Ernst Kendzia

Ernst Kendzia (born April 2, 1894 in Danzig ; executed on November 4, 1950 in Waldheim ) was a German administrative officer in occupied Poland . Most recently he was President of the Gau Labor Office and Reich trustee for work for Wartheland and Posen .

Life

Kendzia completed a commercial apprenticeship in Gdansk, had a job as an assistant until 1929 and then worked as an authorized representative in an import and export company. He joined the NSDAP in the Free City of Danzig in 1931 ( membership number 465.054) and the SS in 1933 (SS number 247.843). Thanks to his party affiliation, he was appointed head of the employment office under the Senate President Arthur Greiser , who had been in office since 1934 . Kendzia became a member of the Danzig People's Day .

At the time of the outbreak of war in 1939 he had the rank of SS-Sturmbannführer and in April 1941 was appointed SS-Standartenführer . In 1942 he received the Gau Ehrenzeichen , in 1943 the Golden Party Badge of the NSDAP and in 1944 the War Merit Cross 1st Class .

After the German occupation of Poland in 1939, Greiser took him to the administration of the Reich Governor of the newly established Reichsgau Wartheland in Posen . Within the Department of Economics and Labor, Kendzia, as Herbert Mehlhorn's deputy in the rank of senior government councilor, headed the Labor Department, from which he managed the labor deployment of the Poles in the Warthegau. In addition, on November 1, 1939, he was assigned to the “Gaukommissariat for Immigration” of the ethnic Germans as a representative for labor. On November 25, 1939, as trustee of the work , he was a participant in a meeting led by SS-Sturmbannführer Albert Rapp , at which the evacuation and robbery of the Jewish and Polish population of employees of the Reich Governor's Office , the Chamber of Industry and Commerce, the Oberfinanzpräsidium, the Land Office and the German resettlement trust was discussed. It was agreed that Kendzia's office would also be affected by the economic side effects of the evacuation measures.

After the establishment of the Litzmannstadt ghetto , Kendzia was also involved in hiring out Jewish forced laborers outside the ghetto, for example on the construction site of the planned Frankfurt / Oder-Posen Reichsautobahn, and as Reich trustee regulated the tariff issues. In September 1941, Kendzia suggested to the camp administrator of the Litzmannstadt ghetto, Hans Biebow , that the approximately 5,000 Jews who Biebrow described as absolutely incapable of working should be reported to the Gestapo in order to "deport" them from the ghetto. The term "deportation" included their "extermination." “Understood what Rolf-Heinz Höppner, head of the SD section in Posen, had already rumored to Adolf Eichmann in Berlin on July 16, 1941 from the Reich Governor's Office. In September 1941, Himmler and Greiser decided to deport 20,000 Jews and 5,000 Gypsies from the Altreich to the Litzmannstadt ghetto , and on September 20, the chief government director Mehldorn and the deputy senior government councilor Kendzia von Greiser were in charge of the necessary measures for the accommodation and the work of Jews and Gypsies in the Wartheland. In November 1941, the Kulmhof extermination camp was about to go into operation , and Kendzia announced in a meeting at the Reich Labor Ministry that all other Jews except for the Jews who were fit for work would be "deported" by the end of March 1942. In January 1942, the Reichsarbeitsblatt reported on a meeting of the Reich Trustees of Labor, at which Kendzia had demanded that the Jewish workforce should be as expedient as possible until the imminent end of European Jewry.

In August 1944, Kendzia was appointed President of the Gau Labor Office.

After the end of the war, Kendzia was sentenced to death in the Waldheim trials for exploitation and mistreatment of Polish workers in 1950 and was executed in the Waldheim correctional facility .

literature

Michael Alberti: The persecution and extermination of the Jews in the Reichsgau Wartheland 1939–1945. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2006, ISBN 3-447-05167-1 .
Jochen Böhler , Stephan Lehnstaedt (ed.): Violence and everyday life in occupied Poland 1939–1945. (= Individual publications by the German Historical Institute Warsaw; 26). Fiber, Osnabrück 2012, ISBN 978-3-938400-70-8 .
Karsten Linne (Hrsg.): Labor as spoils of war. The case of Eastern and Southeastern Europe. 1939-1945. Metropol-Verlag, Berlin 2011 ISBN 978-3-86331-054-7
Peter Klein : The "Litzmannstadt ghetto administration" 1940 to 1944. An office in the field of tension between local bureaucracy and state policy of persecution. Hamburger Ed., Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-86854-203-5 (Berlin, Techn. Univ., Diss., 2007).

Footnotes

^ ^A ^b ^c ^d ^e Michael Alberti: The persecution and extermination of the Jews in the Reichsgau Wartheland 1939–1945. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2006, ISBN 3-447-05167-1 , p. 60.
^ Date of birth according to: Reich Ministry of Labor: inventory R 41. edit. by Ute Simon, Federal Archives Koblenz 1991, ISBN 3-89192-025-3 . Different information in Alberti and in the list of SS members (dws-pl) : Birthday: April 2, 1893
^ List of SS members , at dws-pl
↑ The German Consul General in Danzig to the Foreign Office. Report of the Consul General of the German Reich Otto von Radowitz dated February 7, 1935
^ Karsten Linne: Volkstumsppolitik and worker recruitment in the Reichsgau Wartheland. In: Karsten Linne [ed.]: Labor as spoils of war. 2011, p. 131.
↑ The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 . Volume 4, 2011, pp. 151f.
^ Peter Klein: The "Gettoverwaltung Litzmannstadt" 1940 to 1944. 2009, pp. 321–324.
^ Michael Alberti: The persecution and extermination of the Jews in Reichsgau Wartheland 1939-1945. 2006, p. 378.
^ Michael Alberti: The persecution and extermination of the Jews in Reichsgau Wartheland 1939-1945. 2006, p. 395.
^ Peter Klein: Kulmhof / Chelmno. In: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror. History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 8, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-57237-1 , p. 305.
^ Peter Klein: The "Gettoverwaltung Litzmannstadt" 1940 to 1944. 2009, p. 356f.
^ Michael Alberti: The persecution and extermination of the Jews in Reichsgau Wartheland 1939-1945. 2006, p. 418.
↑ Dr. Bues, Kalisch: Workshop on Eastern Issues. Reichsarbeitsblatt, 1942, No. 4, pp. 84–85. Quoted in Peter Klein: Die "Gettoverwaltung Litzmannstadt" 1940 to 1944. 2009, pp. 454–455.
^ Files of the party chancellery of the NSDAP
^ Peter Klein: Kulmhof / Chelmno. In: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror. History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 8, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-57237-1 , p. 321f.
↑ Bernd Withöft: The death sentences of the Waldheim trials. Wien, Univ., Diss., 2009. Available at ÖNB , pp. 90–93 (The dissertation has not yet been viewed for this article)

personal data
SURNAME	Kendzia, Ernst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German administrative officer
DATE OF BIRTH	April 2, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH	Danzig
DATE OF DEATH	November 4th 1950
Place of death	Waldheim

[Alberti60-1] A ^b ^c ^d ^e Michael Alberti: The persecution and extermination of the Jews in the Reichsgau Wartheland 1939–1945. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2006, ISBN 3-447-05167-1 , p. 60.

[2] Date of birth according to: Reich Ministry of Labor: inventory R 41. edit. by Ute Simon, Federal Archives Koblenz 1991, ISBN 3-89192-025-3 . Different information in Alberti and in the list of SS members (dws-pl) : Birthday: April 2, 1893

[3] List of SS members , at dws-pl

[4] The German Consul General in Danzig to the Foreign Office. Report of the Consul General of the German Reich Otto von Radowitz dated February 7, 1935

[Linne131-5] Karsten Linne: Volkstumsppolitik and worker recruitment in the Reichsgau Wartheland. In: Karsten Linne [ed.]: Labor as spoils of war. 2011, p. 131.

[6] The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 . Volume 4, 2011, pp. 151f.

[7] Peter Klein: The "Gettoverwaltung Litzmannstadt" 1940 to 1944. 2009, pp. 321–324.

[Alberti378-8] Michael Alberti: The persecution and extermination of the Jews in Reichsgau Wartheland 1939-1945. 2006, p. 378.

[Alberti395-9] Michael Alberti: The persecution and extermination of the Jews in Reichsgau Wartheland 1939-1945. 2006, p. 395.

[10] Peter Klein: Kulmhof / Chelmno. In: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror. History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 8, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-57237-1 , p. 305.

[11] Peter Klein: The "Gettoverwaltung Litzmannstadt" 1940 to 1944. 2009, p. 356f.

[Alberti418-12] Michael Alberti: The persecution and extermination of the Jews in Reichsgau Wartheland 1939-1945. 2006, p. 418.

[13] Dr. Bues, Kalisch: Workshop on Eastern Issues. Reichsarbeitsblatt, 1942, No. 4, pp. 84–85. Quoted in Peter Klein: Die "Gettoverwaltung Litzmannstadt" 1940 to 1944. 2009, pp. 454–455.

[14] Files of the party chancellery of the NSDAP

[15] Peter Klein: Kulmhof / Chelmno. In: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror. History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 8, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-57237-1 , p. 321f.

[16] Bernd Withöft: The death sentences of the Waldheim trials. Wien, Univ., Diss., 2009. Available at ÖNB , pp. 90–93 (The dissertation has not yet been viewed for this article)