Hans Schumacher (lawyer)

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Hans Karl Schumacher (born June 12, 1907 in Barmen ; † September 16, 1992 in Kassel ) was a German lawyer , SS-Sturmbannführer , Kriminalrat, head of the Gestapo in Kiev and Stalino and, after the Second World War, an employee of the Gehlen organization .

He is not to be confused with SS-Unterscharführer Hans Schumacher (born August 31, 1906 in Düsseldorf , † January 28, 1948 in Krakow ), overseer in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp .

School, university and doctorate

After his parents, the authorized signatory Carl Schumacher and his wife Paula Jöge, moved to Gladbach-Rheydt in 1912 , he attended elementary and secondary school there, where he passed the Abitur exam in 1926 . He then studied political science and law at the universities of Würzburg , Erlangen and Bonn . He finished his studies in 1930 on February 15 with the first state examination at the Cologne Higher Regional Court . He began his preparatory service for a career in the higher judicial service on March 15, 1930.

The doctorate to Dr. jur. He obtained his traineeship at the Mönchengladbach District Court in 1930 at the University of Erlangen on the subject of the transfer of ownership by way of security with special consideration of the position of the trustee in the bankruptcy of the trustor and in the foreclosure against the same , with Friedrich Lent being the speaker on the subject of Schumacher had asked. On July 19, 1932 he was granted his license to practice medicine. He passed the Grand State Examination in March 1934 at the Prussian Ministry of Justice .

Political orientation

In 1925 he became a member of the nationalist fighting organization Wehrwolf . In 1932 he was a member of the German National People's Party (DNVP) for a few months . As an officer in the criminal police he joined the NSDAP on May 1, 1933 (membership number 2.880.022). The Karlsruhe Regional Court certified him in the judgment of December 20, 1961 that he was not a compliant partisan and fellow campaigner of National Socialism . During the trial against him it was mentioned that he had refused to join the Gestapo . His sense of duty and his duty of obedience were determined more by the principles of traditional civil service than by National Socialist ideas and objectives . Mintert judged him as a type of opportunist and conformist , not as a radical National Socialist, not a ideological or excess offender .

Criminal Police and SS

Since his career prospects in the legal civil service were not promising due to the large number of applicants, he decided to work as a criminalist. In July 1934 he took up a job as a detective commissioner candidate in Berlin . After appropriate training, he was appointed detective commissioner on July 1, 1936. Then he went to the criminal police control center in Düsseldorf , where he headed the personnel department and the identification service from October 1, 1936. He became a member of the SS (membership number 306.629) on January 1, 1939. He was transferred to Vienna on February 15, 1939, where he was in charge of a police station. From November 1939 he worked in the same position in Prague . He was appointed to the criminal council on August 1, 1940.

Lecturer at the Pretzsch border police school

On November 1, 1940, he was transferred to the Pretzsch border police school by an instruction from the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA), to the Bad Schmiedeberg department . Until May 1941, he had the task of supervising the teaching operations, teaching the subject of criminal law himself. In the course, which lasted eight weeks, he prepared reservists of the Waffen SS for service in the Gestapo and the criminal police. One course comprised 400 men of the SS. While the first course was taught until the beginning of January 1941, the second course began after that until March. These SS men were, however, already prepared for service in the Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and the SD . Because of a disease of the vocal cords of the larynx, Schumacher broke off his service in Bad Schmiedeberg and traveled back to Prague.

Command in Einsatzgruppe C

After successful treatment, he was transferred to Duisburg on June 1, 1941 , where he was to work for the criminal police as head of inspection. In Essen he took the position of a representative of the crime department. Towards the end of October / beginning of November 1941 he was assigned to Einsatzgruppe C in Kiev. On November 9, 1941 he left Essen for the Reichskommissariat Ukraine with the rank of SS-Hauptsturmführer. In Kiev he was ordered by SS-Gruppenführer Max Thomas, as chief of Einsatzgruppe C and commander of the Security Police and SD (BdS) of Ukraine, to set up a division IV / V of the criminal police. Officially, he was subordinate to the BdS as well as the Einsatzkommando 5 (EK 5). From ethnic German and Ukrainian militia on the one hand and other forces police unit reached the end of December 1941, a thickness of about 150 men. Schumacher then went on vacation from December 26 to January 20, 1942.

Gestapo chief in Kiev

Thomas now confronted him with a new task related to fighting partisans. Schumacher tried in vain to point out that as a criminalist he was unsuitable for such tasks. Schumacher had meanwhile learned that such activity would also be directed against Jews. Schumacher finally gave in because Thoma promised to relieve him when a representative arrived. Schumacher took up his new post in Melnikastraße in Kiev with SS-Obersturmbannführer August Meier at EK 5. Meier largely carried out the current administrative tasks, while Schumacher took over the tasks of the state police and, in part, the criminal police.

Liquidation of Jews

His area of ​​responsibility also included the arrest and liquidation of all reported Jews who were admitted to the prison at 33 Karolenka Street in Kiev. A group of around 20 men was available to him for this purpose. A gas truck requested by Schumacher was used for the execution in order to avoid shootings. In the following four weeks Schumacher had three to four gassing operations carried out, in which around 120 people were killed, including around 100 Jews with women and children.

In mid-February 1942, SS-Obersturmbannführer Erich Ehrlinger arrived in Kiev , who set up the office of a commander of the Security Police and the SD (KdS). Schumacher was appointed by Ehrlinger as department head of departments IV of the Gestapo and V of the criminal police. In this position he signed the execution lists and had them confirmed. Over the next few weeks Schumacher participated in eight to ten executions, in which around 280 to 350 people were killed. Of these, at least 70 were Jews with women and at least three children. Schumacher shot at least 25 people, including two children. He justified his personal commitment by saying that he owed it to his subordinates.

In order to reduce the number of shootings, Schumacher succeeded in April 1942, that the arrested were sent to a concentration camp on the outskirts of Kiev, which should serve as a labor camp. Mintert suspects that it was a satellite camp of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp , the Syrez concentration camp . Schumacher had all able-bodied people instructed there. In the summer of 1942 Schumacher took vacation and, with the support of the head of the personnel department of SS-Sturmbannführer Fritz Braune in Office I of the RSHA, managed to end his assignment in the Ukraine in the near future. For the time being, however, after his vacation, he was given the task of helping to set up departments IV and V at KdS in Stalino. He was also used in the fight against the partisans, for example at the company Blau . In June 1942 Schumacher returned to Germany. His successor was SS-Obersturmführer Erich Wagner (1916–1960).

Command in Wroclaw

From August 1942 to July 1943 he worked in the RSHA in Office V as investigating officer and court officer in Department ID 2 in matters of discipline of the security police. In addition, he was entrusted with tasks at the criminal police headquarters in Berlin . From July 1943 he was transferred to the Wroclaw Criminal Police Headquarters as the director's representative. From October 1944 he took over the management of department V at the newly established KdS Breslau. Since he fell ill with kidney inflammation, he was flown out of Breslau to a hospital in Nuremberg in March 1945 .

post war period

When he went to Hamburg after his stay in the hospital , he was arrested by the German criminal police and handed over to the British military police. Since he claimed that he only worked for the criminal police during the Nazi era, he was released again. He went to Mönchengladbach and worked there as a sewer and construction worker. He was arrested again in February 1946 when he was suspected of having been involved in the murder of 50 Royal Air Force officers (see Broken Chains ) as head of the Wroclaw Criminal Police Department (see Broken Chains ) between March and April 1944. After several months, he was released in August 1946 as no complicity could be proven. In the Curiohaus trial , the defense even named him as an exonerating witness.

Employee in the Rhineland

From 1946 to 1958 he worked as an employee in the commercial area at companies in Mönchengladbach, Wuppertal and Darmstadt . In the Wuppertal address book he was listed under various professional titles until 1965. His last position was in Wuppertal as head of human resources and legal advisor. In Düsseldorf he accepted a position as a lawyer in the legal department of the Central Association of German House and Landowners on November 1, 1958 .

Trial and sentencing

On August 18, 1959, the Ludwigsburg Central Office for War Crimes filed a criminal complaint for his activities with the KdS in Kiev. The Karlsruhe District Court issued an arrest warrant against him on August 27, 1959. After an initial interrogation , the Wuppertal police took him into custody , which lasted from September 4, 1959 to December 13, 1961. On December 20, 1961, he was sentenced to four years in prison by the Karlsruhe Regional Court for community aid in 240 murder cases . During the trial, Schumacher confessed to his crimes, which he was aware of as a fully qualified lawyer. His Karlsruhe defense attorney, Hans Ingenohl , did not request an acquittal at Schumacher's request .

The revision of the judgment before the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) was successful for procedural reasons, but the sentence remained. In December 1963 he was sentenced to four years in prison for the same offenses in 82 murders. Another appeal before the BGH failed.

Employee in the Gehlen organization

For the first time in the main hearing, Schumacher admitted his work for the Organization Gehlen (OG) after 1946 until 1956 at the latest. With his knowledge and activities in Prague, Wroclaw and the Ukraine, he brought the best qualifications for the OG . He also benefited from his relationships with the RSHA. A witness also confirmed in an interrogation on February 10, 1960 that Schumacher had gained experience in dealing with his own and enemy agents. What function and what type of activity he carried out at OG was not discussed in the process.

SS ranks

  • January 1939 SS-Untersturmführer
  • September 1939 SS-Obersturmführer
  • October 1940 SS Hauptsturmführer
  • November 1943 SS-Sturmbannführer

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Justice and Nazi Crimes, Volume 18, Ser. 526, Amsterdam 1978, pp. 65-132, here: pp. 71-72.
  2. ↑ Justice and Nazi Crimes, Volume 18, Ser. 526, Amsterdam 1978, p. 113.
  3. ↑ David M. Mintert, "Since then in deep debt" - The exceptional perpetrator Dr. Hans Schumacher, in: Klaus Michael Mallmann, Andrej Angrick, The Gestapo after 1945 - Careers, Conflicts, Functions, Darmstadt 2009, p. 151–163, here: p. 156.
  4. ^ Justice and Nazi Crimes, Volume 18, 1978, p. 72.
  5. ↑ David M. Mintert in Mallmann and Angrick 2009, p. 151.
  6. ↑ In an interrogation on September 23, 1959, Schumacher claimed to have had no knowledge of the preparation of the course participants for the Einsatzkommandos. see: David M. Mintert in Mallmann and Angrick 2009, FN 7, p. 152 and p. 161.
  7. ^ Andrej Angrick, Occupation Policy and Genocide - Task Force D in the Southern Soviet Union 1941-1943, Hamburg 2003, p. 451.
  8. ^ Justice and Nazi Crimes, Volume 18, 1978, p. 99.
  9. ^ Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of European Jews, Volume 2, Frankfurt / Main 1990, p. 349.
  10. ^ Justice and Nazi Crimes, Volume 18, 1978, pp. 104-105.
  11. ↑ David M. Mintert in Mallmann and Angrick 2009, pp. 154–155.
  12. ^ Justice and Nazi Crimes, Volume 18, 1978, p. 102.
  13. ↑ David M. Mintert in Mallmann and Angrick 2009, p. 159.
personal data
SURNAME Schumacher, Hans
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schumacher, Hans Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer, detective and SS-Sturmbannführer
DATE OF BIRTH June 12, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Barmen
DATE OF DEATH September 16, 1992
Place of death kassel