Heinrich Schendel

Heinrich Schendel (born March 2, 1922 in Essen ) was a German SS squad leader of the Waffen SS , who was with the 6th Company of the II Battalion / Panzer Grenadier Regiment 35 of the 16th SS Panzer Grenadier Division "Reichsführer SS" on Was involved in the Sant'Anna di Stazzema massacre . A total of around 560 civilians were killed in this massacre, mainly women, children and the elderly. For this Schendel was sentenced to life imprisonment by an Italian military court in La Spezia .

Despite being convicted in Italy , Schendel was neither brought to court nor extradited to Italy after the Stuttgart public prosecutor's office put down the proceedings.

Military career

Schendel probably joined the SS as a volunteer in 1940 and joined the SS division “Das Reich” . With this division he was in combat missions in the west, in the Balkans and from February to June 1942 in the Soviet Union . He was wounded several times and after his recovery he was transferred to the Stralsund training battalion, where he was promoted to SS-Scharführer . When he was assigned to the 6th Company of the 2nd Battalion / Panzergrenadier Regiment 35 of the 16th SS Panzer Grenadier Division "Reichsführer SS" in the summer of 1944 , he was - among others - also with his battalion at the massacre on August 12th Involved in 1944 by Sant'Anna di Stazzema. On August 18, 1944, he was wounded and subsequently treated in military hospitals.

Denial of the deeds

Schendel was questioned in Germany on October 1, 2002 as part of a request for legal assistance from the Italian authorities. He stated that on August 14, 1944, he was not in Italy, but in Stralsund for training. This could be refuted by the Italian court, because he began his service in Italy on August 1, 1944 with the 6th Company of the 2nd Battalion with the rank of SS-Scharführer . He also said that he had only heard of civilians being shot. This and the false indication of his arrival in Italy were taken by the court as a protective claim and he was convicted as a perpetrator.

Late legal work-up

Judgments in Italy

In 2002, the military prosecutor in La Spezia opened a case against alleged perpetrators of the massacre of Sant'Anna di Stazzema. This was made possible because there were files that had been created after the end of the Second World War and were hidden in the so-called closet of shame . In 2004 the trial began at the La Spezia Military Court. Ludwig Göring , Ludwig Heinrich Sonntag and Werner Bruß , Karl Gropler , Gerhard Sommer , Alfred Schöneberg , Georg Rauch , Alfred Mathias Concina and Heinrich Schendel were sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia. These judgments were upheld in 2006 by the Court of Appeal in Rome in the second instance and in 2007 by the Supreme Court of Cassation in the third and last instance.

Investigations in Germany

Since 2002, the Stuttgart public prosecutor's office has been investigating nine of the people convicted in Italy, plus another five who were not indicted in La Spezia. The proceedings were closed in 2011. A reopening of the investigation was rejected by the Stuttgart public prosecutor.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Republika Italiana in Nome del Popolo Italiano il Tribundal Militare della La Spezia (judgment of June 22, 2005 in Italian) (PDF), June 22, 2006. Retrieved October 7, 2019
2. ↑ ^{a b} 10. La posizione degli imputati (Italian), on Defense Italy. Retrieved October 7, 2019
3. ↑ Silvia Buzzelli, Marco De Paolis, Andrea Speranzoni: La ricostruzione giudiziale dei crimini nazifascisti in Italia. Questioni preliminari. Giappichelli, Turin 2012, ISBN 978-88-348-2619-5 . Pp. 145-146
4. ↑ Nazi war crimes: proceedings on SS massacre in Italy discontinued , October 1, 2012, on Spiegel Online . Retrieved October 7, 2019
5. ↑ Felix Bohr: German Justice rejects the reopening of the investigation , from May 21, 2013, on Spiegel Online . Retrieved October 7, 2019