Heinrich Schneider (SS member)

Heinrich Adam Martin Schneider (born October 8, 1914 in Barmen ; † October 14, 1967 ( suicide )) was a German captain of the security police, SS-Hauptsturmführer , deputy commander of the police in Lyon and war criminal .

Use in Poland and the Soviet Union

In the Realgymnasium Schneider achieved the secondary school leaving certificate. He then began an apprenticeship in the textile industry. In 1934 he became a member of the state police in Münster . With his unit he was used in the attack on Poland in 1939 . Then he was transferred to Cologne.

Schneider, meanwhile promoted to lieutenant in the police force , became a member of the newly formed Police Battalion 309 in September 1940 , which was stationed in Cologne. On September 23, 1940, the battalion was relocated to Radom in the then General Government. It was moved to Ostrolenka towards the end of May 1941.

Massacre in Białystok

After a march through Łomża , Schneider and his company reached Białystok on June 27, 1941 . At this point Schneider commanded the 4th platoon of 3rd Company of Police Battalion 309, which was led by Major Ernst Weis. Schneider was commissioned to search the houses for Jews . When he met them, he killed them with volleys from his submachine gun.

On the afternoon of the same day, the battalion companies rounded up around 700 to 800 Jews on the market square in front of the main synagogue . Schneider and the chief of the 1st Company, Captain Hans Behrens , gave the order that the Jews should assemble in the synagogue. The entrances to the synagogue were then locked and the synagogue surrounded. The synagogue was set on fire with concentrated charges . Refugees were shot by the police.

In the course of the synagogue fire, the fire spread to the synagogue district, whereupon it also caught fire. About a thousand more Jews are said to have perished as a result. In the evening the battalion officers got drunk. Schneider was lying drunk on the street and was hit by a motorcycle from his battalion.

Return, service in Münster and Lyon

Until September 1941 there were further operations against Jews in the Soviet Union , with Schneider involved in shootings. On July 11, 1941, he was awarded the Iron Cross, 2nd class. In September 1942 he became an adjutant to the commander of the Ordnungspolizei (BdO) in Military District VI in Münster.

In March 1943 he was transferred to Lyon , where he was deployed as deputy commander of the regulatory police to combat the resistance. Towards the end of the war, he was seriously wounded while serving on the Eastern Front . In a military hospital on the Danube, he experienced the end of the war and became a prisoner of the US Army.

No return to the police force

In the post-war years, Schneider applied to the police several times for employment. However, in both 1946 and 1952, his applications were rejected, and he filled out the information in the documents either incompletely or incorrectly. In 1954 he was informed that he was no longer fit for duty. With that he was put into retirement, with which a pension was connected. Since 1949 he had accepted a position as a warehouse clerk. Just one year later, he was promoted to head of department in the Wuppertal company Villbrandt & Zehnder AG .

Prosecutor's investigation

In the course of the investigation against members of Police Battalion 309, Schneider was first questioned on January 2, 1963 at the Wuppertal police headquarters . Fifteen more hearings were to follow before he was arrested in June 1963 and taken into custody.

During the interrogations by the detective Ernst Woywod, he denied that he had been present at the synagogue in Białystok. Regarding the history of the battalion, he stated that Nazi training courses under the title Judaism and Bolshevism were taking place in Radom , in which he was also involved. Other contemporary witnesses characterized Schneider as an obsessed National Socialist and a Jew hater. Since the suspicion against Schneider became more and more substantiated during the interrogations, the responsible public prosecutor Schaplow applied for an arrest warrant against Schneider in May 1963.

Charge in court and mental breakdown

In the course of the interrogations, in which he was confronted with all the details of the crimes committed at the time, Schneider showed increasing psychological instability and insecurity. Above all, it could be proven that individual murders were committed by him without orders from other command posts. So he could not invoke a so-called emergency of orders.

In October 1967 Schneider broke down mentally under the weight of the accusations, so that after the start of the Wuppertal Białystok Trial on October 14, 1967, he hanged himself in his cell in the remand prison.

literature

• Heiner Lichtenstein : Himmler's Green Helpers - The Protection and Order Police in the “Third Reich”. Cologne 1990, ISBN 3-7663-2100-5 .
• Wolfgang Curilla: The German Ordnungspolizei and the Holocaust in the Baltic States and Belarus 1941–1944. Paderborn 2006, ISBN 3-506-71787-1 .
• Michael Okroy: “You want our Batl. what to do ... “- The Wuppertal Białystok Trial 1967/68 and the investigations against members of the Police Battalion 309. In: Alfons Kenkmann, Christoph Spieker: On behalf of the police, administration and responsibility. Essen 2001, ISBN 3-88474-970-6 .
• Michael Okroy: "After 26 years now a mammoth trial against police officers" - the judicial processing of Nazi crimes by the police using the example of the Wuppertal Bialystok proceedings. In: Jan Erik Schulte (ed.): The SS, Himmler and the Wewelsburg. Paderborn u. a. 2009, ISBN 978-3-506-76374-7 .
• Stefan Klemp: Cologne police battalions in Eastern Europe: The police battalions 69, 309, 318 and the Cologne police reserve company. In: Harald Buhlan, Werner Jung (Ed.): Whose friend and whose helper? - The Cologne police under National Socialism. Cologne 2000, ISBN 3-89705-200-8 .
• Heiner Lichtenstein: A tangle of lies - The Wuppertal trial against members of the police battalion 309. In: Harald Buhlan, Werner Jung (ed.): Whose friend and whose helpers? - The Cologne police under National Socialism. Cologne 2000, ISBN 3-89705-200-8 .
• Stefan Klemp : "Not determined". Police Battalions and the Post War Justice. A manual. 2nd edition, Klartext Verlag, Essen 2011, ISBN 978-3-8375-0663-1 .
• Stefan Noethen: Old comrades and new colleagues - police in North Rhine-Westphalia 1945–1953. Essen 2003, ISBN 3-89861-110-8 , p. 257.

Web links

• Biographical sketch by Heinrich Schneider