in prison, which had already been served due to the imprisonment in the Butzbach prison. In addition, he received compensation of DM 121,500. The Frankfurt judges saw the involvement in the crime as proven, but Strippel himself was only an assistant.

The third Majdanek trial against 16 SS men began in November 1975 at the Düsseldorf Regional Court . Strippel is said to have initiated the killing of 41 Soviet prisoners of war in the Majdanek concentration and extermination camp on July 14, 1942. He was sentenced to three and a half years imprisonment in 1981 for aiding and abetting murder in 41 cases, which he did not have to serve.

In the early 1980s, the Frankfurt public prosecutor dropped the so-called "bunker drama" without any convictions. On January 15, 1944, SS men, including Arnold Strippel, pressed 74 female prisoners into a 9.5 m² cell in the Vught concentration camp in the Netherlands . Another 17 women were locked up in the neighboring cell. By the morning of January 16, 1944, when the cell door was opened, ten women died from agonizing suffocation.

The murder of 20 Jewish children in the basement of the Bullenhuser Damm school in Hamburg-Rothenburgsort on the night of April 20-21, 1945 caused a public sensation shortly after the end of the war . The children aged five to twelve years, half boys and half Girls were brought from Auschwitz to Neuengamme in November 1944 , requested by the concentration camp doctor Kurt Heissmeyer . After he had already carried out human experiments on Soviet prisoners of war, the children were infected with tuberculosis. Tissue samples were then taken from them to develop a vaccine. In order to get rid of the witnesses to this crime, SS-Obergruppenführer Oswald Pohl from Berlin ordered that the Heißmeyer department be "dissolved". In the school basement, the children were injected with morphine and then - with Arnold Strippel's complicity - they were hanged from heating pipes . Their four carers and over 20 Soviet prisoners of war were also killed with the children. As early as May 3, 1946, some of Strippel's accomplices, who were caught, were sentenced to death and executed in the main Neuengamme trial . Strippel, who was also charged in the proceedings, also known as the Curiohaus trial , denied involvement in this crime during interrogations in May 1965. For lack of evidence, the proceedings against Arnold Strippel were discontinued by the Hamburg public prosecutor in June 1967. The responsible public prosecutor, Helmut Münzberg, saw the crime as a murder that was "insidious" and for "low motives", but not as "cruel" because:

“The investigation did not show with the necessary certainty that the children had to torture themselves excessively before they died. On the contrary, there is some evidence that all the children lost consciousness as soon as they received the first injection and, for this reason, did not notice everything that happened to them. So beyond the annihilation of their lives, no further harm was inflicted on them; in particular, they did not suffer particularly long, mentally or physically. "

And, according to Helmut Münzberg, the murdered Soviet prisoners of war were “lawfully sentenced to death”, so the SS “did not act illegally”.

He was fined against a publication in Stern in 1979, in which Strippel was accused of complicity in the crime. Nevertheless, the relevant investigations against Strippel were resumed and discontinued several times. It was not until 1983 that the Hamburg Justice Senator instructed the public prosecutor to bring charges again. Due to the inability to stand trial, the proceedings against Strippel were finally dropped in 1987.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Peter Koblank: Revenge killings after the Elser assassination attempt , online edition Mythos Elser 2011
  2. Thomas Schattner: Strippel's blood trail through Europe's concentration camps - it began 70 years ago here in Unshausen ( memento of the original from July 23, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 107 kB), in: Breitenau Memorial, circular 24-57, p. 57f. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.gedenkstaette-breitenau.de
  3. Quoted from Hans Canjé: “ But the murder was not cruel ... ( Memento of the original from March 30, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. “In: Ossietzky - two-week publication for politics / culture / economy , No. 23, November 17, 2007 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.sopos.org
  4. ^ Hans Daniel: Two kinds of work-up , young world , July 6, 2011; Günther Schwarberg: My twenty children . Göttingen, Steidl Verlag, 1996.