Bruno Nice

Bruno Nette (born December 22, 1887 in Eisleben ; † June 27, 1960 in Bremen ) was a German police officer and from 1941 to 1945 Jewish clerk for the Gestapo in Bremen at the time of National Socialism .

resume

Shortly before the First World War, Bruno Nette joined the Bremen Police . He was last deployed on the Eastern Front with the Secret Field Police , a kind of intelligence service of the Imperial Army . He joined the right-wing conservative " Kyffhäuserbund der Deutschen Landes-Krieger-Associations". After the First World War , Nette became a policeman again and in 1920 moved to the Bremen police force . On May 1, 1937, he became a member of the NSDAP and at the same time of the National Socialist People's Welfare (NSV) . In Vegesack he took part in the persecution of the Jews in his neighborhood as a criminal investigator on behalf of the Gestapo. He was indirectly involved in the Reichspogromnacht on November 9 and 10, 1938. Before the appeal chamber he declared in 1949: “In 1938 I was in Vegesack during the pogrom against the Jews. I was called at night and they told me that the SA people were breaking the windows of the Jews. "

In 1940, Nette was transferred to the Gestapo in Bremen at his own request, initially to the “Sabotage and Counter-Espionage” department. From 1941 on, Nette was a “Jewish clerk” for the Gestapo in Bremen. In this function he was one of those responsible for the deportation and murder of hundreds of Jews in Bremen and in the administrative district of Stade .

On April 29, 1945, Bruno Nette was arrested after the British army marched into Bremen and interned in a camp, first in Fallingbostel and then in the Riespott internment camp on the grounds of the North German hut . In March 1949, the 1st Spruchkammer in Bremen classified the Jewish clerk in the context of denazification as "incriminated". He could leave the courtroom as a free man. He appealed, describing himself as a "Jew friend". On September 20, 1949, Nette was classified only as a "minor offender" in the appeal process. Most of his pension entitlements were retained. With the “Law Concluding Political Liberation” in Bremen (April 4, 1950), he was declared a “follower” on June 23, 1950. He died in Bremen in 1960.

Party career

In 1936, Bruno Nette applied for membership in the NSDAP. Due to a general ban on membership in May 1933, no new members could be accepted beforehand. In Bremen, including Nette, 700 other Bremen police officers applied for membership. At the same time, Nette applied for admission to the National Socialist People's Welfare (NSV). This welfare organization of the NSDAP had taken on welfare tasks that were previously often carried out by church organizations. Also in 1936, Bruno Nette was transferred to the Bremen exclave Vegesack. There he was the sole detective and provided administrative assistance to the Bremen Gestapo.

On September 26, 1938, Adolf Hitler awarded "in the name of the German people to the criminal district secretary Bruno Nette, Vegesack, the first-level police service award in recognition of 25 years of loyal service in the police".

Participation in Nazi crimes according to own statement

In 1947, Nette had to comment on his responsibility before the Spruchkammer . He explained: “When I was employed as a Jewish clerk, the evacuation of around 570 Jews from Bremen to Minsk was in progress. I had to finish the preparations for this, which my predecessor had started. (...) In addition, my main work as a Jew clerk was to secure the property left behind by the Jews, such as land, mortgages, securities, bank accounts, life insurance, passage credits and more. ”The job of the Jew clerk was to compile the lists for the deportations. “In June 1942 the second transport to Theresienstadt was put together for evacuation. (...) There were about 300 people in total. The technical implementation was the same as in 1941. I assume that these Jews did not fare badly either. (…) The third and last action was carried out in 1944/45. All Jews able to work should go to Theresienstadt for work. There were still around 165 Jews in total ”(in Bremen). He did not want to have known anything about the fate of the deported Jews until the very end: "I must have been surprised that the ... evacuated Jews never wrote home."

The example of the persecution of the Neitzel-Neumann family

Even as a police officer in Vegesack, Bruno Nette was very eager to research the Jewish descent of his fellow citizens. Several members of the Neitzel-Neumann family were deported and murdered during the Nazi era . The well-documented case of the Neitzel-Neumann family shows that Nette was an anti-Semitic perpetrator of convictions even before he was appointed "Jewish clerk".

According to Johanne Winter's testimony, Nette has been trying to convict his neighbor Louis as a "valid Jew" since 1939, during his time as a criminal investigation officer. After the Nuremberg Laws were passed (1935), they were “ half-Jews ” who practiced the “Mosaic religion”. “When my eldest half-brother Arthur Neumann came to the assembly point of the transport to Minsk,” reported Johanne Winter, “Nette naturally wanted to know where Louis Neumann-Neitzel was, whether he had not started, etc. My oldest brother wanted to convince Nice that Louis , who is not a Jew, is out of the question for the transport. Nett only said: 'I know better, we'll get it too.' ”On June 21, 1942, Louis Neitzel-Neumann was deported to Theresienstadt . When he then had to go to Auschwitz , he said: “Don't forget Nette,” reported Johanne Winter in 1948. He did not return from the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Nice also tried to squeeze out corresponding incriminating statements from his brother Bruno Neumann-Neitzel. According to Johanne Winter, Nette hit him in the face and said: “You dog, you know exactly what I want to know, he was the prayer leader. I'll take you to where I want you to go. ”In both cases, the point was to get the statement that Neitzel-Neumann's father was a“ prayer leader ”, that is, a Jew to be deported. On February 13, 1945, Bruno Neumann-Neitzel, like his sisters, had to climb the last Bremer cattle wagons to Theresienstadt under the watchful eye of Bruno Nice.

Helene Peter, another sister of Louis and Bruno Neitzel-Neumann, explained in 1948: “We all had the impression that it was a sport to hunt my brothers Bruno and Louis like a hunter hunting game. (...) Nette made life hell for all of us. If only he had wanted everything could have been very different, but the documents procured about my father's ancestry were simply not authoritative for him. He has my brother on his conscience. "

Even Carl Katz , Chairman of the Jewish community in Bremen, declared in 1948: ". Nice was and sense of conviction Jews opponent has edited his post accordingly" A systematic reconstruction work by Nice as Jews clerk is not possible because the Bremer Gestapo in March 1945, almost burned all of her files.

Memory culture of the grandchildren

Bernhard Nette belongs to the "generation of grandchildren" of the Nazi perpetrators who were born immediately after the Second World War . Little was said in his family about the activities of the Jewish secretary Bruno Nette - he only knew from hints that there were family members who accepted the trivializing self-portrayal of his grandfather and others who despised him for his Gestapo work.

Until 1987, the grandson Bernhard Nette did not ask too much. "This certain silence was the socio-psychologically and politically necessary medium for the transformation of our post-war population into civil society in the Federal Republic of Germany", this is how Hermann Lübbe interpreted this refusal to mourn.

The rebellious 1968 generation made the issue of Nazi criminals in the Federal Republican society their generational issue, but often avoided arguments in their own families. The grandson Bernhard Nette also extended the taboo of Nazi perpetrators that was dominant in the 1950s within the family.

In 1987, according to his own account, he came across the remark in the book Bremen in the Third Reich by chance that his grandfather, the Gestapo Jewish advisor , was a Nazi perpetrator, "who thought humane and did his best for many Jews". He didn't want to believe that. Only then did the “return of memory” begin for grandson Bernhard Nette and, in the sense of Hannah Arendt, he tried to consciously carry and understand “the burden that our century has placed upon us”.

Only in 2002, shortly before the death of his 80-year-old father Günther Nette, did he ask him about his grandfather. He was full of understanding for Bruno Nette: “A Nazi? No, it wasn't. What he did, he had to do. My father was head of the Secret State Police in Vegesack, then head of the Jewish department in Bremen. Although he played skat with the Jews and prevented the worst. "

Bernhard Nette didn't believe that, he mistrusted the romanticizing family memories and began studying the files. At night he got panic attacks. “Why are you doing this to yourself”, my wife asked me at the breakfast table, “your grandfather was a Nazi criminal, wasn't he? What more do you want to know? "

In 15 years of part-time research and processing, the book "Vergesst ja Nette nicht" was created as an outstanding document of the West German culture of remembrance.

literature

• Bernhard Nette: Don't forget Nette! The Bremen police officer and Jewish officer Bruno Nette. VSA-Verlag , Hamburg 2017, ISBN 978-3-89965-763-0 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Appeals Chamber IV Bremen, minutes of the public meeting on September 20, 1949. Bremen State Archives, Bruno Nette files, 1887/12/22.
2. ↑ The 'Riespott' / Osterort is a former forced labor camp which, like the Farge camp, belonged to the Neuengamme concentration camp from 1943 to 1945. Cf. Eike Hemmer, Robert Milbradt: 'Strolling' threatens Gestapo detention . Edition Temmen, Bremen 2007, ISBN 978-3-86108-591-1 , p. 75.
3. ^ Statement by Bruno Nette from May 7, 1947. Bremen State Archives, Bruno Nette files, 1887/12/22.
4. ↑ Nette 2017, p. 96ff.
5. ↑ Johanne Winter, b. Neumann-Neitzel, written testimony from February 5, 1948. Bremen State Archives, 4, 66-I, Bruno Nette files, 1887/12/22, sheet 92.
6. ↑ Nette 2017, p. 100.
7. ↑ Helene Peter, testimony on June 1, 1948. Bremen State Archives, 4, 66-1, Bruno Nette files, 1887/12/22.
8. ↑ Carl Katz: Statement of October 2, 1948. Bremen State Archives, 4. 66-1, Bruno Nette file, 1887/12/22, sheet 160.
9. ↑ Hermann Lübbe, National Socialism in the Political Consciousness of the Present , in Germany's Path to Dictatorship , ed. v. Martin Broszat u. a., Berlin 1983, 8.334. See also: ders., From party comrades to federal citizens , Munich 2008.
10. ↑ Götz Aly: Our fight: 1968 - an irritated look back . Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-596-17778-3 .
11. ^ Inge Marßolek , René Ott, Peter Brandt : Bremen in the Third Reich . Adjustment, resistance, persecution. Schünemann, Bremen 1986, ISBN 3-7961-1765-1 .
12. ↑ Aleida Assmann: The European dream. Four lessons from history . 2018 Verlag CHBeck, Munich 2018, ISBN 978-3-406-73380-2 , p. 38ff.