Berthold Heilig

Berthold Heilig (born October 26, 1914 in Heidelberg ; † November 7, 1978 in San Miguel de Tucumán , Argentina , by suicide ) was a senior German NSDAP functionary, most recently NSDAP district leader in Braunschweig and district inspector for the state of Braunschweig and deputy of Hartmann Lauterbacher , the Gauleiter of the South Hanover-Braunschweig district .

Early years

Heilig was born as the third child of the textile merchant Georg Heilig and his wife Elise Marie, b. Bringsauf, born. He had two sisters, one of whom was named Annemarie. He graduated from elementary school in 1931 with secondary school leaving certificate . From 1931 to 1933 a commercial apprenticeship followed in Bad Hersfeld .

SA and NSDAP member

As early as 1931, at the age of 17, Heilig joined the SA and NSDAP (membership number 669.310). In 1932 he became leader of the Hitler Youth (HJ), from 1934 he worked full-time for the HJ. In May of the same year, Heilig became HJ adjutant to Karl Weinrich , the Gauleiter of the Gaus Kurhessen . Between October 1936 and December 1940, Heilig completed training as a junior leader on the staff of the Führer’s deputy in Munich, which was led by Rudolf Hess .

In 1938 he married Liselotte Stolz († 1995) from Kassel , with whom he had three daughters: Annegret (1939–1990), Hannelore (* 1941) and Karin (* 1943).

Second World War

Heilig took part in the French campaign from September 1939 to September 1940 during the Second World War. From January 1942 to January 1943 he took part in the war against the Soviet Union and received both the Iron Cross II. And I. Class. Because of an injury, he retired from active military service. After his recovery he was district leader in Hildesheim from March 1943 to March 1944 , before finally becoming district leader in Braunschweig (city and country) and deputy district leader.

NSDAP district leader in Braunschweig

At the age of 29, Heilig was appointed district leader and district inspector for Braunschweig on March 19, 1944, making him the highest-ranking Nazi functionary in the city. He held this position until the end of the war. He was described by numerous contemporary witnesses as “fanatical”, “radical”, “unpredictable” and “unscrupulous”. In November 1944, for example, in the “Maternity Home for Eastern Workers ”, which was located on Broitzemer Strasse (today Münchenstrasse), he ordered the further administration of milk to infants and toddlers of the forced laborers employed in the Brunswick companies to be stopped. This made the catastrophic nutritional situation in the home even worse. During the period in which the maternity hospital was in existence from May 1943 until the end of the war, at least 365 infants and young children died.

Last days of the war in Braunschweig

In the last weeks of the war Heilig proved to be one of the most unscrupulous representatives of the collapsing Nazi regime: In slogans he let it be known that "to the last drop of blood" and "to the last cartridge" had to be fought.

On April 6, 1945, Heilig was commissioned by Gauleiter Hartmann Lauterbacher to leave Braunschweig in order to organize the defense of the last retreat of the German armed forces, the " Harz Fortress ", by SA and Volkssturm . On the same day the Nazi propaganda organ Braunschweiger Tageszeitung published the article “Lieber tot als Sklav!”, In which Lauterbacher incited the population to fanatical resistance against the approaching US troops .

On the evening of April 10, 1945, Heilig, who had been in the Harz for a few days, learned by telephone that Braunschweig, which had recently been surrounded by US troops, was to be surrendered to them without a fight. He immediately made his way to Brunswick, where he on 11 April, at night to 2:30 in the NS-district command post in Nußberg bunker arrived. His first official act was to appoint the city of Braunschweig a "fortress". In addition, Heilig threatened to have “traitors” and “apostates” shot dead. B. happened with District Administrator Friedrich Bergmann , who refused to comply with the order to blow up all bridges over the Mittelland Canal and over the Oker and all motorway bridges. Bergmann had tried in vain after the refusal suicide to commit. Heilig had the seriously injured man shot by the SA. In addition, he had "Einsatzkommandos" formed, which acted against looters and defeatists and murdered numerous public officials at the "last minute" (see final phase crimes ).

At around 2:00 p.m. Heilig received the order to destroy the files of the NSDAP district leadership and to have the provisional service building, the Veltheimsche Haus from 1573, on Burgplatz destroyed (the original district leadership in the "Adolf Hitler House" on Wolfenbütteler Road was already bombed). The fire started by SA men was quickly extinguished by the Braunschweig population and the historic building was saved as one of the few half-timbered buildings in Braunschweig.

At around 6:00 p.m., several of the Nazi leaders who were still in Braunschweig met for the last time, including Heilig, the Braunschweig combat commandant Lieutenant General Karl Veith and Prime Minister Dietrich Klagges . At this meeting, Heilig did not want to hear of a peaceful surrender of the city. For the last time, on April 11, 1945 - just a few hours before the handover of Braunschweig to the troops of the 30th US Infantry Division on April 12 - he made a call to the Braunschweig population by radio to make them the last Incite resistance and proclaim the toughest crackdown on " saboteurs ". Finally, he ordered the demolition of industrial and utility works as well as various bridges in Braunschweig. However, as the majority of those who were loyal to the regime gradually waned, this last order was not implemented.

Escape, arrest and renewed escape

Contrary to his own slogans to hold out “the city to the last man”, Heilig did the same as his superior, Gauleiter Lauterbacher, and fled from the approaching US division. He fled the city in the direction of Berlin on April 11 between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. Shortly afterwards, at 2:59 a.m. on Thursday, April 12, 1945, Braunschweig was handed over to the US troops without a fight.

On his escape from the Allies, Heilig was taken prisoner by the Soviets , from which he was able to flee very soon. In the summer of 1945 he returned to Braunschweig and was arrested on September 14th of that year by the British military police in Braunschweig.

Trial and death sentence

Because murder of District Bergmann had prosecutor Braunschweig an arrest warrant issued in the prison because of its holy on March 28, 1946 Rennelberg was transferred. On June 12, 1947, he was sentenced to death by the Braunschweig Regional Court . The Supreme Court for the British Zone of Occupation in Cologne upheld this judgment on September 28, 1948. It was the only act that could be proven Heilig. On May 27, 1948, the British military tribunal rejected a further conviction for the incidents in the Broitzemer Strasse maternity hospital on the grounds that Heilig had already been sentenced to death.

Escape with helpers

Until the execution of the sentence, Heilig was imprisoned on the "death row" of the prison in Wolfenbüttel . However, it could not be carried out: On the morning of December 10, 1948, Heilig managed to escape with the help of a British sergeant (lover and later husband of Heilig's former secretary) and some former SA men.

The rat line

Heilig's escape was carefully planned by his wife and his former secretary, using Nazi escape aid organizations such as “ Stille Hilfe ” and Hans-Ulrich Rudel 's “Kameradenhilfswerk” . Heilig first fled to southern Germany and from there, wearing a monk's robe and disguised as "Brother Hans", he arrived with the help of numerous clergymen. B. Leopold von Gumppenberg (1901–1982), from monastery to monastery to Rome . There he found shelter at the instigation of the Catholic Austrian Bishop Alois Hudal in the seminary Collegio Teutonico di Santa Maria dell'Anima . Rudel's "Kameradenhilfswerk" and the organization of former SS members ("ODESSA") finally provided him with the money for new papers and thus a new identity and thus enabled him in 1951 to use the " rat line " organized by the Croatian Franciscan clergyman Krunoslav Draganović To flee Europe to Argentina , where he arrived in Buenos Aires on January 17, 1951 .

Life and death in Argentina

False identity

In Rome, Heilig had acquired the new identity of "Hans Richwitz", with "Richwitz" being the name of a comrade missing in Russia. After being in Argentina for a few weeks, he changed his name to "Juan Richwitz". Heilig's wife followed him with their three daughters on March 25, 1953, but in the meantime he had a lover, Irmgard Lehder, who in turn had two children, Roswitha and Frank. As a result, his wife and children traveled back to Germany only a few months later, on December 21, 1953, while Heilig stayed in Argentina.

In the hope that they could help him professionally and socially, Heilig tried to establish contacts with other Nazi criminals in South America. B. to Ludolf-Hermann von Alvensleben and Eduard Roschmann , but this didn't work. He often changed occupations, none of which brought the long-term success that he longed for. For a while he worked for the company Compañía Argentina para Proyectos y Realizaciones Industriales - Fuldner y Cía , or "Capri" for short, which had been founded by the former SS officer Horst Carlos Fuldner to provide an income for refugee Nazis. The company employed up to 400 people around 1955 (300 of whom were Nazis who had fled). One of Heilig's colleagues was Adolf Eichmann , a former SS-Obersturmbannführer and head of division in the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA).

Prosecution

The Federal Criminal Police Office had launched a search for Heilig via Interpol in 1959 . An extradition request from Germany to Argentina was rejected in 1960. Ever since Eichmann was tracked down by the Israeli secret service Mossad in Argentina in 1960 and kidnapped to Israel (where he was sentenced to death and executed), Heilig lived in constant fear of discovery, also because Argentine newspapers published a “list of wanted Nazi criminals” , on which "Juan Richwitz" was written. Heilig went into hiding for a while and returned when he ran out of money.

Holy life was poor, as all professional endeavors sooner or later ended in failure, among other things he ran an angora rabbit farm with his partner for a while. The breed went bankrupt after 15 years. Heilig then plunged once more into a deep crisis and attempted suicide. His stepdaughter later characterized him as being “ schizophrenic ” during this time and as a “ quarter drunk ”. In the early 1970s he managed one last time to achieve professional and social success as a kind of "event manager", but alcoholism destroyed that too.

On November 7, 1978, Berthold Heilig fell to his death on the 10th floor of a hotel in Tucuman .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Eckhard Schimpf: Holy. The escape of the Braunschweig Nazi leader on the Vatican route to South America. Braunschweig 2005, p. 13.
2. ↑ Eckhard Schimpf: Holy. The escape of the Braunschweig Nazi leader on the Vatican route to South America. Braunschweig 2005, p. 126.
3. ↑ Eckhard Schimpf: Holy. The escape of the Braunschweig Nazi leader on the Vatican route to South America. Braunschweig 2005, p. 48.
4. ↑ Eckhard Schimpf: Holy. The escape of the Braunschweig Nazi leader on the Vatican route to South America. Braunschweig 2005, p. 19f.
5. ↑ Horst-Rüdiger Jarck, Gerhard Schildt (Ed.): Braunschweigische Landesgeschichte. A region looking back over the millennia. Braunschweig 2000, p. 1022.
6. ↑ Horst-Rüdiger Jarck, Gerhard Schildt (Ed.): Braunschweigische Landesgeschichte. A region looking back over the millennia. Braunschweig 2000, p. 1032.
7. ↑ Braunschweiger Zeitung (ed.): End of the war. Braunschweig 2005, p. 66.
8. ↑ Burchardt Warnecke: The Braunschweiger Nussberg and its surroundings. A piece of urban history from the east of the city of Braunschweig , 6th expanded edition, Braunschweig 2002, p. 81.
9. ↑ Eckhard Schimpf: Holy. The escape of the Braunschweig Nazi leader on the Vatican route to South America. Braunschweig 2005, p. 28f.
10. ↑ Braunschweiger Zeitung (ed.): End of the war. Braunschweig 2005, p. 68.
11. ^ LG Braunschweig, June 12, 1947 . In: Justice and Nazi crimes . Collection of German criminal judgments for Nazi homicidal crimes 1945–1966, Vol. I, edited by Adelheid L. Rüter-Ehlermann, CF Rüter . Amsterdam: University Press, 1968, No. 21, pp. 431–468 Shooting of the district administrator and district leader Bergmann, who attempted suicide towards the end of the war and started fire in the building of the Braunschweig district administration to destroy documents and buildings ( Memento des Originals from March 14, 2016 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. 
12. ↑ Eckhard Schimpf: Holy. The escape of the Braunschweig Nazi leader on the Vatican route to South America. Braunschweig 2005, p. 60.
13. ↑ Eckhard Schimpf: Holy. The escape of the Braunschweig Nazi leader on the Vatican route to South America. Braunschweig 2005, p. 20.
14. ↑ Eckhard Schimpf: Holy. The escape of the Braunschweig Nazi leader on the Vatican route to South America. Braunschweig 2005, p. 85f.
15. ↑ Eckhard Schimpf: Holy. The escape of the Braunschweig Nazi leader on the Vatican route to South America. Braunschweig 2005, p. 99.
16. ↑ Eckhard Schimpf: Holy. The escape of the Braunschweig Nazi leader on the Vatican route to South America. Braunschweig 2005, p. 105f.
17. ↑ Eckhard Schimpf: Holy. The escape of the Braunschweig Nazi leader on the Vatican route to South America. Braunschweig 2005, p. 110f.
18. ↑ Eckhard Schimpf: Holy. The escape of the Braunschweig Nazi leader on the Vatican route to South America. Braunschweig 2005, p. 117.
19. ↑ Eckhard Schimpf: Holy. The escape of the Braunschweig Nazi leader on the Vatican route to South America. Braunschweig 2005, p. 120f.
20. ↑ Eckhard Schimpf: Holy. The escape of the Braunschweig Nazi leader on the Vatican route to South America. Braunschweig 2005, p. 124.

literature

• Braunschweiger Zeitung (ed.): End of the war. Braunschweig 2005
• Horst-Rüdiger Jarck , Gerhard Schildt (ed.): The Braunschweigische Landesgeschichte. A region looking back over the millennia . 2nd Edition. Appelhans Verlag, Braunschweig 2001, ISBN 3-930292-28-9 .
• Horst-Rüdiger Jarck, Günter Scheel (Ed.): Braunschweigisches Biographisches Lexikon. 19th and 20th centuries , Hannover 1996
• Helmut Kramer (ed.): Braunschweig under the swastika. Braunschweig 1981
• Karl-Joachim Krause: Braunschweig between war and peace. The events before and after the city's surrender on April 12, 1945. Braunschweig 1994
• Michael Rademacher: Handbook of the NSDAP district, 1928–1945. The officials of the NSDAP and their organizations at Gau and district level in Germany and Austria as well as in the Reichsgau Gdansk-West Prussia, Sudetenland and Wartheland , Vechta, self-published 2000
• Eckhard Schimpf : Holy. The escape of the Braunschweig Nazi leader on the Vatican route to South America. Braunschweig 2005
• Gerald Steinacher : Nazis on the run. How war criminals escaped overseas via Italy , StudienVerlag, Innsbruck, Vienna, Bozen 2008, ISBN 978-3-7065-4026-1
• Bernhild Vögel: Maternity home for Eastern workers. Braunschweig, Broitzemer Straße 200 , Hamburg: Hamburg Foundation for Social History of the 20th Century 1989 (1999. Small historical library. 3)

Web links

• Literature by and about Berthold Heilig in the catalog of the German National Library
• Photo by Berthold Heilig