Harald Heyns

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Harald Heyns (born November 21, 1913 in Bremervörde ; died 2004 in Berlin ), as a German SS member in France, was responsible for the Caen massacre . In France he was sentenced to death in absentia in 1952 . In Hamburg he had already been sentenced to death in absentia by a British military tribunal for air murders . A trial against him was prevented for years in the GDR due to insufficient evidence and missed in the Federal Republic of Germany .

Life

Harald Heyns studied law and received his doctorate from Kiel University in 1938.

In April 1940 Heyns belonged to Group 633 of the Secret Field Police (GFP) , which acted as the police executive of the military administration in France . This Wehrmacht troop was transferred to the security police in France in 1942, so that from December 1942 Heyns belonged to the command of the security force (KdS) Rouen , external command Caen, which he commanded from February 1944 in the rank of Oberscharführer . On December 1, 1943, he was awarded the War Merit Cross, Second Class. In Caen Heyns was the collaborator Marie-Clotilde de Combiens friends to him in the prosecution of members of the French Resistance helped.

Occupation and resistance in Caen (replica in the "Memorial de la Paix", Caen)

Heyns was the head of the SD branch in Caen at the time of the invasion of France . On June 6, 1944, under Heyns's order, around 90 prisoners from Caen prison were shot in the prison yard. The riflemen were members of the SS and possibly members of the prison staff. The number of dead and their graves could not be established. According to Heyns, the order came from KdS Rouen , which he did not pass on, but which was carried out by members of his department without authorization. Heyns was also accused by the witness Robert Martin of having been personally involved in the torture of an arrested French civilian. Even as a member of the SD group in Alençon , "Bernard" had the reputation of a "terrible beast" .

Heyns and his unit were still deployed in Brno in late summer 1944 and then in Breslau .

Trials and investigations

After the end of the war, Heyns was interned in northern Germany and on August 4, 1948, before a British military court in Hamburg, he was charged with two aviation murders in the “Caen Sipo Trial”. On August 16, he fled the courthouse and settled in the Soviet zone of occupation . Herman Seif and Karl Melhose who were deployed in Caen were also able to flee from the internment camp . The court found him guilty in absentia on September 18 and sentenced him to death by hanging . The death sentence was later questioned by the British military authorities because it had to be tried in absentia .

Heyns and three other members of the SD were sentenced to death in absentia on July 10, 1952 by a military court in Paris-Reuilly in the "Gestapo-Caen trial". Karl Ludwig, the prison director of Caen, and a guard, Joseph Hoffmann, received long term imprisonment.

In the GDR, Heyns lived under the false name “Dr. Herbert Monath-Hartz ”and had a position as head of the legal department of a state-owned industrial company . In 1964 he was arrested and his real identity was revealed. As a result, Heyns was convicted of violating the identity card ordinance, which was settled by the eighteen months of pre-trial detention. Heyns was then able to work again as a lawyer at VEB Minol .

The GDR authorities learned that Heyns had been convicted of war crimes . However, they were unable to carry out the investigation into the air killings and the Caen massacre in a targeted manner because there was allegedly insufficient evidence to bring charges.

In the seventies, too, at the instigation of Karli Coburger, Heyn's identity was not disclosed in the GDR, while in the Federal Republic of Germany the blockade tactics of the FDP politician Ernst Achenbach against the ratification of the Franco-German additional agreement to the transition agreement of 1971 only continued until the 30th January 1975 held. Only this agreement made it possible to bring those German Nazi criminals to trial who had already been convicted in absentia in France. Because of Achenbach's blockades, only three actors in the persecution of Jews in France, namely Kurt Lischka , Ernst Heinrichsohn and Herbert M. Hagen , could be brought to justice in Cologne in 1979 .

The “Central Office in the State of North Rhine-Westphalia for the Processing of National Socialist Mass Crimes”, located at the Dortmund public prosecutor's office , was aware in 1981 that Heyns was in East Berlin , but stopped the investigation into the massacre in Caen and four other killings there there was a lack of evidence to demonstrate the fulfillment of a murder criterion such as the "cruel execution", which under German law alone would have allowed the proceedings to be continued.

The “Heyns case” only became known to the German public through the publication of the book “Nazi Criminals and State Security” by Henry Leide. The "Caen massacre" was not discussed.

Fonts

  • The use of military reprisals among League of Nations member states , Baruth / Mark-Berlin, 1938

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Press release of the Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Records , October 17, 2005, "3rd case" (last paragraph); Retrieved September 19, 2014
  2. ↑ the biographical information from Henri Leide, NS-Verbrecher und Staatssicherheit , Göttingen 2006, pp. 373–391
  3. ↑ Photo at sgmcaen / collaboration and advert as informer  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.memorial-genweb.org
  4. ↑ In 1983 a mass grave was discovered near Baron-sur-Odon . Henry Leide: Nazi Criminals and State Security , 2006, p. 390, note 221
  5. ^ Henry Leide: Nazi Criminals and State Security , 2006, p. 385
  6. ↑ see sgmcaen / collaboration
  7. ↑ "la Gestapo de Caen"
  8. ↑ sgmcaen / collaboration
  9. ↑ Michel de Boüard also gave information to the GDR in 1966, see Henry Leide: NS-Verbrecher und Staatssicherheit , 2006, p. 385. On Boüard, concentration camp prisoner in Mauthausen , professor in Caen in the 1960s, see French Wikipedia fr: Michel de Boüard
  10. ↑ What did the Stasi know, do, and prevent? , Neues Deutschland , April 8, 2006 [paid access]
  11. ^ The "Agreement between the Federal Republic of Germany and the French Government on the Prosecution of Certain Crimes" came into force on April 15, 1975
  12. ↑ see: Bernhard Brunner, The France Complex
  13. ↑ Heyns lived in Dingelstädter Str. 48a until 2000, until around 2000–2002 in Plauener Str. 86, and most recently until 2004 in Schalkauer Str. 32, all in Berlin-Lichtenberg. (Berlin telephone directories 1989 to 2006). His widow Hella Heyns was last entered in the 2010-2011 phone book at Schalkauer Str.
  14. ^ Henry Leide: Nazi Criminals and State Security , 2006, p. 389
  15. ↑ see report in ZDF-Frontal from March 6, 2006
  16. ↑ Photo description at sgmcaen / collaboration: "L'Hauptscharführer Harald Heyns, dit" Bernard ", parlant couramment le français, Harald Heyns est le type du partait aryen  : âgé d'une trentaine d'années, grand, svelte, le type nordique avec des cheveux blond-roux et des yeux bleus. "
personal data
SURNAME Heyns, Harald
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer, SS member and convicted war criminal
DATE OF BIRTH November 21, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Bremervörde
DATE OF DEATH 2004
Place of death Berlin