Erwin Schulz

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Erwin Schulz during the task force process

Erwin Schulz , actually Erwin Wilhelm Schulz, (born November 27, 1900 in Berlin , † November 11, 1981 in Bremen ) was a German SS brigade leader and major general of the police. As leader of the Einsatzkommandos 5 (Ek 5) of the Einsatzgruppe C he was responsible for numerous mass murders in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine .

Life

Schulz was the son of an administrative inspector at the waterworks in Berlin-Lichtenberg . During the First World War he attended the Kölln high school in Berlin. In April 1918, he registered as a volunteer in the Unterprima. After a short infantry training, he did not return to the front due to the armistice in November. Instead he was used against the rebellious Spartakists in Berlin.

At the end of 1919 he passed the simplified Abitur exam for combatants. Since his father could not finance the desired medical studies, he decided to study law. After two semesters, however, he broke off his studies and joined the Freikorps Oberland , which fought against Polish insurgents in Upper Silesia .

After his return in 1922, he did not take up his studies again, but took a brief position at Dresdner Bank . In the spring of 1923 he left Berlin for Hamburg and kept himself afloat with odd jobs until he began training in the Bremen police service in the autumn of that year . In 1926 he was appointed lieutenant in the security police. Schulz switched to the political police in 1930 and acted undercover as a liaison with the NSDAP .

After the NSDAP came to power, Schulz joined the party in May 1933 (membership number 2,902,238) and was appointed provisional head of the Gestapo in Bremen in November 1933 and final head in 1935. He became a member of the SS and SD in 1935 and SS-Sturmbannführer and government councilor in March 1938 .

This was followed by missions in Graz , Olmütz and Reichenberg at short intervals . In April 1940 he became inspector of the security police and the SD in Hamburg . At the beginning of 1941 he became a group leader in the Reich Security Main Office responsible for training and education. During this time he headed the 1st Sipo and SD leadership school in Berlin-Charlottenburg .

In May 1941 in Pretzsch he was instructed by his chief SS-Standartenführer Bruno Straßenbach to lead the Einsatzkommando 5 (Ek 5). Ek 5 was part of Einsatzgruppe C (led by SS group leader Otto Rasch ).

From June 1941 to April 1942 Einsatzgruppe C murdered Ukraine about 150,000 civilians and committed among other things, the end of September 1941, the massacre of Babi Yar . "During my time, the activity of the Einsatzkommando V extended to the areas around and in Brody , Dubnow, Berditschev and Skvira," Schulz declared in an affidavit to the war crimes tribunal in Nuremberg. He was convicted in particular for his involvement in the murder of Jews in Lemberg .

At the beginning of August 1941, Schulz himself declared, the Higher SS and Police Leader Friedrich Jeckeln had instructed the commando leaders of the Einsatzgruppen to take “stronger action against the Jews” . Women and children are also to be shot “so that no avengers can arise” . This was reason for him to turn to his friend Linienbach with the request to order him back to Berlin. Schulz was back in Berlin at the end of August 1941. Among his accomplices in mass murder, he was considered "soft" because of his refusal to allow women and children to be shot; it was said that he was "avoiding" himself. The recall has not harmed his career. In November 1941 he was promoted to SS-Oberführer.

After 1945

In the Nuremberg Einsatzgruppen Trial in 1948, SS Brigadefuehrer Schulz was sentenced to 20 years in prison and pardoned to 15 years in 1951.

When Schulz's lawyer turned to the President of the Bremen Senate , Mayor Wilhelm Kaisen , "whether the Bremen government could issue a declaration that there was nothing to be said against an act of grace for [Schulz]," replied the head of the Presidential Chancellery, that the request “will be gladly complied with” . Several social democrats, u. a. Interior Senator Adolf Ehlers and Mayor Wilhelm Kaisen campaigned for “our State Police Major Schulz” with the American Ambassador Donnelly . The Senate press spokesman, Alfred Faust, is particularly committed to Schulz. Faust was released after a year in the Mißler concentration camp and was able to go to Berlin with his Jewish wife, where he worked for the coffee entrepreneur Ludwig Roselius - " under Gestapo supervision," as he himself later explained. Schulz apparently also knew von Faust's wife “from various conversations” and sent her “warmest” greetings from her imprisonment in Landsberg . The historian Hans Wrobel has collected indications that the Senate campaigned for the war criminal to be pardoned on the background of his incriminating knowledge of Gestapo informants in circles of leading Bremen Social Democrats.

On January 9, 1954, Schulz was released on parole from the Landsberg War Crimes Prison and received retrospectively his remuneration, compensation and a transitional allowance until his retirement.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Death register of the Bremen registry office No. 5629/1981.
  2. ^ Erwin Schulz, Gestapo chief in Bremen and convicted mass murderer . Searching for traces-Bremen. Retrieved July 6, 2020.
personal data
SURNAME Schulz, Erwin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS Brigade Leader and Major General of the Police
DATE OF BIRTH November 27, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH November 11, 1981
Place of death Bremen