Georg Michalsen

Georg Michalsen , (born September 13, 1906 as Georg Michalczyk in Wendrin in Upper Silesia ; † unknown) was a German SS-Sturmbannführer who was involved in the systematic murder of Polish Jews, the " Aktion Reinhardt ".

Life

The son of a primary school teacher attended school in Opole from 1912 to 1920 . After an apprenticeship as an office assistant in a law firm in Opole, Michalczyk worked as an accountant or clerk in agricultural cooperatives, in the building materials industry and in the housing industry.

Raised by his father in the German national sense, Michalczyk joined the " Wehrwolf " in 1924 , a regional folk organization. On November 1, 1928, he became a member of the NSDAP (membership number 103.613). In the party, he headed the local group in Opole from 1930, before he had been editor and treasurer. He was also a member of the SA reserve. On January 10, 1932, Michalczyk switched from the SA to the SS (SS No. 29,337). At times sports officer in the 45th SS standard in Opole, Michalczyk had achieved the rank of SS-Obersturmführer in 1937 .

In World War II

During the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, Michalczyk was part of an SS commando from Opole that marched into Czestochowa . In Poland he led an SS troop of around 70 men who, in addition to guard duties, trained the “ Volksdeutsche Selbstschutz ” in Petrikau . Michalczyk also trained self-protection units in the Opoczno and Rawa districts . This paramilitary organization, formed from members of the German minority in Poland , was used as auxiliary police and was involved in the murder and expulsion of Poles.

Michalczyk married in 1940 and had a daughter. In the same year he had his name - which he perceived as a Polish-sounding "flaw" - changed to Michalsen.

Deportation of Jews at Umschlagplatz in Warsaw

Initially deployed to the SS and Police Leader's (SSPF) office in Radom for a short time , Michalsen switched to the SSPF's staff for Lublin , Odilo Globocnik, in August 1940 . Globocnik, relieved of Gauleiter from Vienna due to financial irregularities, was entrusted with building fortifications along the German-Soviet demarcation line. Michalsen ran a camp for mostly Jewish forced laborers who were used for this work. After a short time he fell ill with dysentery ; in April 1941 he returned to Globocnik's staff. After the German attack on the Soviet Union , Globocnik was commissioned by Himmler to set up SS and police bases in the newly conquered areas. Michalsen was appointed head of the Riga branch . The planned bases could not be realized; in the case of Riga, conflicts of competence with the local Higher SS and Police Leader (HSSPF) for Ostland , Friedrich Jeckeln , may have been the cause. When the Riga ghetto was evacuated on November 30, 1941 and between 12,000 and 15,000 people were shot in the forest of Rumbula , Michalsen was there. In his opinion, the "security was totally inadequate" ; According to later findings by the judicial authorities, Michalsen was not involved in the mass murder .

Michalsen returned to Lublin in the early summer of 1942. At this point in time Odilo Globocnik organized " Aktion Reinhardt ", the systematic murder of all Polish Jews. In Treblinka , Belzec and Sobibor were extermination camps built to house the Jews in the gas chambers were murdered. On July 21, 1942, a command from the Lublin office to “evacuate” the Jews from the Warsaw ghetto arrived on site: Michalsen, Hermann Höfle , Kurt Claasen , Ernst Lerch and Hermann Worthoff discussed with the Warsaw SSPF, Ferdinand von Sammern-Frankenegg , the procedure. Höfle and Michalsen demanded from the chairman of the Warsaw Jewish Council , Adam Czerniaków , that 6,000 Jews should be available every day for an alleged “resettlement to the east”. The fiction of “resettlement” could not be maintained for long, it quickly became known that the destination of the deportations was the Treblinka extermination camp. After July 27, the command had the ghetto evacuated from north to south. Michalsen as deputy head of the command was deployed at the transshipment point at this time , where people had to board the freight wagons to be transported to Treblinka. The deportations lasted until the beginning of September 1942; According to later estimates by the Hamburg public prosecutor's office, around 300,000 Warsaw Jews were murdered in Treblinka.

After the completion of the evacuation of the Warsaw ghetto, Michalsen was an “evacuation expert”: In the following months, with the Lublin Command, he held a leading position in the evacuation of the ghettos in Otwock , Wołomin , Piaski , Międzyrzec Podlaski and Włodawa , among others . When the Warsaw Ghetto was finally evacuated in the spring of 1943, Michalsen organized the relocation of Többens and Schultz's operations to Lublin camps. The deportation of the ghetto residents was carried out by the new SSPF in Warsaw, Jürgen Stroop . Between August 16 and 23, 1943, Michalsen was involved in the liquidation of the ghetto in Białystok . At least 30,000 people were deported to Treblinka and Auschwitz. Odilo Globocnik came to the following assessment of Michalsen's mission in Poland: " M. participated in the mission> R < [Einhard] in an independent and decisive position and, for example, decisively influenced the heavy fighting in Warsaw and cleared Bialystok in 5 days."

At the end of August 1943 Michalsen was transferred to Trieste . Odilo Globocnik had been appointed HSSPF “ Adriatic Coastal Land ”; several of his employees, like Michalsen, moved from Lublin to Trieste. In Trieste Michalsen took over the management of the HR department at the HSSPF; he was also involved in fighting partisans in Istria. Michalsen held the function of SS and police commander in various cities: In spring 1944 in Fiume , in summer in Pola and from autumn 1944 in Trieste.

Prosecution after the end of the war

Michalsen was captured on May 31, 1945 together with Odilo Globocnik , Hermann Höfle and Ernst Lerch on an alpine pasture near Paternion in Carinthia. In British captivity, he posed as a member of the Waffen SS . Released from captivity in 1948, he moved to Hamburg in 1950 and worked again as an accountant. He was arrested on January 24, 1961. According to press reports, he initially stated that he had been a soldier during the war and had temporarily worked in administration. Public prosecutor Dietrich Zeug interrogated him in 1961 for the central office of the state justice administrations for the investigation of National Socialist crimes . Stuff noted Michalsen's statement that Adolf Eichmann had participated as an observer in a mass murder in the Warsaw ghetto in the summer of 1942. This statement, which weighed heavily on Eichmann and would have refuted his staging as a small cog, could no longer be used against him in the Jerusalem trial for a time.

On July 25, 1974, Michalsen was sentenced to twelve years in prison by the Hamburg Regional Court . The subject of the proceedings was, among other things, the deportation of the Warsaw and Bialystok Jews to the extermination camps. Michalsen testified to the point in his trial, which earned him "a certain amount of respect from the public prosecutor's office" . As a witness in a criminal case in Wiesbaden, Michalsen responded to the judge's questions: “In the whole matter with the Jews, no one thought anything at all. You just did your job and didn't think about it. ” On May 22, 1979, he was released from custody.

literature

• Andrej Angrick : Georg Michalsen - traveling salesman of the "final solution". In: Klaus-Michael Mallmann , Gerhard Paul (Ed.): Careers of violence. National Socialist perpetrator biographies. WBG , Darmstadt 2004, ISBN 3-534-16654-X , new edition. Primus, Darmstadt & WBG 2010, pp. 156–165. ISBN 3896787268 .
• Joseph Poprzeczny: Odilo Globocnik - Hitler's man in the East. McFarland, London, 2004. ISBN 0-7864-1625-4 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ SS membership number in the staffing plan for the staff of the SS and Police Leader in the Lublin District at www.deathcamps.org.
2. ↑ Angrick, Michalsen , p. 157.
3. ↑ Angrick, Michalsen , p. 159.
4. ↑ Angrick, Michalsen , p. 159f. Here is the quote too.
5. ↑ Globocnik's letter to Maximilian von Herff dated February 11, 1945 with the request that Michalsen be promoted to Sturmbannführer of the Waffen SS. Quoted from Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer-Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 , p. 410.
6. ↑ Angrick, Michalsen , p. 160.
7. ↑ Michael Wedekind: National Socialist Occupation and Annexation Policy in Northern Italy 1943 to 1945: The Operation Zones “Alpine Foreland” and “Adriatic Coastal Land”. (Military history studies 38), edited by the Military History Research Office , R. Oldenbourg Verlag , Munich 2003, ISBN 3-486-56650-4 , p. 446.
8. ↑ Poprzeczny, Globocnik , p. 130.
9. ↑ Poprzeczny, Globocnik , p. 129.
10. ↑ Ruth Bettina Birn, On the state of knowledge of the prosecution in the Eichmann trial ..., in Insights 05, Bulletin of the Fritz Bauer Institute Frankfurt, spring 2011, p. 27 according to source Federal Archives Ludwigsburg.
11. ↑ Summary of the verdict on justice and Nazi crimes ( memento of the original from June 26, 2013 on WebCite ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
12. ↑ Angrick, Michalsen , p. 156. In this assessment, Andrick refers to conversations with Hamburg prosecutors and refers to the widespread tactics of Nazi criminals to deny their crimes, to trivialize them, to portray themselves as victims or to an order or putative emergency to call.
13. ↑ Michalsen's testimony in a criminal trial in Wiesbaden, quoted in Angrick, Michalsen , p. 160.