Georg Heuser

Georg Albert Wilhelm Heuser (born February 27, 1913 in Berlin ; † January 30, 1989 in Koblenz ) was a German criminalist , as SS-Obersturmführer Head of Department IV at the Commander of the Security Police and the SD (KdS) in Minsk and head of the State Criminal Police Office Rhineland-Palatinate (LKA) in Koblenz. As the main defendant in one of the largest war crimes trials in the Federal Republic of Germany, he was found guilty in 1963 of having participated in the scheduled murder of 11,103 people.

Parental home and studies

As the son of the businessman Albert Heuser and his wife Margarete Stein, he attended elementary school from 1919 and then from 1923 the secondary school in Berlin-Lichtenberg , where he graduated from high school on March 2, 1932 . From mid-1932 he began to study law in Berlin, Königsberg and Prague. On July 27, 1936, he passed the examination for the first state examination in law at the Berlin Court of Appeal , whereupon he took up legal preparatory service in Berlin. In 1934 he worked for six months in the Reich Labor Service. In 1935, 1936 and 1937 he attended courses with the Air Force for a few months . With these periods of service he had acquired the rank of sergeant and candidate officer in the reserve.

Career as a criminalist

Without continuing his legal training, he decided in the spring of 1938 to switch to the criminal police. On December 1, 1938, he began his service in the criminal police as a detective inspector candidate. This was followed by training in all stations of the criminal police, including at the Berlin State Police Headquarters (StapoLSt Berlin) and at the head section of the SD . Since he had made good preliminary work in his previous legal training and in other services, the normally three-year training period was shortened for him so that in May 1940 he was able to attend a course for detective officers at the driving school of the security police in Berlin-Charlottenburg , which should last nine months. On February 14, 1941, he passed the final exam as the best of this course.

Then he began working as an auxiliary crime commissioner at the criminal police control center in Berlin in the department for capital crimes . From around July 1941 he was appointed detective inspector on probation and on October 6, 1941 he was appointed as a civil servant for life with the rank of inspector of the criminal investigation department. When a series of murders on the Berlin S-Bahn shook the public in Berlin from October 1940 to July 1941, Heuser worked on the investigations in Wilhelm Lüdtke's murder commission that led to the perpetrator Paul Ogorzow . Lüdtke and Heuser jointly published an article about it in the journal Kriminalistik in 1942 .

Use in the Soviet Union

According to his own statements, he joined the SS in 1941 and was appointed SS-Untersturmführer in February 1941. He continued to claim that he had never belonged to the NSDAP or its subdivisions. Shortly before his detail to Riga to Einsatzgruppe A in September 1941 he was promoted to obersturmführer. Then he belonged to the Sonderkommando 1b (SK 1b) under SS-Obersturmführer Erich Ehrlinger , which advanced to Tosno .

Sonderkommando 1 b

With Ehrlinger he was transferred to Minsk with the SK 1b towards the end of November 1941. After the end of the military administration, the KdS Minsk office was built from units of SK 1b under the command of Ehrlinger, from March 1942 under SS-Obersturmbannführer Eduard Strauch . Since the KdS Minsk did not yet have any fixed structures or subordinate relationships, Department IV / V was initially subordinate to Heuser and then alternately to SS-Untersturmführer and Detective Inspector Kurt Burkhardt . This department dealt with both state police and Jewish affairs.

Head of department at KdS Minsk

It was not until May 1942 that the structure of the KdS, modeled on the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), was given Department IV as a Gestapo facility that Heuser commanded. This included the service areas of sub-departments IVa and IVb:

• Service areas Department IVa: Combating sabotage, espionage and economic crimes; Industrial defense and reconnaissance against partisans
• Service areas of Department IVb: Affairs of Jews and Poles

The office was located in a spacious building of the University of Minsk, with the Maly Trostinez Manor, located 12 kilometers from Minsk in the southeast, as a warehouse for the property of the arrested. In the summer of 1943 he was a member of Sonderkommando 1005 (SK 1005). From autumn 1943 the KdS in Minsk was renamed a commander of the security police and the SD (BdS). A Division N was separated from Division IV, and Heuser was mainly concerned with counter-espionage against partisans. SS-Sturmbannführer Kurt Gornig took over his previous command .

Withdrawal in 1944

Shortly before the Red Army recaptured the city on July 3, 1944, Heuser withdrew from Minsk on July 1 with the last SS sub-command of the BdS. The route of the retreat took place via Augustowo and Ortelsburg to Nakeln in West Prussia , where the security police's leadership school had been relocated after bombing raids on Berlin. Here he taught the participants of the course for about four weeks, and from August 1944, after being promoted to SS-Hauptsturmführer, he was appointed chief of Einsatzkommando 14 (EK-14). The main task of the EK-14 as a unit of Einsatzgruppe H was to put down the uprising in Slovakia with other units. In March 1945, Heuser was still leading a combat group in Krems an der Donau .

post war period

After the end of the Nazi regime, he ended up in Goslar , where his sister lived. He now claimed to have a doctorate in law and was doing odd jobs. From July 1, 1948, he took up a job at the company Internationale Transporte Palatia in Mutterstadt , where he worked until June 30, 1949. He received a certificate of political harmlessness on August 19, 1948 from an authority in Ludwigshafen am Rhein , where he moved on September 1, 1949. Here he worked from December 31, 1949 to December 31, 1952 as an employee in the battery factory "Akuwa". From October 1, 1953, after his dismissal, he had no job, and then from October 10, 1953, he found a job at the compensation office in Ludwigshafen. A first application in 1953 to return to the police force was rejected.

Return to the police force

As a 131 he succeeded in returning to the police force on May 1, 1954, where he first took up his post as chief detective at the Ludwigshafen police headquarters. He was able to present a letter of recommendation from Kriminalrat Johannes Hoßbach , who was then the personal assistant to the President of the BKA , Hanns Jess . Heuser knew Hoßbach both from the security police's driving school and from serving in the EK14. When applying for the criminal police service, he submitted a forged copy of the police chief of Berlin dated November 16, 1941, from which it should emerge that there should be a doctoral certificate from Charles University in Prague dated April 1, 1941, so that he was Law title should have been lawfully acquired. From October 22, 1954, he took a position at the police headquarters in Kaiserslautern . After he was promoted to chief detective on January 1, 1955, he took over the management of the criminal police in Kaiserslautern. When he was appointed Kriminalrat on May 18, 1955 , he temporarily took over the business of the head of the Kaiserslautern Police Department.

LKA Rhineland-Palatinate

He was seconded to the LKA Rhineland-Palatinate in Koblenz on July 15, 1956 and took the position of deputy head of the LKA. The official transfer to the LKA took place with effect from September 1, 1956. With the promotion to the Chief Criminal Police on January 1, 1958, he also took over the management of the LKA. One of his tasks was the resumption of the search for criminals in the Nazi regime. Heuser represented the state of Rhineland-Palatinate from January 1958 to mid-1959 at the conferences of the heads of the LKAs of the federal states. In the meantime, because of the investigation into the murder of Jews in Minsk, there was a search for an SS officer with the surname Hauser , but this was unsuccessful until then.

arrest

In 1959, Heuser's boss in Minsk, Erich Ehrlinger , was questioned extensively by employees of the Central Office of the State Judicial Administrations about what was going on in the KdS Minsk, and he mentioned Heuser's name several times. The investigation into Heuser, which is now beginning, did not remain hidden from him. An investigation group in Baden-Wuerttemberg applied over the prosecutor's office in Karlsruhe in Karlsruhe District Court issued an arrest warrant on 14 July 1958th One day later, Heuser was arrested in Bad Orb , where he was taking a cure. During the first interrogation on July 24, 1959 at the Koblenz Public Prosecutor's Office, he denied any guilt regarding the allegations.

Investigations

Heuser's arrest made headlines in the press, and the political leadership in Rhineland-Palatinate wanted to downplay Heuser's role in Minsk. Interior Minister August Wolters claimed that at the time Heuser's transfer to Minsk there had been no executions there. The secretary Heusers in Minsk, who was questioned about Heuser's orders by the Koblenz public prosecutor, declared that she was not a denunciator after all . Only after repeated inquiries was she willing to admit that the execution orders affected Jews. Most of the surveys showed that Heuser had a positive character image. Only Adolf Rübe stated that Heuser had shown himself brutal and merciless on duty. The members of the Heusers office - Jakob Ostwald under interrogation on July 1, 1960 and Fritz Mischke on June 2, 1961 - stated that they were uneasy about Heuser's behavior. Two members of the KdS Minsk incriminated Heuser heavily, he would have personally participated in the shootings. Wilhelm Kaul characterized Heuser in his testimony on June 13, 1960: You should see the Heuser by the pit (which meant a pit from the mass shootings).

Trial before the Koblenz Regional Court

On October 15, 1962, the trial of Heuser and ten other defendants from the KdS Minsk office began before the Koblenz Regional Court under the direction of Regional Court Director Erich Randebrock : SS-Obersturmführer Karl Dalheimer , SS-Obersturmführer Johannes Feder , SS-Hauptsturmführer Arthur Harder , government inspector Wilhelm Kaul , SS-Obersturmführer Friedrich Merbach , SS-Obersturmführer Jakob Oswald , SS-Hauptsturmführer Rudolf Schlegel , SS-Hauptsturmführer Franz Stark , SS-Untersturmführer Eberhard von Toll and SS-Hauptsturmführer Artur Wilke .

Line of defense

Heuser had deliberately chosen his first defense attorney from his circle of friends as an SS officer from the KdS Minsk. As the senior and the main defendant, Heuser was the focus of the process. The first line of defense was the claim that they had only carried out orders from command posts. In addition, the events occurred in the course of the " fight against gangs ". However, Heuser was initially flexible and admitted that he was partly guilty . On the other hand, the co-defendants incriminated him because they relied on Heuser's orders.

Crime complexes

During the execution from March 1 to 3, 1942, Heuser was assigned to one day as a shooter at the firing squad that was supposed to shoot Jews from the Minsk ghetto . Heuser defended himself with all sorts of claims that he did not take part. Heuser also offered an acquaintance who claimed under oath that she had met Heuser in Berlin at the beginning of March 1942. But the testimony of Merbach and other witnesses refuted his testimony. The jury came to the conclusion that Heuser wanted to obscure his presence.

When a transport of 900 deportees from Vienna arrived in Minsk on May 11, 1942 , Heuser acted as a shooter during the execution, firing the fatal shots with the pistol at victims who were still alive in the pit. He would have shot like an automaton , so he confessed to these events. Heuser also acted as a shooter during the execution of the deportees on a transport from Vienna, which arrived on May 26, 1942. During an evacuation operation of the Minsk ghetto from July 28 to 30, 1942, Heuser took part in the subsequent execution, where he was confronted with the testimony of a witness that Heuser had returned from the shooting site with a pale expression on his face. Heuser tried in vain to cover up claims that he had not been in Minsk at the time.

On the night of September 21-22, 1943, the General Commissioner for Belarus , Wilhelm Kube , was fatally injured by an explosive device. The SS and Police Leader in Minsk, the SS Brigade Leader and Major General of the Police Curt von Gottberg , thereupon ordered 300 residents of Minsk to be shot in retaliation. Several witnesses testify that Heuser took part in the execution and shot himself. Heuser denied participating in the execution, but Heuser did not give any exonerating counter-statements to the accusations in the judgment.

In the winter of 1942/1944 a young Russian woman was convicted of having carried out espionage activities in Minsk against the German institutions. Ehrlinger gave Heuser the order to shoot the Russian woman. Without a present court ruling, Heuser executed the Russian on a rubble plot. Heuser admitted the execution and claimed to have acted lawfully . A witness confirmed the sequence of events. Heuser defended himself by saying that they had to crack down ruthlessly with the enemy agents .

Towards the end of 1942 or beginning of 1943, the Catholic priest Godlewski was picked up and shot by two Gestapo officials in Minsk . The questioning of one of the participants in this action in court revealed beyond any doubt that Heuser was the shooter because Heuser was the last person to be with Godlewski in the dark immediately before the shot. Who gave the order to execute could not be clarified. There was also no court ruling for the execution. Since Godlewski was also politically active in a local aid organization, the court assumed that the Gestapo wanted to eliminate an alleged political opponent. Heuser denied having carried out the execution. He wouldn't have known anything about it.

Support and defense

While he was in custody, colleagues from the Rhineland-Palatinate LKA sent him flowers. Heuser was probably not satisfied with the first defense attorney, because he attacked the court and the chairman with dubious motions, which also delayed the process. Finally, Heuser replaced him and his successor, so that he was finally represented by defense attorney Egon Geis. The process dragged on for 62 days. In his plea , Geis called for Heuser to be acquitted. This had only made an accessory to the crime of genocide .

Facts and sentences

After the taking of evidence and the hearing, the court found Heuser convicted in ten offenses and imposed the following sentence in the individual offenses for joint or individual aiding and abetting of murder in 11,103 cases:

• March action from March 1st to 3rd, 1942 in 1000 cases: 6 years in prison
• Transport action on May 11, 1942 in 900 cases: 4 years in prison
• Transport action on May 26, 1942 in 900 cases: 4 years in prison
• Transport action on September 2, 1942 in 900 cases: 4 years in prison
• Transport action on September 25, 1942 in 900 cases: 4 years in prison
• Transport action on October 9, 1942 in 500 cases: 4 years in prison
• July 1942 in 5500 cases: 10 years in prison
• Dissolution of the ghetto in Minsk in autumn 1943 in 500 cases: 4 years in prison
• Live cremation in autumn 1943 in 2 cases: 3 years in prison
• Execution of an agent: 5 years in prison

Heuser had participated in numerous other mass killings, but his direct perpetration could not be proven beyond doubt for the court. The sum of the individual sentences of 48 years in prison was combined into a total sentence of 15 years.

Release from prison and new investigations

In mid-1969, Heuser applied for the remainder of the sentence to be waived. The management of the Diez correctional facility supported the application in a letter dated July 1, 1969 to the chief public prosecutor in Koblenz, since Heuser was not a criminal in the usual sense . On December 12, 1969, the Koblenz Regional Court ordered Heuser's release from prison. In the meantime there have been accusations against Heuser of having committed crimes as head of EK 14. The responsible public prosecutor in Koblenz interrogated Heuser several times in the period from June 1979 to January 1980. Heuser denied any action against Jews because at the time when Einsatzgruppe H was deployed in Slovakia there were no more Jews and he only had the assignment Fight partisans. Since the public prosecutor was unable to produce sufficient evidence against Heuser, the proceedings were discontinued on February 29, 1980.

When the Munich public prosecutor's office brought new charges against Heuser for using the EK 14 at the end of the 1980s, the investigation could no longer be continued because Heuser died on January 30, 1989.

literature

• LG Koblenz, May 21, 1963 . In: Justice and Nazi crimes . Collection of German criminal judgments for Nazi homicidal crimes 1945–1966, vol. XIX, edited by Irene Sagel-Grande, HH Fuchs, CF Rüter . Amsterdam: University Press, 1978, No. 552, pp. 159–317 Subject matter of the proceedings: shooting, gassing in a 'gas truck' and burning of thousands of Soviet Jews and Western European Jews deported to Minsk, gypsies, the mentally ill, other Soviet civilians and Soviet agents in the Years 1941–1944 in the area of ​​the KdS / BdS Minsk. Shootings of reprisals, etc. a. Execution of 300 men, women and children from Minsk after the assassination attempt on General Commissioner Kube
• Wilhelm Lüdtke, Georg Heuser, Die Berliner S-Bahn-Morde, in: Kriminalistik, 16th year, May 1942, issue 5, pp. 49–52 and 66–70.
• Heiner Lichtenstein , Himmler's Green Helpers - The Protection and Order Police in the “Third Reich”, Cologne 1990.
• Konrad Kwiet , The murder of Jews, Gypsies and Partisans - On the use of Einsatzkommandos 14 of the Security Police and the SD in Slovakia 1944/45, in: Yearbook for Research on Antisemitism Volume 7, Frankfurt / Main 1992, pp. 71-81.
• Willi Dreßen , The Holocaust in Slovakia and the German Justice, in: Yearbook for Research on Antisemitism Volume 7, Frankfurt / Main 1992, pp. 93-102.
• Tatjana Tönsmeyer , Die Einsatzgruppe H in Slovakia, in: Joachim Hösler, Wolfgang Kessler, Finis Mundi - End times and the ends of the world in Eastern Europe, Stuttgart 1998.
• Christian Gerlach , Calculated Murders - The German Economic and Extermination Policy in Belarus 1041 to 1944, Hamburg 1999.
• Dieter Schenk , Blind in the Right Eye - The Brown Roots of the BKA, Cologne 2001.
• Jürgen Matthäus , Georg Heuser - veteran of the Eastern Security Police, in: Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Gerhard Paul (eds.), Careers of Violence - National Socialist Perpetrator Biographies, Darmstadt 2004.
• Jürgen Matthäus, "No ordinary Criminal" - Georg Heuser, Other Mass Murders, and West German Justice, in: Patricia Herberer, Jürgen Matthäus (Edits.), Attrocities on Trial - Historical Perspectives on the Politics of Prosecuting War Crimes, London 2008.
• Christina Ullrich, “I don't feel like a murderer”: the integration of Nazi perpetrators into post-war society , Darmstadt: WBG, 2011, ISBN 978-3-534-23802-6 .
• David Thomas, Ostland, London 2013 (novel about Heuser).

Web links

• The trial against Heuser in Koblenz
• Reference to Heuser in Mutterstadt in the years 1948–1949