Gerhard Friday

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Gerhard Freitag , (born March 13, 1913 in Magdeburg ; † October 10, 1995 ) was a German SS-Hauptsturmführer who was assigned to Einsatzkommando 2 of Einsatzgruppe A in Riga ( Latvia ) in 1941 and in 1943 to Sonderkommando 10 a of Einsatzgruppe D in National Socialism the Ukraine belonged. In the post-war period, he worked as a government criminal advisor and head of the personal identification department at the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA).

Life

Freitag was born in Magdeburg as the son of a senior police officer. After graduating from high school in 1931, he completed an apprenticeship at Deutsche Bank und Disconto-Gesellschaft in Magdeburg on April 1, 1931 , which he completed in autumn 1933. After that he was employed there as a bank clerk.

time of the nationalsocialism

At the age of twenty, Friday joined the SA on November 5, 1933 , on January 1, 1935 the German Air Sports Association (DLV), a forerunner organization of the National Socialist Air Corps (NSFK), and on April 1, 1937 he reported to the " SS -Motorsturm “In Hanover and on May 1, 1937, he joined the NSDAP with membership number 5.540.710.

In 1937 the job changed from bank clerk to detective on Friday. He first entered the service of the state police administration in Hanover on February 1, 1937 and was hired by the Halle / Saale criminal police control center as a candidate for a detective commissioner on June 1, 1937 . From October 12, 1938 to June 30, 1939, he completed the 13th detective trainee course at the driving school of the Security Police and SD in Berlin-Charlottenburg , was appointed detective detective on July 15, 1939 in Magdeburg and on January 15 In 1940 appointed detective inspector.

Freitag was accepted into the General SS in March 1939 with membership number 337.662 and appointed SS-Untersturmführer on July 1, 1939 . In 1940 he was selected for a career in the executive service within the Security Police and the SD , in the course of which he began studying law . In February 1941 he was appointed SS-Obersturmführer . From May to September he acted as “antechamber adjutant” to Rudolf Batz , the leader of Einsatzkommando 2 of Einsatzgruppe A operating in the Baltic States , which was one of the first units in August 1941, “which not 'only' men, but also women and children en masse shot". Witness testimony confirms his presence at the official meetings that took place under the direction of Batz, at which the shootings were allocated and “two or three times the number of Jews shot so far ” was discussed.

He was then able to continue his university education from Friday to October 1942, but was not employed in the managerial service, but transferred to the Wilhelmshaven Criminal Police in November 1942 , before further stations of his "foreign assignment" took place from May 1943 until the end of the war.

First, from May to October 1943, he was assigned to Einsatzkommando 10a of Einsatzgruppe D in Mosyr , commanded by SS-Obersturmbannführer Kurt Christmann , and after its dissolution to the commander of the Security Police and SD (BdS) of the Ukraine in Rovno . According to his own statements, he wants to have been commissioned there to “fight gangs” and to deal with “war economic crimes”.

According to his own information, he was transferred to the BdS in Belgrade on Friday at the beginning of January 1944 .

On November 6, 1944, Friday was finally seconded to the BdS in Oslo . Here he was in Department IV ( Gestapo ) responsible for the areas of "Military Organization and Home Front" and "Illegal Leaflets and Propaganda" and was promoted to SS-Hauptsturmführer on January 30, 1945.

post war period

At the end of the war, Freitag was imprisoned in Norway, from which he was handed over to the British occupation forces in December 1946 and deported to Germany. Here he was interned by the Allies at various locations and released on November 11, 1948. Until 1951 he got by as a construction worker or was unemployed. It was only when his initially unsuccessful efforts to denazification were successful - on February 28, 1951, the Appeals Chamber rejected a classification in Category II as "Nazi-burdened" by the 2nd Chamber of the Central Hesse-South Chamber on February 24, 1950 on May 2, 1951, he was employed by Süddeutsche Bank AG Mainz.

During this activity as a bank clerk, at the end of 1953 he asserted his pension claims as a civil servant within the meaning of the 131 regulations. On the registration and personnel sheet submitted, he concealed his activity in the SS task force and instead emphasized: “I was never a member of the Gestapo.” In February 1957, the President of the Lower Saxony administrative district of Oldenburg, Robert Dannemann , told him that he was “as a so-called down-to-earth official "Should be assessed because he" did not acquire his civil service rights because of close ties to National Socialism ". On April 15, 1957, his application, which he had already submitted to the Federal Criminal Police Office in November 1956, was successful. Friday was hired by the BKA as an employee for the duration of the probationary period. Friday's recruitment was expressly advocated by the BKA's head of personnel, Eduard Michael , who himself was involved in the deportation of 40,000 Jews from the Czestochowa ghetto in 1941 . In a letter from December 1957 to the Federal Ministry of the Interior , signed by BKA President Reinhard Dullien and Michael - as "reporter" on Friday's progress - it was stated that his suitability as a BKA official was "that his takeover into a firm Civil servant relationship would represent a valuable systematic enrichment of the Federal Criminal Police Office ”. Freitag was employed in the news gathering department before he moved to the identification service in 1970 to become the "subject manager, assistant and consultant for identification of persons" . Because of his youthful appearance, his colleagues referred to him as Inspector "Bübchen".

From the mid-1960s, however, disciplinary proceedings and public prosecutor investigations were initiated against him , which led to his temporary suspension from service and bans on promotion. First, from 1960 on, Freitag was heard as a witness in several trials against perpetrators by SS Einsatzgruppen, as a result of which the Chief Public Prosecutor at the Hamburg Regional Court noted on February 14, 1964 that Friday himself “may be considered a suspect” in the course of the preparations Following formal disciplinary proceedings, he was suspended from duty from October 1965 to January 1966, before the Federal Ministry of the Interior opened four-year disciplinary proceedings on January 18, 1966, in which he was charged:

"1. as a member of Einsatzkommando 2 in the Riga area in 1941 to have been involved in the preparation and execution of the extermination of the Jewish population and 2. at his judicial interrogation on March 27, 1962, as a witness to the truth, to have contradicted the truth that he was told by the At that time nothing specific was known about the extermination of the Jews. "

Regarding the accusation that he did not state his membership in the SS-Einsatzkommando when he was hired, he explained:

“When I joined the Federal Criminal Police Office, I had to assume that my security police involvement was known. I myself was no stranger to the senior officials either. "

The disciplinary proceedings were discontinued on April 6, 1970, because the preliminary disciplinary investigations from 1966, according to which it could certainly be assumed that Friday "himself took part in a shooting operation [...] could not be proven" due to the order situation. The postponed promotions have now been made up in quick succession: In 1971, Freitag was promoted to the Criminal Investigation Council, in 1972 to the Higher Criminal Police Office, because, as the administration of the BKA argued in 1972, the preliminary proceedings pending at the Hamburg Regional Court "will probably be closed at the end of the year due to lack of evidence" and " any doubts that may still exist should not be at the expense of the officer ”. The public prosecutor's investigations were indeed closed due to a lack of evidence, although the public prosecutor's office found “sufficient evidence to be suspected” that “all members of Einsatzgruppe A who were in Riga in July / August 1941 had contacted the the shooting operations described were involved ”. On March 31, 1973, Freitag, who was never charged, reached his age limit and resigned as senior criminal investigator. D. to retire.

literature

Remarks

  1. ↑ Imanuel Baumann / Herbert Reinke / Andrej Stephan / Patrick Wagner : Shadows of the past. The BKA and its founding generation in the early Federal Republic . Edited by the Federal Criminal Police Office, Criminalistic Institute. Luchterhand, Cologne 2011, p. 139.
  2. ↑ Imanuel Baumann u. a .: Shadow of the past. The BKA and its founding generation in the early Federal Republic , p. 140.
  3. ↑ Imanuel Baumann u. a .: Shadow of the past. The BKA and its founding generation in the early Federal Republic , pp. 140f.
  4. ↑ a b c Imanuel Baumann u. a .: Shadow of the past. The BKA and its founding generation in the early Federal Republic , p. 141.
  5. ↑ Dieter Schenk: Blind in the right eye. The brown roots of the BKA . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2001, p. 77.
  6. ↑ a b Dieter Schenk: Blind in the right eye. The brown roots of the BKA . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2001, p. 83.
  7. ↑ a b Imanuel Baumann u. a .: Shadow of the past. The BKA and its founding generation in the early Federal Republic , p. 142.
  8. ↑ a b Imanuel Baumann and others: Shadows of the past. The BKA and its founding generation in the early Federal Republic , p. 143.
  9. ↑ Imanuel Baumann u. a .: Shadow of the past. The BKA and its founding generation in the early Federal Republic , p. 146.
  10. ↑ a b Imanuel Baumann u. a .: Shadow of the past. The BKA and its founding generation in the early Federal Republic , p. 153.
  11. ↑ Dieter Schenk: Blind in the right eye. The brown roots of the BKA . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2001, p. 74
  12. ↑ Imanuel Baumann u. a .: Shadow of the past. The BKA and its founding generation in the early Federal Republic , p. 148.
  13. ↑ Imanuel Baumann u. a .: Shadow of the past. The BKA and its founding generation in the early Federal Republic , p. 151.
  14. ↑ Imanuel Baumann u. a .: Shadow of the past. The BKA and its founding generation in the early Federal Republic , p. 154.
  15. ↑ Imanuel Baumann u. a .: Shadow of the past. The BKA and its founding generation in the early Federal Republic , p. 151ff.
personal data
SURNAME Friday, Gerhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German detective and SS-Hauptsturmführer
DATE OF BIRTH March 13, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Magdeburg
DATE OF DEATH October 10, 1995