Emanuel Schäfer

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SS-Oberführer Emanuel Schäfer, left in the picture

Emanuel Schäfer (born April 20, 1900 in Hultschin ; † December 4, 1974 in Cologne ) was a German lawyer, government and criminal adviser and, from 1943, SS-Oberführer . At the time of National Socialism, Schäfer was the leader of Einsatzgruppe II in German-occupied Poland , in 1942 he was in command of the Security Police and the Security Service (BdS) in Serbia and in 1945 in Trieste .

Early years

Emanuel Schäfer was born on April 20, 1900 in Hultschin, Silesia (now Hlučín ). His father was a hotel owner there, but moved to Rybnik in Upper Silesia after the birth of his son . Schäfer attended elementary school and high school there. During the First World War he was still a soldier as a senior second in June 1918, but no longer served at the front.

After the end of the war, Schäfer joined the Upper Silesian Border Guard in early 1919 in order to fend off the first Polish uprising as part of this association. Like many of his class, Schäfer received the high school diploma without a prior examination due to the war and his participation in the border guard. At the University of Breslau , Schäfer enrolled as a law student for the winter semester of 1920/21. In a student company, Schäfer was involved in the third Polish uprising in the fighting on Annaberg . After continuing his interrupted studies, he received his doctorate on August 1, 1925 with a dissertation on civil law. iur.

Schäfer had already joined the Stahlhelm in 1925 and remained its member until the spring of 1928. In April 1926, he joined the police service as a detective commissioner candidate and completed his training at the police institute in Berlin-Charlottenburg . After passing the final exam in early 1928, he was hired on March 1, 1928 at the police headquarters in Breslau and on August 11, 1928 appointed as a detective commissioner for life. At the end of 1928 he became head of the Breslau homicide squad and remained so until his appointment as head of the political police on February 26, 1933. He was promoted to the Criminal Police Office on September 1, 1933.

Schäfer switched from the Catholic to the Evangelical Church in 1928, from which he also left in 1936 and, like the majority of the SS leaders, described himself as “ believers in God ”. After the war, however, he returned to the Evangelical Church.

In 1931, Schäfer became a sponsoring member of the SS two years before the National Socialists came to power . In early 1933 he joined the SA and was appointed SA troop leader there on April 20, 1933. In further promotions he became head of the state police station (Stapo) Opole in May 1934, SA storm leader in 1935 and government and criminal councilor on October 1, 1936.

In September 1936, Schäfer also joined the SS (SS no. 280.018), after having worked for the SS security service (SD) from 1933 onwards. He was accepted as an SS man and at the same time promoted to SS-Untersturmführer in the SD. As early as April 20, 1937 he was promoted to SS-Obersturmführer, on August 1, 1938 to SS-Hauptsturmführer, on November 9, 1938 to SS-Sturmbannführer and on September 10, 1939 to SS-Obersturmbannführer. Finally, Schäfer joined the NSDAP in August 1937 ( membership number 4,659,879) after a corresponding application from May 1933 had apparently not been complied with because of the admission ban.

As head of the Stapostelle Opole, he and officials from his department faked the alleged attack on the Gleiwitz transmitter , which served as a pretext for the attack on Poland .

Second World War

During the attack on Poland , Schäfer took over the " Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei " ( Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei ), which was called " Operation Tannenberg " and was in charge of Einsatzgruppe II, which comprised two special units and thus had a strength of around 300 people. SS-Hauptsturmführer Günther Knobloch was appointed Schäfer's representative . The task of the “Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police” was to “combat all elements hostile to the Reich and German against the fighting troops backwards” and at the same time to destroy the Polish intelligentsia as comprehensively as possible .

Task Force II marched in the wake of Field Marshal Walter von Reichenau's 10th Army from Opole into Poland and reached Czestochowa on September 7, 1939 . When a staff officer of Army Group South handed 180 civilian prisoners over to Einsatzgruppe II and on the same day heard the rumor that the prisoners were to be shot, he demanded their return. Schäfer explained to him, however, that he had received the order from Himmler to shoot all members of Polish insurgent groups. This was an order "directly from the Fuehrer's platoon to the Gestapo commandos and commanders of the regulatory police".

Schäfer was also a participant in a large meeting in Berlin on September 21, 1939, which Reinhard Heydrich held with the heads of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA), Adolf Eichmann and the leaders of the Einsatzgruppen. Heydrich informed the participants, among other things, about the destined fate of the Jews and Poles and explained:

“The deportation of Jews to the foreign-language Gau, deportation across the demarcation line is approved by the Führer. However, the whole process should be spread over a year. The solution to the Polish problem - as already stated several times - differs according to the leadership class (intelligentsia of the Poles) and the lower working class of Poland. Of the political leadership in the occupied territories, at most 3% remains. These 3% also have to be rendered harmless and are sent to concentration camps. ... The primitive Poles are to be integrated into the work process as migrant workers and will gradually be relocated from the German districts to the foreign-language district. "

In summary, Heydrich stated:

"1.) Jews as quickly as possible into the cities,
2.) Jews from the Reich to Poland,
3.) the remaining 30,000 gypsies also to Poland,
4.) systematic deportation of Jews from the German areas with freight trains."

(Minutes of the meeting of September 21, 1939, BA R 58/825).

Emanuel Schäfer, like all other Einsatzgruppenführer, was therefore informed firsthand about the intentions of the top leadership due to his role.

After the German attack on Poland was over, Schäfer was appointed head of the newly established state police station in Katowice . His deputy Günther Knobloch followed him as adjutant to Katowice. Knobloch moved to Division IV A 1 of the RSHA in August 1941 , where he was responsible for processing the incident reports from the Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and the SD in the Soviet Union . Shortly after his promotion to the Higher Government and Criminal Police Officer on September 1, 1940, he took over the management of the state police station in Cologne in October 1940 , which he held until the end of 1941.

On January 6, 1942, Schäfer was appointed commander of the Security Police and the SD (BdS) in Serbia and was promoted to SS-Standartenführer at the end of the same month . The head of the RSHA, Reinhard Heydrich , was not satisfied with the performance of Schäfer's predecessor in Serbia (SS-Standartenführer Wilhelm Fuchs ) and therefore expected him to fight the insurgents and partisans more sharply and effectively. Schäfer immediately organized his office into the following six departments in accordance with the RSHA's business distribution plan:

  • Department I: Human Resources, Organization,
  • Department II: Administration, Registry,
  • Department III: Domestic Intelligence Service (SD)
  • Department IV: Gestapo (Kriminalrat and SS-Sturmbannführer Bruno Sattler ),
  • Department V: Criminal Police (only established in June 1942),
  • Department VI: Foreign Intelligence Service (SD).

He immediately replaced unsuitable staff and showed himself to be a strict but correct superior.

The commanders of the Security Police and the SD were organizationally subordinate to the Higher SS and Police Leaders (HSSPF) of the occupied territories, but received their instructions directly from the RSHA, except in exceptional cases. The HSSPF were therefore basically not authorized to issue instructions, but were to be informed of all actions of the BdS and its direct reports to the RSHA.

After giving up his work as BdS Serbia, Schäfer took part in the Ardennes Offensive in southern Belgium and was then BdS in Trieste.

After the war

After the end of the war and surrender , Schäfer went into hiding in a unit of the Wehrmacht and obtained false papers from this unit with the name “Dr. Ernst Schleiffer ”.

After a short American imprisonment and release in the summer of 1945, he stayed under his false name in the Sauerland with his former secretary and her husband. He became a representative for paints and varnishes and moved to Cologne in October 1949. Until his arrest on the basis of an arrest warrant from the Bielefeld Chamber of Arbitration in April 1951, he continued to live in Cologne under a false name as a warehouse worker in a hide and skin shop with his wife and his now divorced secretary.

On June 20, 1951, Schäfer was sentenced by the 1st Spruchkammer in Bielefeld to imprisonment of one year and nine months for his membership of the Gestapo and SD. By taking his pre-trial detention into account, he had served his sentence until February 1953.

On June 20, 1953, the Cologne Regional Court sentenced Emanuel Schäfer for his role as BdS Serbia for aiding and abetting murder in one case and for manslaughter in two cases and for aiding and abetting the murder of more than 5,000 Jews in the Semlin concentration camp in Belgrade to five years and five Years and six months in prison, which were combined into a total sentence of six years and six months in prison (judgment of June 20, 1953 Ref .: 24 Ks 1/52, 24 Ks 2/53). The two individual cases involved the shooting of a Serbian customs officer on alleged suspicion that he had murdered two ethnic Germans , as well as the communist high school professor Silvira Tomasini, whose shooting Schäfer ordered. However, his dismissal took place in 1956. After that, Schäfer worked at the Institute for Industrial Advertising in Düsseldorf .

In an interrogation on January 27, 1967 by the Public Prosecutor's Office at the Berlin Court of Appeal , Schäfer testified in the preliminary proceedings against the former deputy head of the Secret State Police Office Werner Best and referred to him as the personnel organizer for putting together the security police forces in Poland.

Emanuel Schäfer represents a large number of police officers who made themselves available to the new rulers, if not out of inner approval, then at least for the sake of professional careers. This also included the affirmation of the National Socialist ideology and membership in various political organizations. In addition to his SA, SS and party membership, he was also a member of the “ Lebensborn ” and was the owner of the memorial symbols created by Himmler himself, such as the “ Julleuchter ” and the SS skull ring . As a police officer who had already committed himself to National Socialism before the “ takeover ”, he was also allowed to wear the triangle with a star on his uniform.

When the orders for murder were required from the Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police in Poland and later as the BdS in Serbia, Schäfer carried out these criminal orders obsessively. The Cologne Regional Court stated in its judgment:

“In spite of all the rest of the correct demeanor, the accused was a compliant servant of his leader, finally ready, despite all the disgust at the ordered injustice and despite the shock at the cruel fate of the victims, to promptly meet the demands made on him from above. He belongs to the ranks of those who, correct in demeanor and decent outlook, ran along with National Socialism and benefited from it until they could no longer break free and - for professional or other reasons - also not wanted to solve more, and finally compliantly served his criminal goals. "

His subordinate Bruno Sattler , who acts as Gestapo chief of Belgrade was a year before, with a similar accusation by a court in the GDR to a life sentence convicted.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ LG Cologne, June 20, 1953 . In: Justice and Nazi crimes . Collection of German criminal judgments for Nazi homicidal crimes 1945–1966, Vol. XI, edited by Adelheid L. Rüter-Ehlermann, HH Fuchs, CF Rüter . Amsterdam: University Press, 1974, No. 362, pp. 143–182 Order to shoot a Serbian customs officer on suspicion of murdering two ethnic Germans and an arrested communist resistance fighter by the BdS Serbia. The accused also participated in the killing of around 6,000 Jewish prisoners in the Semlin Jewish camp (near Belgrade) by a task force of the Reich Security Main Office carried out with 'gas vans' ( memento of the original from July 29, 2014 on WebCite ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , here p. 169 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www1.jur.uva.nl
personal data
SURNAME Shepherd, Emanuel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German policeman, in the Third Reich Government and Criminal Police Officer, SS-Oberführer, commander of the security police
DATE OF BIRTH April 20, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Hultschin
DATE OF DEATH 4th December 1974
Place of death Cologne