Gustav Richter (Jewish advisor)

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Gustav Richter (born November 19, 1912 in Stadtprozelten ; † June 5, 1997 ) was a German SS-Sturmbannführer and as a " Jew advisor " employee of the Eichmann department in the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA). In January 1982 he was sentenced to four years in prison for participating in the deportation of Romanian Jews .

Life

The lawyer was a member of the NS student union from 1932 and a member of the NSDAP from May 1933 (membership number 2.710.328). He joined the SD in 1934 and worked there from 1935 in the Judaism department in Stuttgart , where he became deputy head of the department in 1939. From 1940 he was subordinate to the commander of the security police and the SD in Mulhouse and was also temporarily deployed in Dijon .

“Adviser for Jewish questions” in Romania

From April 1941 to August 1944 Richter worked as an “advisor for Jewish affairs” in Romania and in the function of a police attaché at the German embassy in Bucharest . His task initially included supporting the Romanian government in drafting "anti-Jewish legislation". Richter returned briefly to the German Reich in May 1941 , as the Romanian government confiscated Jewish property, initiated pogroms and murdered tens of thousands of Jewish citizens, even without Richter's support . However, at the request of the Romanian Foreign Minister Mihai Antonescu , Richter returned to his post in Bucharest in September 1941. Richter cooperated with the Romanian head for "Jewish issues" Radu Lecca , who was directly based at the Romanian Prime Minister. Richter operated the dissolution of the "Union of Jewish Communities" and thus achieved the establishment of a " Judenrat ". On July 29, 1942, Antonescu and Richter agreed to the deportation of 272,409 Romanian Jews to the Belzec extermination camp . Ambassador Manfred von Killinger informed Berlin directly of the Romanian government's commitment on August 11th, and Emil von Rintelen sent a telegram with Richter's agreement to the Foreign Office on August 19th . The deportation was postponed due to the increasingly tense German-Romanian relationship and ultimately not carried out. Nevertheless, up to 250,000 Romanian Jews perished, also with the help of Richter. Because of Richter's interventions with the Romanian government, Romanian Jews were denied emigration to Palestine . As a result of the course of the war, Richter's influence on the Romanian government decreased steadily and ultimately only included the field of " anti-Bolshevik and anti-Semitic propaganda ".

On April 3 and 4, 1944, a “working conference of the Jewish officers” of twelve diplomatic representations of the Foreign Office in Europe took place in Krummhübel , initiated by the Information Center Anti-Jewish Foreign Action . Here the participants agreed to intensify the propaganda in order to advance the Shoah . Franz Alfred Six demanded the "physical elimination of the Eastern Jews", as the "Judenreferent" of the office, Eberhard von Thadden , recorded. Richter attended this meeting on business. After Romania, in view of the course of the war with the royal coup in August 1944, switched from the Axis powers to the side of the Allies , Richter was extradited to the Red Army on August 23, 1944, along with other members of the German embassy staff.

After the end of the war

Richter was interned in the Soviet Union and charged on December 31, 1951 with “espionage” and preparing a war of aggression against the Soviet Union through political influence in Romania. After his release from imprisonment, he returned to the Federal Republic of Germany from the Soviet Union in 1955 and worked as an employee. Following a trial initiated in 1961, he was interrogated in 1969 by the Frankenthal Regional Court, among others, because of his involvement in the deportation of Romanian Jews. In this context, he denied the authorship of an article in the Bucharest Tageblatt of August 8, 1942 with the title “Romania becomes Jew-free ”. Due to other articles written by him and identified by name with similar content, Richter's authorship is obvious. Because of his involvement in the deportation of Romanian Jews, he was sentenced to four years imprisonment by the Frankenthal Regional Court in January 1982. Nothing is known about his further life.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 494.
  2. ↑ a b Encyclopedia of the Holocaust ; Piper Verlag, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-492-22700-7 , volume 3, page 1225f.
  3. ↑ Files on German Foreign Policy , Series E: 1941–1945, Volume III, p. 337, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht: Göttingen 1974
  4. ↑ The Rintelen Telegram of August 19, 1942, see files on German foreign policy , Series E: 1941–1945, Volume III, p. 342, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht: Göttingen 1974. Von Rintelen later claimed that he had made this knowledge, to prevent deportation.
  5. ↑ Christoph Dieckmann , Babette Quinkert, Tatjana Tönsmeyer : Cooperation and Crime: Forms of "Collaboration" in Eastern Europe 1939-1945 , Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2003, p. 99f.
  6. ↑ Wolf Oschlies : Romanian and German anti-Semitism against the Jews in Romania ( Memento from July 19, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) on www.shoa.de
  7. ↑ cf. Eckart Conze, Norbert Frei, Peter Hayes and Moshe Zimmermann: The Office and the Past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic . Munich 2010, pp. 196–199.
  8. ↑ See minutes of the conference of the Jewish consultants in Krummhübel on April 3-4, 1944, PA AA Zagreb Secret Files 27, 2 Summary: Diplomats of the Final Solution on the website . Exact protocol
  9. ↑ Armin Heinen : Romania, the Holocaust and the logic of violence , Munich 2007, p. 22
  10. ↑ Armin Heinen : Romania, the Holocaust and the logic of violence , Munich 2007, p. 85
personal data
SURNAME Judge, Gustav
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS-Sturmbannführer and Jewish officer in Romania
DATE OF BIRTH November 19, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Stadtprozelten
DATE OF DEATH June 5, 1997