Erich Steidtmann

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Erich Steidtmann (born November 5, 1914 in Weißenfels ; died July 25, 2010 in Hanover ) was a German police officer in occupied Poland .

Life

Erich Steidtmann attended the Reformrealgymnasium in Weißenfels and joined the SS in 1933 . From April 1934 to September 1936 he did military service in Saxony. In October 1936 he was hired by the police , passed his training at the police officer school in Berlin-Köpenick in early 1938 and was promoted to lieutenant in the police. He was transferred to Würzburg and was involved in the anti-Semitic actions during the Reichspogromnacht in Würzburg. After the beginning of the war he was deployed in Poland in 1939, in Norway in 1940, and in 1941/42 in the so-called gang fight in the northern section of the Eastern Front in the Soviet Union. After the successful assassination attempt on Reinhard Heydrich , he “probably” took part in retaliatory actions against the civilian population in the Reich Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia . In Prague he was promoted to police captain. It was here that the Gestapo secretary met Lisl Urban and began a relationship with her.

From October 1942 he acted as police captain and company commander of 3rd Company in Police Battalion 53 (SS Police Regiment 22) in occupied Warsaw and was involved in guarding and clearing the Warsaw ghetto . Because of an affair with the Polish woman Maria K. Steidtmann was relieved of duty and was imprisoned in early 1943, but managed to get out and was only transferred to the 1st Company. In the second half of 1943 he was company commander of 1st Company in Reserve Police Battalion 101 in the Lublin area . In mid-1944 he switched to the Waffen-SS and was temporarily battalion commander in the 7th SS volunteer mountain division "Prinz Eugen" . He married Maria K. in July 1944 after the intention to marry had been approved by the SS main office .

After the end of the war Steidtmann was a British prisoner of war for six months. It was denazified in Hanover in 1949 , but its application for reuse was initially unsuccessful. In 1952 he was placed with the criminal police in Essen , but was released in 1956 for indiscipline. When he was first questioned as part of an investigation into Nazi crimes in 1963, Steidtmann named him as a freelance sales representative and driving instructor in Hanover. Although he was repeatedly called up as a witness (1957, 1963, 1965, 1972), he rarely appeared in court, for example at the trial against Ludwig Hahn in 1963. His contradicting statements were not checked and an investigation against him was discontinued.

In 2007 he filed a lawsuit against his former lover Lisl Urban from 1942/43, who also described her brief love affair with an SS officer she called “Eike” in a multi-volume memoir, whom she met and met in Prague in 1942 Had visited Warsaw at the end of the year and in which he now recognized himself. His lawsuit for compensation for pain and suffering and the crushing of the books was dismissed by the Leipzig Regional Court. Due to the process and the public outrage that Steidtmann caused, the publisher of Joachim Jahn's memoirs and the historian Stefan Klemp also researched . He found out that Steidtmann, as leader of a police unit, had also been involved in the suppression of the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto and then in the mass shootings at the harvest festival in the Lublin area. The investigation was closed by the public prosecutor in 2009 without Steidtmann being questioned about the allegations. He died in 2010 at the age of 95.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stefan Klemp: Vernichtung , 2013, p. 196.
  2. ↑ Stefan Klemp: Vernichtung , 2013, p. 37f .; P. 197.
  3. ↑ Stefan Klemp: Vernichtung , 2013, p. 203.
  4. ↑ Stefan Klemp: Vernichtung , 2013, p. 26.
  5. ↑ Stefan Klemp: Vernichtung , 2013, p. 144.
  6. ^ Stefan Klemp: Vernichtung , 2013, p. 143.
  7. ^ Stefan Klemp: Vernichtung , 2013, p. 229.
  8. ↑ Dennis Hevesi: Erich Steidtmann, Ex-Nazi Officer in Inquiry, Dies at 95 , NYT, July 31, 2010
  9. ↑ Stefan Klemp: Vernichtung , 2013, p. 188.
  10. ^ Stefan Klemp: Vernichtung , 2013, p. 191.
  11. ↑ Lisl Urban: A very ordinary life. Book 1 . Leipzig: Dingsda, 2006 ISBN 978-3-928498-03-6 .
  12. ^ Uwe Wittstock : Dispute over the one-night stand of an SS officer , Die Welt, November 8, 2007
personal data
SURNAME Steidtmann, Erich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German police officer
DATE OF BIRTH November 5, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Weissenfels
DATE OF DEATH July 25, 2010
Place of death Hanover