Erna Wallisch

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Erna Wallisch (born February 10, 1922 as Erna Pfannstiel in Benshausen ; † February 16, 2008 in Vienna ) was a guard in the Ravensbrück and Majdanek concentration camps ( Lublin ).

Life

Erna Hedwig Wallisch was the fifth child of a family who lived in simple circumstances. Her father Ernst was a post office worker, her mother Wilhelmine a housewife. After elementary school and a compulsory year, Wallisch attended a two-year housekeeping school and completed a voluntary year in the Reich Labor Service . She then worked as a domestic help.

At the age of 19, Erna Pfannstiel applied for a job as a guard in the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp in Fürstenberg / Havel in the spring of 1941 . They were hired on May 1st. After more than a year of service, she was transferred to the Majdanek extermination camp in Lublin in Poland on October 7, 1942, together with nine other guards. In the Majdanek concentration camp she met her future husband Georg Wallisch, who was her age and worked as a guard in the camp. In October 1943 and again in November 1943, Georg Wallisch submitted a marriage proposal to the Race and Settlement Main Office . At that time Erna Pfannstiel was pregnant. Since Georg Wallisch had stolen gold watches that had been taken from the Jews during the selection process , he was sentenced to three years in prison.

On January 15, 1944, Erna Pfannstiel ended her service in Majdanek due to her pregnancy and initially moved back to Fürstenberg. There she tried in vain to have a distance marriage with Georg Wallisch. Eventually the couple received permission to marry in Lublin on March 24, 1944. Erna Wallisch then lived for a short time in Thuringia, gave birth to her daughter on April 9, 1944 and then moved into an apartment building on Schiffmühlenstrasse in Vienna- Kaisermühlen . Six months later, on July 23, 1944, Russian soldiers liberated the largely vacated Majdanek camp. In October 1946 Georg Wallisch returned to Vienna from an American internment camp and built up a petty-bourgeois life with Erna Wallisch.

Wallisch died in a hospital on February 16, 2008 at the age of 86. She was buried at Sieveringer Friedhof (Department 2, Group 10, Row 60).

Allegations and prosecution

Wallisch was on a list from the Jewish Documentation Center of wanted suspected Nazi criminals and is said to have admitted their involvement in the selection and murder of concentration camp inmates, according to Efraim Zuroff , director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem. She stayed in the Majdanek concentration camp between October 1942 and January 1944. Survivors have described her as a sadist who selected victims and led them to their death.

In the mid-1960s, the first case against Wallisch was conducted in Graz and discontinued in 1965.

In the 1970s a second case was initiated in Vienna. However, the public prosecutor discontinued the proceedings due to the then applicable legal situation (statute of limitations).

At Zuroff's instigation, the Austrian judiciary was supposed to take action again in 2005, but the press spokesman for Justice Minister Karin Gastinger , Christoph Pöchinger, stated that there was not enough evidence for a "direct murder ".

The lack of evidence of a handwritten commission of the offense brought up by Pöchinger would have been absolutely necessary for a reopening of the proceedings, since there was no aid in the current sense until the criminal law reform. According to the law, which was valid until 1973, the "distant complicity in the murder", as the offense was called, had already expired. In contrast to today's aid, this “distant complicity” could very well expire. According to current Austrian law, Wallisch would be threatened with life imprisonment as a mere participant (and thus not the main perpetrator) in a murder, and her offense would be mitigating but not subject to the statute of limitations.

The press spokesman for Justice Minister Gastinger, Christoph Pöchinger, caused a sensation with his statement: "We are in the very sensitive area of ​​tension between moral claims and legal possibilities".

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, headed by Zuroff, continued to deal with the Nazi crimes accused of Wallisch. Zuroff tried several times to extradite the concentration camp guard to Poland , as there are laws that do not provide for a statute of limitations for war crimes . However, there was no evidence for a murder trial either.

In January 2008, five witnesses from Poland were finally found who were ready to testify against Wallisch and about their behavior in the Majdanek concentration camp. Then the discussion about extradition became topical again. In addition, the Austrian public prosecutor began investigations into the new statements and their usability. After her death on February 16, 2008, the investigation was dropped.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ File of the Race and Settlement Main Office (RuSHA): Federal Archives, RS G 0560, Georg Wallisch.
  2. ↑ Bundesarchiv-Zwischenarchiv Dahlwitz-Hoppegarten, ZM 1491 A.1.
  3. ↑ a b orf.at: Concentration camp guard died: proceedings ended (February 21, 2008)
  4. ↑ The Erna Wallisch case . In: Falter 06/2008 from February 6, 2008 ( Memento from April 16, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ orf.at: New investigations against the concentration camp guard (January 25, 2008)
personal data
SURNAME Wallisch, Erna
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pfannstiel, Erna; Wallisch Erna Hedwig
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Austrian guard in the Ravensbrück and Majdanek concentration camps
DATE OF BIRTH February 10, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Benshausen
DATE OF DEATH February 16, 2008
Place of death Vienna