Fred kneeling

Fred Theodor Johannes Kniefall (born May 9, 1909 in Kiel ; † unknown, after 1945) was a German SS and SD member. As leader of the Volksdeutsche Selbstschutz in Poland, Kniefall was involved in mass murders of the local population in 1939 .

Live and act

Kniefall joined the NSDAP in September 1930 ( membership number 304.565). In the same year he became a member of the Schutzstaffel (SS no. 4754). In August 1931 he was given the task of leading the Kiel SS storm. Due to his rabid behavior in this position, he was known in the Hanseatic city as a bully and "bully from the right" according to a contemporary article in the Kieler Volkszeitung .

In 1932 Kniefall was one of the first members of the SD Upper Section East in Berlin, where he remained active until 1934. In 1935 he was transferred to the SS leadership school in Bad Tölz as a course director .

After he was injured in a traffic accident around 1937, Kniefall was released from the SS on January 31, 1938 by the Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler , according to the SS seniority list from 1938 . Florian Altenhöner states that the likely reason for Kneefall's discharge was a morphine addiction , which Kniefall developed after a serious accident.

In 1939 Kniefall was involved in the implementation of mass murders in German-occupied Poland as the leader of the Volksdeutsche Selbstschutz. In the book "Der Volksdeutsche Selbstschutz in Polen 1939/40", the authors describe the sadistic, murderous and raping behavior of an SS leader named Kniefall in the Rypin district. Although a different first name is mentioned there, it can be assumed that it is the same person. From 1941 to 1943 he worked for Telefunken GmbH in Berlin. In 1943 he was arrested for theft and drafted into the Wehrmacht as a grenadier that same year . Charges against him in 1944 for illegally wearing an SS uniform were eventually dropped.

After Kniefall was released from captivity in 1945, he went into hiding under a false name after a brief return to his home in Kiel in the same year. At the end of the 1940s he was still seen in Hamburg . Since then, his whereabouts are unknown. As a result, persecutions by the West German and Polish judiciary due to his leading responsibility for mass murders in Poland did not go beyond preliminary investigations.

Promotions

• February 4, 1931: SS-Sturmführer
• February 1, 1933: SS-Hauptsturmführer

literature

• Florian Altenhöner: The man who started World War II , 2010.