Hans Gewecke

Hans Gewecke

Hans Ernst-August Friedrich Gewecke (born July 17, 1906 in Hachenhausen , † March 10, 1991 in Heidelberg ) was a German politician in the NSDAP - member of the Reichstag and NSDAP district leader in the Duchy of Lauenburg . Between 1941 and 1945 he worked as a regional commissioner in Schaulen , a large city in northern Lithuania that was assigned to the Reichskommissariat Ostland during the German occupation in World War II . As area commissioner, he was formally part of the so-called civil administration and was tied in particular to the political ideologies and programs of Reich Commissioner Hinrich Lohse and the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories , which was headed by Nazi chief ideologist Alfred Rosenberg . In his office, Gewecke took part personally in selections and executions in Schaulen, especially with regard to the genocide of the Jewish population .

origin

Gewecke attended schools in Gandersheim , Düsseldorf and Braunschweig . At first he only attended high school up to senior level and then began an agricultural apprenticeship on his father's lease. After a year and a half, he broke off his apprenticeship and entered the final class of the Johanneum zu Lübeck and passed the Abitur.

Weimar Republic

After graduating from high school, he went back to work with his father because he was unable to study for financial reasons. In 1927, Gewecke joined the Police in the Free State of Braunschweig as an officer candidate , but could not meet the tough physical demands of this job. That is why he returned to his father's farm after almost a year. Now he came into contact with the NSDAP and attended some of their events in Lübeck. On July 1, 1928, he joined the NSDAP with membership number 94286 . He founded a local group in Reinbek and became its leader in 1929. He developed into a popular speaker, first becoming a district, then district, and finally Reich speaker of the NSDAP.

The authors Danker and Schwabe described him with the words: “Gewecke, a member of the NSDAP since he was 22, failed several times in civil life. But he makes a name for himself as a fanatical propagandist and drooling anti-Semite ”.

National Socialism

NSDAP district leader

As early as 1931, Gewecke became a full-time NSDAP district leader in the Duchy of Lauenburg. He held this position until 1945. With the Reichstag election in March 1933 , he entered the Reichstag for the NSDAP, to which he was a member until 1945. In 1933 he was temporarily a member of the Prussian state parliament .

In October 1933, Gewecke stated that “the newspapers of the district are loyal to the National Socialist state and its leaders”. The National Socialists acted against Jews with the "necessary intensity and National Socialist severity" - as Gewecke put it - in order to achieve the " final solution to the Jewish question ".

Area Commissioner

After the German attack on the Soviet Union in April 1941, Gewecke became an employee of the civil administration in the Reichskommissariat Ostland , one of the main locations of the Holocaust . Under the Reich Commissioner Hinrich Lohse, who was his superior as Oberpräsident and Gauleiter of Schleswig-Holstein, Gewecke officiated as Area Commissioner for Schaulen in Lithuania . He coordinated the measures of the civil administration and the assignment of Jews to ghettos who had survived the first waves of killings. Danker and Schwabe write about Gewecke: "He is one of those civil administrators who, after initial hesitation, appear all the more brutal as masters , and personally participates in selections and executions."

post war period

In 1945 Gewecke was arrested and interned by the Allies . His property, which came mainly from his activity as a civil administrator in Lithuania, was confiscated. From then on he worked as an insurance agent in Bad Oldesloe .

Later, investigations into the persecution of Jews in Lithuania and in Schaulen against Gewecke were carried out several times. Therefore Gewecke had to testify repeatedly in court. In 1958, Gewecke explained to the Lübeck public prosecutor: “Of course, my office had to do with the proper (!) Seizure and registration of Jewish property. There were very specific orders from the top management [...] These items [...] then had to be properly recorded, listed in detail and delivered to the competent authorities in the direction of Reich - I would like to say. "In the same interrogation he admitted that im As part of the ghettoization of the Jews "Members of the regional commissioner [...] helped in this action to transfer the Jews from their homes to the ghettos". However, the persecution of the Jews and the mass murder that followed did not result in a conviction. In 1968, Gewecke was released from prosecution in a court case for the murder of at least 700 Jews .

In 1971 Gewecke was sentenced to four and a half years in prison for aiding and abetting manslaughter of a Lithuanian Jewish faith in 1943. At the end of May 1943, the 30 to 35 year old Jewish master baker Mazawetzki had about 30 packets of cigarettes, chocolate and sausage with him on his way home to the Jewish ghetto. Lithuanian police arrested Mazawetzki. In the area commissioner (either Gewecke or his deputy) it was decided to hang the Mazawetzki. Gewecke refused multiple requests from the Judenrat and Mazawetzki's relatives to obtain a pardon. He denied this at an interrogation in 1958, but stated with an anti-Semitic connotation: "It is quite possible that the Jews, because it was customary for them, offered me a larger amount of money for it." But he could not have prevented the execution, and therefore not even attempted. Craftsmen from the ghetto built the gallows. In the early morning of June 6, 1943, two other Jews had to hang Mazawetzki up. All inmates of both ghettos in Schaulen witnessed the murder. The corpse had to remain hanging on orders from Geweck until noon.

literature

• Christoph Dieckmann : German occupation policy in Lithuania 1941-1944 . In 2 volumes, Wallstein, Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-8353-0929-6 . At the same time, the version of the university dissertation Freiburg (Breisgau) 2003 was considerably revised.
• Uwe Danker / Astrid Schwabe: Schleswig-Holstein and National Socialism. Wachholtz, Neumünster 2005, ISBN 3-529-02810-X .
• Ernst Klee : Personal Lexicon for the Third Reich . 2nd edition, Frankfurt a. M. 2007, p. 182, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .
• Karl Heinz Gräfe: From the thunder cross to the swastika. The Baltic States between dictatorship and occupation . Edition Organon, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-931034-11-5 , short biography p. 433.
• Sebastian Lehmann, Uwe Danker, Robert Bohn (eds.): Reichskommissariat Ostland . Crime scene and souvenir. A publication by the Institute for Schleswig-Holstein Contemporary and Regional History at the University of Flensburg and the Military History Research Office . Paderborn 2012, ISBN 978-3-506-77188-9 .

Web links

• Hans Gewecke in the database of members of the Reichstag
• Interview by Claude Lanzmann with Hans Gewecke , around 1980 (in the holdings of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum)
• The murder of Jews in the Reichskommissariat Ostland - publication by the Society for Political Education
• Crimes of the Wehrmacht - Publication by the Society for Civic Education (PDF; 732 kB)
• Christoph Dieckmann: Considerations on German occupation in Eastern Europe 1941–1944: The example of Lithuania - Annaberger Annalen yearbook (PDF; 94 kB)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Frank Omland: “Parliamentarism in the old form no longer existed.” The Schleswig-Holstein MPs of the NSDAP in the Reichstag 1924–1945. In: Working group for research into National Socialism in Schleswig-Holstein (ed.): Critical approaches to National Socialism in Schleswig-Holstein. Festschrift for Gerhard Hoch on his 80th birthday on March 21, 2003 (= information on Schleswig-Holstein Contemporary History, issue 41/42.) Kiel 2003, p. 100–129, here table p. 120.
2. ↑ s. Justice and Nazi crimes - Collection of German criminal judgments for Nazi homicide, case no. 722: LG Lübeck of January 27, 1970, 2KS1 / 68.
3. ↑ ^{a b} Uwe Danker / Astrid Schwabe: Schleswig-Holstein and National Socialism , Neumünster 2005, p. 122.
4. ↑ s. Uwe Danker: The failed attempt to disenchant the legend of the “clean civil administration” . In: Robert Bohn: The German rule in the “Germanic countries” 1940–1945 , Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-515-07099-0 , p. 173. Restricted preview in the Google book search; also http://www.gegenwind.info/128/reichskommissariat.html
5. ↑ s. Wolfgang Curilla: The German Ordnungspolizei and the Holocaust in the Baltic States and in Belarus 1941 to 1944 , Paderborn 2006, ISBN 978-3-506-71787-0 , p. 892.
6. ↑ Summary of the verdict on justice and Nazi crimes , a collection of verdicts from all German criminal proceedings for Nazi homicide crimes by the Law Faculty of the University of Amsterdam ( Memento of the original from February 26, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) 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. 
7. ↑ s. Wolfgang Curilla: The German Ordnungspolizei and the Holocaust in the Baltic States and in Belarus 1941 to 1944 , Paderborn 2006, ISBN 978-3-506-71787-0 , p. 891 f.