Heinrich Erlen

Heinrich Erlen (born January 26, 1907 in Hindenburg ; † October 26, 1981 ) was a German lawyer, police officer and SS leader who was employed as a detective commissioner in Lithuania during the Second World War and was involved in war crimes as a member of Einsatzkommando 3 of Einsatzgruppe A. was.

Life

After attending school, Erlen studied law at the universities of Vienna , Berlin and Königsberg . In the course of the transfer of power to the National Socialists , he joined the SA in 1933 , of which he was a member until 1936, and also the NSDAP . He entered the police force in June 1937 and was initially a candidate for the police in Gleiwitz . From October 1938 to the end of June 1939 he successfully completed the detective inspector's course at the Sipo and SD leadership school in Berlin-Charlottenburg , which the later President of the BKA, Paul Dickopf, also attended. After the end of the course he was accepted into the SD as SS-Untersturmführer . He was then head of the criminal police in Gliwice and then in Opole .

After the attack on the Soviet Union , from January 1942 to March 1944, Erlen headed the Gestapo department at the Vilna branch under the command of the Security Police and SD Karl Jäger ; Erlen himself later stated that he headed the criminal investigation department there. Erlen was involved in mass executions of Jews in the Ponary district of Vilnius . He commanded a security force at least three times that secured the execution site during the mass shootings by Lithuanian collaborators. In 1943 he was promoted to SS-Hauptsturmführer , the highest rank he received in the Schutzstaffel. In the spring of 1944 he was transferred to Katowice , where he headed the criminal police headquarters there until the Red Army approached .

After the war he was in Soviet captivity. Because of his involvement in the war crimes committed in Vilnius, he was sentenced by a Soviet military tribunal to 25 years' imprisonment with compulsory labor, which he served in the Gulag labor camps in the Soviet Union. After Konrad Adenauer's visit to the Soviet Union on October 18, 1955 , Erlen returned to the Federal Republic of Germany as a late returnee .

A year later he joined the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) and was accepted into the civil service in February 1957. After an arrest warrant from the Frankfurt am Main District Court on suspicion of participating in mass executions, Erlen was arrested on December 14, 1959 in the offices of the BKA. In addition, formal disciplinary proceedings were initiated against him in March 1960. Because of the prison sentence that had already been served in the Soviet Union, the preliminary proceedings against Erlen were discontinued by the Wiesbaden Regional Court on August 22, 1966. Erlen's dismissal was the beginning of various unpleasant "discoveries" by officers in the BKA who were seriously exposed to Nazi charges. It is not known whether Erlen was able to return to the BKA after being suspended. Erlen remained childless and lived the last years of his life with his wife in Aalen / Baden-Württemberg.

literature

Dieter Schenk : Blind in the right eye. The brown roots of the BKA . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2001, ISBN 3-462-03034-5 .
Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945 . 2nd Edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .
Imanuel Baumann, Herbert Reinke, Andrej Stephan, Patrick Wagner : Shadows of the Past. The BKA and its founding generation in the early Federal Republic . Edited by the Federal Criminal Police Office, Criminalistic Institute. (Police + research, special issue). Luchterhand, Cologne 2011, ISBN 978-3-472-08067-1 . (Download as PDF)

Individual evidence

↑ Life data according to: Ernst Klee : Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945 . 2nd Edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 . , P. 138 f., Deviating from this name Imanuel Baumann, Herbert Reinke, Andrej Stephan, Patrick Wagner: Shadows of the past. The BKA and its founding generation in the early Federal Republic , Cologne 2011, p. 98 as the year of death 1974.
↑ ^a ^b ^c Imanuel Baumann, Herbert Reinke, Andrej Stephan, Patrick Wagner: Shadows of the past. The BKA and its founding generation in the early Federal Republic , Cologne 2011, p. 98
↑ Dieter Schenk: Blind in the right eye. The brown roots of the BKA , Cologne 2001, p. 67
↑ ^a ^b Dieter Schenk: Blind in the right eye. The brown roots of the BKA , Cologne 2001, p. 274 f.
^ Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 138
↑ ^a ^b Imanuel Baumann, Herbert Reinke, Andrej Stephan, Patrick Wagner: Shadows of the past. The BKA and its founding generation in the early Federal Republic , Cologne 2011, pp. 97f.

personal data
SURNAME	Erlen, Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German lawyer, policeman and SS leader
DATE OF BIRTH	January 26, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH	Hindenburg
DATE OF DEATH	October 26, 1981
Place of death	Bask

[1] Life data according to: Ernst Klee : Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945 . 2nd Edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 . , P. 138 f., Deviating from this name Imanuel Baumann, Herbert Reinke, Andrej Stephan, Patrick Wagner: Shadows of the past. The BKA and its founding generation in the early Federal Republic , Cologne 2011, p. 98 as the year of death 1974.

[Baumann/Reinke/Stephan/Wagner98-2] Imanuel Baumann, Herbert Reinke, Andrej Stephan, Patrick Wagner: Shadows of the past. The BKA and its founding generation in the early Federal Republic , Cologne 2011, p. 98

[3] Dieter Schenk: Blind in the right eye. The brown roots of the BKA , Cologne 2001, p. 67

[Schenk274f-4] Dieter Schenk: Blind in the right eye. The brown roots of the BKA , Cologne 2001, p. 274 f.

[5] Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 138

[Baumann/Reinke/Stephan/Wagner97f-6] Imanuel Baumann, Herbert Reinke, Andrej Stephan, Patrick Wagner: Shadows of the past. The BKA and its founding generation in the early Federal Republic , Cologne 2011, pp. 97f.