Erich Engels (SS member)

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Erich Engels (born September 11, 1908 in Tecklenburg , † May 19, 1951 in Warsaw ) was a German detective commissioner, SS leader and perpetrator of the Holocaust .

biography

Erich Engels was born the son of a civil servant. He completed his school career in Arolsen first at the elementary school and later at a Realreformgymnasium, which he left before he obtained his Abitur . Engels then worked in the hotel business and became a member of the SA in 1930 . He joined the NSDAP (membership number 201.138) in early February 1931. At the beginning of 1934 he joined the Reichswehr . From October 1935 Engels was employed by the Stapo control center in Kassel and two years later promoted to detective inspector. He was then transferred to the Bielefeld police station and from the summer of 1939 worked in Hungarian-Hradisch . In early July 1938 he joined the SS . In the SS Engels rose to SS-Hauptsturmführer until 1942.

After the outbreak of World War II , Engels was deployed in the General Government with Helmut Tanzmann , the commander of the Security Police and SD (KdS) Warsaw . From September 1941 he headed the Jewish department at the Gestapo in Lemberg and took part in the deportations of Jews from the Galicia district to the Belzec extermination camp . On September 1, 1942, by order of Engels, eleven Jews were hanged on a balcony and the ropes used were charged to the Judenrat .

Under Franz Marmon , Detective Inspector Engels was deputy head of the Gestapo Kassel from the summer of 1944. Engels headed a branch of the Kassler Gestapo in the Breitenau labor education camp in Guxhagen , which was closed at the end of March 1945. Then 28 former prisoners of the camp were executed by a firing squad assembled by Engels .

Shortly before the end of the war , Engels was arrested by members of the US Army and was then imprisoned in Darmstadt and the Dachau internment camp , among other places . Engels was transferred to Poland at the end of February 1947 . On March 13, 1950, Engels was sentenced to death. Engels sat in a cell with the Polish resistance fighter Władysław Bartoszewski and the abbot of Czestochowa . On May 19, 1951, Engels was executed in Mokotów Prison in Warsaw for his crimes committed in the Government General.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Date of death according to: Gunnar Richter: Das Arbeitsserziehungslager Breitenau (1940-1945) - A contribution to the National Socialist camp system , Kassel 2004, p. 499. Richter refers to the copy of Erich Engel's death certificate from the archive of the Breitenau Memorial. At Ernst Klee : The person encyclopedia to the Third Reich : Who was that before and after 1945 , Frankfurt 2007, p 136 is, however, given as Engels Date of death: May 15, 1951.
  2. ↑ "We haven't forgotten anything". Poland's former Foreign Minister Władysław Bartoszewski on the start of the war, the Germans and the Russians . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung, August 30, 2014, weekend, p. 4.
  3. ^ Gunnar Richter: Das Arbeitsserziehungslager Breitenau (1940-1945) - A Contribution to the National Socialist Camp System , Kassel 2004, pp. 55f.
  4. ↑ a b c Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 136.
  5. ^ Thomas sand cooler: Final solution in Galicia. The murder of Jews in Eastern Poland and the rescue initiatives by Berthold Beitz 1941-1944 , Bonn 1996, p. 438.
  6. ^ A b Dieter Pohl : National Socialist Persecution of Jews in East Galicia, 1941-1944. , Munich 1997, p. 413.
  7. ↑ Helge von Horn / Ulrich Schneider u. a. (Ed.): Days of Liberation 1945 - Kassel - "Tiger" city, rubble city, dreams of a new time , Kassel 2005, p. 11.
  8. ↑ Susanne Meinl, Jutta Zwilling: Legalized robbery: the plundering of the Jews under National Socialism by the Reich Finance Administration in Hesse . Campus Verlag, Frankfurt 2004, ISBN 3593376121 , p. 483.
  9. ^ Gunnar Richter: Die Geheime Staatspolizeistelle Kassel 1933–1945. In: Journal of the Association for Hessian History (ZHG) Volume 106 (2001), p. 260ff (pdf; 1.1 MB) .
  10. ^ Gunnar Richter: Das Arbeitsserziehungslager Breitenau (1940-1945) - A contribution to the National Socialist camp system , Kassel 2004, p. 497.
  11. ↑ Marion Countess Dönhoff : "Wladyslaw Bartoszewski wrote his life experiences - no word of vengeance". In. The time of January 13, 1980, issue 3.
  12. ^ Gunnar Richter: Das Arbeitsserziehungslager Breitenau (1940-1945) - A contribution to the National Socialist camp system , Kassel 2004, p. 499.
personal data
SURNAME Engels, Erich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German police officer and perpetrator of the Holocaust
DATE OF BIRTH September 11, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Tecklenburg
DATE OF DEATH May 19, 1951
Place of death Warsaw