Hans-Joachim Becker

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Hans-Joachim Becker (born November 19, 1909 in Kassel ; † after 1974) was the head of the central clearing office for the T4 campaign in the Third Reich and office manager of the Nazi killing center in Hartheim .

Life

Hans-Joachim Becker was born on November 19, 1909 in Kassel as the son of a dairy machine dealer. After graduating from secondary school, he worked in his father's company. Becker volunteered in a Jewish paint factory in 1929, before starting in 1930 as an administrative employee in the head office of the regional governor's Hesse association in Kassel. Becker was used here in the office and cash desk as well as in the Gau youth welfare office.

On May 1, 1937, he joined the NSDAP . When he was interrogated on March 19, 1949 by the public prosecutor's office in Kassel (3a Js 794/48), he gave one of the most curious reasons for this among the many attempts to explain that had been heard after the war for joining the party: “It was suggested to me at the time Party because I was the head of the soccer team in my authority. "

He passed the inspector's examination for the upscale administration and cashier service in 1940 with an overall grade of “good”, although he was not yet officially appointed. A delegation of the Youth Office of the Gauselbstverwaltung Gdansk took place from mid 1940th

At the suggestion of Herbert Linden , Ministerialrat from the Reich Ministry of the Interior, whose wife was a cousin of Becker, he was required to do emergency service for the T4 organization and released for this from January / February 1941 by the Hesse District Association. Becker, however, remained a formal employee of the district association, which had Becker's salaries reimbursed by the T4 headquarters. Associated with this service obligation was a higher pay grade.

At the T4 headquarters, Becker initially worked in the estate administration, which was also responsible for the utilization of the dental gold of the "euthanasia" victims. As an administrative specialist , he found the central office of Aktion T4 in an administrative jumble. In his testimony of March 4, 1947 before the public prosecutor in Kassel, Becker stated:

“They had thought of everything in the killing of the mentally ill, but there was a camouflage hole left in the accounting sector ... I was urged to at least sort out the administrative mess ... On this occasion I realized how completely unsuspecting the leaders, who apparently all came from party circles Were personalities in an administrative relationship. "

As a solution, Becker suggested the establishment of a “Central Clearing Center for Hospitals and Nursing Institutions (ZVSt)” as another dummy company of the Central Service Center T4, which carried out the accounting with the cost and pension funds centrally. This organizational revision brought three decisive advantages:

  • Ease of work for the various reception centers and payers
  • Compensation for the different levels of nursing care when changing institutions
  • Contribution to the secrecy of the murder of the sick, since the payers no longer knew the actual places of death.

A by-product of this centralization was still the possibility of using fictitious death dates to claim the costs of accommodation from the payers for times after the patient's death. In advanced practice, the official date of death was postponed by about two weeks after the actual date of death. The "additional income" gained in this way amounted to a considerable amount and earned Becker the nickname "Million Becker".

The head of this central clearing office was officially the managing director of the central office T4 Dietrich Allers . In fact, however, it was headed by Becker as his formal representative. The office was initially located in Berlin, Kanonierstraße 39. In 1942 the office was moved to Wilhelmstraße 43a and finally to a barrack behind the central office building at Tiergartenstraße 4.

Due to circumstances caused by the war, the ZVSt was relocated to the Nazi killing center in Hartheim near Linz in August 1943 . Associated with this was an increase in tasks for Becker. According to the business distribution plan of August 6, 1943, he was now also the office manager of the gassing institute, head of the special registry office , the local police authority and responsible for the "Cholm lunatic asylum (clearing office Germany)", transport, estate administration, courier and for the "liquidation procedures" of the now closed gassing plants in Bernburg , Brandenburg , Grafeneck , Hadamar and Sonnenstein . Finally, he also acted as the representative of the head of the Attersee office, d. H. for the also outsourced medical main department of the central office T4 under its head Hermann Paul Nitsche .

In the autumn of 1944 the ZVSt moved to Schönfließ in Pomerania and at the beginning of 1945 to the Pfafferode State Sanatorium and Nursing Home near Mühlhausen , where Becker saw the end of the war.

As an interpreter for the American occupation forces, he left Thuringia with them, which then belonged to the Soviet occupation zone. From October 1945, after his resignation, Becker worked for the Provincial Association of Kurhessen, as a commercial clerk for the American occupying power and a. in the sales organization and as a manager in the canteen area.

A request for arrest by the Thuringian state criminal police in January 1947 was rejected by the Kassel police chief. The chief public prosecutor's office in Kassel opened its own investigation. However, this was discontinued on May 19, 1950 on the grounds that a causal connection between Becker's actions and the killings could not be established.

From 1952, Becker worked temporarily for the economic and organizational consultancy of Hessian communities in Offenbach and then again for a US company. In 1953 he tried in vain to be reinstated at the State Welfare Association of Hesse, the successor to his pre-war employer. Applications to the regional council in Kassel in 1958/59 were also unsuccessful.

Becker was again working for US offices in Bad Kreuznach when he was arrested on June 7, 1966 by the Frankfurt Attorney General Fritz Bauer . Released on October 27, 1966, he was imprisoned again on April 15, 1970 after the public prosecutor's office in Frankfurt / M. on November 7, 1967, charges against him and the gassing doctor Georg Renno and Friedrich Lorent , the former head of the main economic department of the T4 central office, were brought against him for complicity in murder .

On May 25, 1970, Becker was appointed by the jury of the Frankfurt / M. sentenced to a total penalty of ten years imprisonment for aiding and abetting the murder of 24,540 mentally ill and 3,228 concentration camp prisoners (Ks 1/69). In his closing remarks, Becker rejected any responsibility:

“Finally I would like to say that I got involved in the action without knowing or understanding anything about it… It happened to me like many other Germans who had to work in the place where they were placed. As far as Hartheim is concerned, it is an unbearable thought for me to atone for something I did not do. "

Becker spent four years in the Diez and Kassel prisons, then on September 6, 1974, he was released from prison due to incapacity for execution.

Remarks

  1. quoted from Ernst Klee: What they did - what they became , p. 78 (see literature).
  2. Becker's statement of March 15, 1966 before the Public Prosecutor's Office in Frankfurt / M. (Js 5/65).
  3. ^ Jury charges against Dr. Renno, Becker and Lorent dated November 7, 1967. Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Wiesbaden, HHStA 631a, proceedings against Renno u. a., Regional Court Frankfurt / Main Ks 1/69.
  4. quoted from Ernst Klee: What they did - what they became , p. 80 (see literature).

literature

  • Ernst Klee : "Euthanasia" in the Nazi state. The "destruction of life unworthy of life". 11th edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-596-24326-2 ( Fischer-Taschenbucher 4326 The time of National Socialism ).
  • Ernst Klee: What they did - what they became. Doctors, lawyers and others involved in the murder of the sick or Jews. 12th edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-596-24364-5 ( Fischer pocket books 4364 The time of National Socialism ).
  • Ernst Klee: Hans-Joachim Becker. In: Ernst Klee: The personal dictionary for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. Updated edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 , p. 12 ( Fischer-Taschenbucher 16048).
  • Peter Sandner: Administration of the murder of the sick. The Nassau District Association under National Socialism. Psychosozial-Verlag, Giessen 2003, ISBN 3-89806-320-8 ( Historical series of publications by the State Welfare Association of Hesse. University publications 2), (also online, see web links).

Web links