Hans-Dietrich Ernst

Hans-Dietrich Ernst (born November 3, 1908 in Opole ; † November 23, 1986 in Leer (East Friesland) ) was a German lawyer, SS-Sturmbannführer and SD employee who served as commander of the security police in German-occupied France during the Second World War and the SD (KdS) in Angers and was responsible for the deportations of Jews there.

Life

Studies and Third Reich

The judge's son completed a law degree after completing his school career . After the National Socialists seized power , he joined the NSDAP . After completing his legal traineeship and graduation, he worked in internal administration in Hamburg and Berlin and immediately after the annexation of Austria until the end of 1939 in the office of the "Reich Commissioner for the Reunification of Austria with the German Empire". After the beginning of the Second World War, he was appointed to the government council in 1940 as part of his work for the Hamburg Senate Department. Shortly afterwards he became the deputy of the district administrator in Tegel in the administrative district of Karlsbad . He was promoted to the higher government council.

After the campaign in the west , he was deployed in German-occupied France as a war administrator in the military administration in Dux and from 1941 in Bordeaux as an officer for police matters at the field command there. At the beginning of June 1942 he became the commander of the security police and the SD (KdS) in Angers . At the beginning of his activity as KdS received the equalization rank SS-Hauptsturmführer due to this function . On July 20, 1942, a transport of Jews from Angers to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp departed under his command . Ernst vacated his official seat as KdS Angers in August 1944 as the Allies advanced .

After the war

After the war, Ernst was in American internment from which he could escape, however. He then went into hiding in Leipzig , but was arrested by members of the Soviet occupation forces and sentenced to twenty years of forced labor after a trial . He was imprisoned in the Vorkuta work camp of the Gulag from 1947 to 1956 and was released as an amnesty . During his internment in the Soviet Union, he was sentenced to death three times in absentia for crimes against French citizens.

During his absence, on the initiative of his wife in 1951, a court proceedings took place in which she appeared on behalf of her husband, who was believed to be missing in the Soviet Union. His wife had initiated this procedure in order to be financially secure under the 131 rule. Ernst was classified as a supporter of National Socialism in the denazification process and would have received lower salaries and a five-year ban on promotion if he had been reinstated in the public service. His wife still received financial support under the 131 regulation.

After his release, Ernst moved to his wife in Leer at the beginning of 1956 and received compensation of DM 5,520 . On the initiative of the Central Legal Protection Agency (ZRS), Ernst was warned against entering France by the Association of Returnees . Due to his denazification status, Ernst could not return to the public service, but received payments. From 1958 he was admitted to the bar in Leer and from 1964 also as a notary . Investigations were launched several times against Ernst, to whom the Central Office of the State Justice Administration became aware in 1965 and who was targeted by Nazi hunters Serge and Beate Klarsfeld . During an interrogation in March 1977, Ernst did not deny the deportation of Jews and referred to the tasks he, as KdS, demanded. He was not aware of the destination of the deportation of Jews, as the trains first went to the Drancy assembly camp and he knew nothing about the Holocaust . Serge Klarsfeld sent Justice Minister Hans-Jochen Vogel in 1977, among other things, about incriminating material, which he passed on to the Oldenburg Higher Regional Court . In 1977, the OLG Oldenburg withdrew Ernst's admission as a lawyer and as a notary. After an honorary court proceeding initiated by Ernst, both admissions were granted again. After the campaigns of the Klarsfelds in Leer, French protests against Ernst. Ernst voluntarily returned both approvals in 1981 in the course of the legal proceedings initiated against him. Because of the deportation of Jews, Ernst was indicted in 1981 by the public prosecutor of the Aurich Regional Court , but due to his state of health the main hearing did not take place.

literature

• Bernhard Brunner: The France Complex. The National Socialist Crimes in France and the Justice of the Federal Republic of Germany . Wallstein, Göttingen 2004, ISBN 3-89244-693-8 .
• Serge Klarsfeld: The Final Solution of the Jewish Question in France: German Documents 1941–1944 / Documentation Center for Contemporary Jewish History Paris, Klarsfeld, Paris 1977.
• Ahlrich Meyer : perpetrator under interrogation. The “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” in France 1940–1944 , WBG , Darmstadt 2005, ISBN 3-534-17564-6 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b c} Bernhard Brunner: The France complex. The National Socialist Crimes in France and the Justice of the Federal Republic of Germany . Wallstein, Göttingen 2004, p. 57.
2. ^ Bernhard Brunner: The France Complex. The National Socialist Crimes in France and the Justice of the Federal Republic of Germany . Wallstein, Göttingen 2004, p. 56.
3. ↑ Commemorative Book Victims of the Persecution of Jews under the National Socialist Tyranny in Germany 1933–1945. Chronology of the deportations from France
4. ^ Bernhard Brunner: The France Complex. The National Socialist Crimes in France and the Justice of the Federal Republic of Germany . Wallstein, Göttingen 2004, p. 63.
5. ^ Bernhard Brunner: The France Complex. The National Socialist Crimes in France and the Justice of the Federal Republic of Germany . Wallstein, Göttingen 2004, p. 96.
6. ↑ ^{a b c d} Bernhard Brunner: The France complex. The National Socialist Crimes in France and the Justice of the Federal Republic of Germany . Wallstein, Göttingen 2004, p. 177 f.
7. ^ Bernhard Brunner: The France Complex. The National Socialist Crimes in France and the Justice of the Federal Republic of Germany . Wallstein, Göttingen 2004, p. 143.
8. ^ Bernhard Brunner: The France Complex. The National Socialist Crimes in France and the Justice of the Federal Republic of Germany . Wallstein, Göttingen 2004, p. 333.
9. ^ Bernhard Brunner: The France Complex. The National Socialist Crimes in France and the Justice of the Federal Republic of Germany . Wallstein, Göttingen 2004, p. 328f.