Heinz Auerswald (lawyer)

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Heinz Auerswald
Announcement by Heinz Auerswald that eight Jews will be executed for leaving the Warsaw ghetto

Heinz Auerswald , also: Heinz Auerwald , (born July 26, 1908 in Berlin ; † December 5, 1970 in Düsseldorf ) was a German lawyer and German commissioner of the Warsaw Ghetto during the Second World War .

Early years

Auerswald was born the son of a Berlin master craftsman. He often spent the first years of his life with his mother in the country with relatives. He attended elementary school and secondary school in Berlin-Moabit before he graduated from high school in 1927. He then worked for Knorr-Bremse AG in Berlin for 3½ years before he began studying law, which he completed with a doctorate .

On June 7, 1933, he became a member of the SS (SS No. 216.399). On April 22, 1934 he was promoted to SS-Staffel-Mann, on September 10, 1935 to SS-Staffel-Sturmmann and his SS career ended when he reached the SS-Unterscharführer on April 20, 1937. In 1935 he also put the major state law examination. In 1937 he joined the NSDAP ( membership number 4.830.479). In the same year he signed up as a volunteer for the Wehrmacht , but was transferred to the police as an SS member. Since 1938 he was also a licensed attorney at the Berlin Higher Court . He served in the police force in September and October 1938, where he took part in the Sudetenland , and from August 1939 to February 1940 in the "Berlin-Tiergarten section". Here he achieved the rank of police superintendent of the reserve.

Use in Poland

With the beginning of the Second World War he took part in the attack on Poland . In 1940 he was released from the police force at the request of the governor of Warsaw Ludwig Fischer and handed over to the civil administration. From February 15, 1940, he took over the management of the ID card office at the Warsaw City Council under City Governor Ludwig Leist .

After that, from June 1, 1940, he was appointed "Advisor for the German Ethnic Group" and "Head of the Population and Welfare Subdivision" in the "Internal Administration Department" in the Office of the Chief of the Warsaw District.

On May 24, 1941, the Krakauer Zeitung published an announcement by Warsaw Governor Ludwig Fischer with the following wording:

“Administrative order on the commissioner for the Jewish residential district in Warsaw dated May 14, 1941 - 1. On the basis of § 1 of the ordinance for the Jewish residential district in Warsaw of April 19, 1941 (VBIGG p. 21) I am appointing the commissioner for the Jewish Residential district in Warsaw a lawyer Auerswald. -… - 3. This order comes into force on May 15, 1941. "

Auerswald also carried out this function after the Warsaw Ghetto was cleared in July 1942. His representative in office was Franz Grassler .

On the same day he sent out a circular stating that a number of measures would be carried out in the future that would cut off the Jewish residential area more effectively from the outside world and more clearly prevent the movement of people and goods.

There is no documentary evidence, but confirmed by statements by the historian Hilel Seidman and Marcel Reich-Ranicki , Auerswald accepted "gifts for relief" (gold watches, etc.) from the Jewish council of the Warsaw Ghetto (namely engineer Adam Czerniaków ).

According to the Polish serologist Ludwik Hirszfeld , Auerswald was polite in dealings, but brutal in behavior. At Auerswald's efforts, an ordinance is said to have been issued for the Warsaw ghetto, imposing the death penalty on Jewish citizens for leaving the ghetto.

On November 17, 1941, Auerswald had a sign posted by him in Warsaw stating that the Jews Motek Fiszbaum, Rywka Kligerman, Fagga Margules, Sala Pastejn, Dwojra Rosenberg, Josef Pajkus, Chana Zjadewach were sentenced by the Warsaw Special Court on November 12, 1941 and Luba Gac were sentenced to death and this was carried out on November 17, because they had crossed the border of the ghetto by leaving the ghetto unjustified . The verdict on two men and six women caused great horror among the population in Warsaw because of its brutality.

After the start of the evacuation of the Warsaw ghetto in June 1942, before the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in 1943, was in 1942 as Auerswald mid-November Kreishauptmann in Ostrowo used, where he had to replace Karl Valentin, who for corruption before the special court was accused Warsaw. In mid-January 1943 Auerswald was replaced by Martin Lenz and drafted into the Wehrmacht .

After the end of the war

After the war , Auerswald worked as a lawyer in Düsseldorf. The preliminary investigation initiated at the Dortmund public prosecutor's office for involvement in the Nazi crimes in occupied Poland was later "settled by death".

notes

The historian and chronicler of the Warsaw Ghetto, Emanuel Ringelblum , makes the following notes about Heinz Auerswald:

  • November 22, 1941: "A law that is in preparation that prohibits Jews from crossing the ghetto borders under the death penalty can be traced back to Auerswald's proposal."
  • 1-10 November 1941: "Inspector Auerswald wants a death sentence against Jews to be carried out only by the Jews themselves."
  • May 1942: "Auerswald generally only addressed gypsies with the expression 'Gypsy Jew'."

literature

  • Ernst Klee : Personal Lexicon for the Third Reich , Frankfurt / Main 2003
  • Joseph Wulf : The Third Reich and its executors , Frankfurt / Main 1984
  • Norbert Podewin : Braunbuch - war and Nazi criminals in the Federal Republic and in Berlin (West) , Berlin 1968
  • Helge Grabitz, Wolfgang Scheffler: Last Traces - Warsaw Ghetto - Trawniki SS Labor Camp - Harvest Festival , Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-89468-058-X
  • Jewish Historical Institute Warsaw: Fascism-Ghetto-Mass Murder , Documentation on the extermination and resistance of the Jews in Poland during the Second World War, Berlin 1961
  • Markus Roth : Gentlemen. The German District Chiefs in Occupied Poland - Career Paths, Rule Practice and Post-History. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2009. ISBN 978-3-8353-0477-2

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Franz Grassler survived the world war. You can see an interview with him in Claude Lanzmann's film Shoah , which sheds some light on Auerswald's politics.
  2. ↑ Short biography on Karl Valentin in Markus Roth: Herrenmenschen , Göttingen 2009, p. 507
personal data
SURNAME Auerswald, Heinz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Auerwald, Heinz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer and ghetto commissioner in Warsaw
DATE OF BIRTH July 26, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH 5th December 1970
Place of death Dusseldorf