Eduard Michael

This article deals with the lawyer and criminalist Eduard Michael. For the forester see Eduard von Michael ; on the composer see Edward Salim Michael .

Eduard Michael born when Edward Michalski , (* 13. May 1902 , † 1987 ) was a German lawyer, detective and hauptsturmführer which the Nazis during the war in 1939, the / SS Einsatzgruppe 5 II belonged to 1942 as Head of Service of the security police in Czestochowa was involved in the deportation of around 40,000 Jews to the Treblinka extermination camp . In the post-war period, he worked between 1952 and 1959 as head of administration and personnel at the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA).

Life

time of the nationalsocialism

Eduard Michael graduated from law . In August 1934 he was appointed detective commissioner at the Gleiwitz police headquarters . After the handover of power to the National Socialists , he joined the SA in June 1933 and the NSDAP at the beginning of May 1937 ( membership number 4,727,901). At an unknown point in time, he had his maiden name Michalski translated into Michael.

After the start of the Second World War in 1939 he was a member of SS- Einsatzkommando 5 / II, headed by SS-Obersturmbannführer Robert Schefe , which committed Nazi crimes in Poland by liquidating members of the Polish intelligentsia .

Between the end of 1941 and January 1945 he was employed by the Commander of the Security Police (KdS) in Radom and Krakow , and at times also in the Czestochowa branch. According to his own statement, Michael worked in 1942 as the head of the forensic department at the Institute for Forensic Medicine and Criminal Statistics in Cracow.

As the head of the Czestochowa field office of the KdS Radom, Michael arrested Jews suspected of Bolshevism and had them sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp in a so-called “communist action” at the end of April , before he took part in the deportation of 40,000 Jews from the Jewish ghetto there in September and October 1942 who were taken to the Treblinka extermination camp and murdered there. The action was prepared in several official meetings, which were led by the SS and Police Leader Herbert Böttcher "in the presence of the agency chief Michael" and in which the exact "procedure and all details of the liquidation of the 'Great Ghetto'" were planned.

post war period

In the post-war period, Michael was promoted to head of administration and personnel at the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) in 1952. The circumstances of his appointment as head of personnel, "which must have been made through the Federal Ministry of the Interior ", cannot be clarified using the files at hand. He was promoted to the government chief criminal officer. Michael received the nickname Pistolenede in the BKA , because in addition to his service weapon he always carried a private pistol. Schenk characterizes him as a rigidly correct, closed and humorless colleague. During his tenure, which lasted until 1959, during which he was responsible for recruiting staff at the BKA, former SS members who were severely exposed were admitted to the BKA. For example, he supported the recruitment and employment of the former SS-Hauptsturmführer Gerhard Freitag , who as adjutant of the leader of SS-Einsatzkommando 2 of Einsatzgruppe A, Rudolf Batz , committed the most serious mass crimes after the attack by the Wehrmacht on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 how the shooting of thousands of Jewish children, women and men, was implicated by not even asking about Friday's membership in an SS Einsatzgruppe during their recruitment process. As a retiree, Michael justified himself in 1969 by admitting that it was not necessary to ask suitable candidates about previous activities about their possible membership of "security police commands" because there "was no corresponding question on the form". The group of historians set up by the BKA to come to terms with their history, led by Patrick Wagner, judges:

"Michael's career makes it clear: in the fifties, filling the position of head of administration, as the person responsible for recruiting applicants, was a major problem in the Federal Criminal Police Office."

In the 1970s, after preliminary investigations by the Central Office in Ludwigsburg, the Wiesbaden public prosecutor's office carried out investigations into "involvement in Nazi crimes of the Sipo branch in Czestochowa". On the one hand, he was accused of participating in the preparations for the deportation of 40,000 Jews to Treblinka. Michael stated that he did not know about their imminent extermination, but only heard that "the Jews would come to Eastern Poland". On the other hand, he was accused of having passed an order from SS and Police Leader Böttcher to subordinates in his office, which demanded the shooting of Jews unable to walk in their apartments. There were witnesses both for the passing on of the order and for its implementation, but the public prosecutor's office assessed Michael as Böttcher's “assistant”, who himself could not be shown to have any base motives. The investigation ended on January 29, 1979.

literature

• Imanuel Baumann / Herbert Reinke / Andrej Stephan / Patrick Wagner : Shadows of the Past. The BKA and its founding generation in the early Federal Republic . Edited by the Federal Criminal Police Office, Criminalistic Institute. Luchterhand, Cologne 2011, ISBN 978-3-472-08067-1 ( police + research , special volume). ( Download as PDF file)
• Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3-10-039309-0 .
• Dieter Schenk : Blind in the right eye. The brown roots of the BKA . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2001, ISBN 3-462-03034-5 .

Remarks

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Dieter Schenk: Blind in the right eye - The brown roots of the BKA . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2001, p. 247.
2. ^ Year of birth and death according to: Imanuel Baumann / Herbert Reinke / Andrej Stephan / Patrick Wagner: Shadows of the past. The BKA and its founding generation in the early Federal Republic . Edited by the Federal Criminal Police Office, Criminalistic Institute. Luchterhand, Cologne 2011 ( police + research , special issue), p. 95.
3. ↑ ^{a b} Dieter Schenk: Blind in the right eye - The brown roots of the BKA . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2001, p. 243f.
4. ↑ Dieter Schenk: Blind in the right eye - the brown roots of the BKA . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2001, p. 345.
5. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Imanuel Baumann / Herbert Reinke / Andrej Stephan / Patrick Wagner: Shadows of the past. The BKA and its founding generation in the early Federal Republic . Edited by the Federal Criminal Police Office, Criminalistic Institute. Luchterhand, Cologne 2011 ( police + research , special volume), p. 144.
6. ^ Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2003, p. 410.
7. ↑ ^{a b} Dieter Schenk: Blind in the right eye - The brown roots of the BKA . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2001, p. 245.
8. ↑ Dieter Schenk: Blind in the right eye - the brown roots of the BKA . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2001, pp. 245f.