Heinz Jost

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Heinz Jost during the Nuremberg Trials
Otto Ohlendorf (left) and Heinz Jost (right-back) on February 9, 1948 in Nuremberg as defendants in the Einsatzgruppen trial
Heinz Jost in the middle of the picture (with headphones) during the task force process.

Heinrich Maria Karl Jost (born July 9, 1904 in Holzhausen ; † November 12, 1964 in Bensheim ) was a German SS brigade leader and major general of the police as well as head of the SD main office, Amt III (SD abroad / defense). In the Reich Security Main Office , he was Chief of RSHA Amt VI (SD abroad) and in March 1942 he took command of Einsatzgruppe A .

Life

Jost was born as the son of a pharmacist and his wife in the north Hessian village of Holzhausen, now part of Homberg (Efze) . He attended high school in Bensheim, where he graduated from high school in 1923 . As a student he became a member of the Young German Order .

He studied law at the Universities of Giessen and Munich . In 1923 he became a member of the Corps Hassia . In May 1927 he passed his legal traineeship exam.

National Socialist, career in the security service of the Reichsführer SS

In February 1928 he became a member of the NSDAP (membership number 75,946). He worked in various functions for this party in southern Hesse. From 1930 he set up as an independent lawyer in Lorsch (Hesse).

After the National Socialist seizure of power, he was appointed police director of Worms in March 1933 and then police director of Gießen . It was from this time that he became attached to Werner Best , who won him over to the security service (SD).

In July 1934 his full-time career began with the SD. He quickly rose to Head of Office III (defense) in the SD main office. In 1938 he became head of the Dresden Einsatzgruppe, which was involved in the occupation of the Sudetenland . In August 1939, as SS-Brigadführer von Heydrich, he was commissioned with the procurement of Polish uniforms that were needed for the bogus attack on the Gleiwitz transmitter .

In the Reich Main Security Office, which was newly established in 1939, Jost became head of RSHA Office VI (SD Abroad). In 1942, he was replaced by Walter Schellenberg as head of the Foreign Affairs Department.

In March 1942, Jost, succeeding Walter Stahlecker , who had been killed by partisans, took over command of Einsatzgruppe A and became the commander of the Security Police and SD (BdS) Ostland in Riga . He was in command of Einsatzgruppe A until September 1942. He was the head of civil administration in the Zichenau administrative district .

His career nevertheless suffered a kink, probably due to his connection with the inferior Heydrich rival Best. Further use in the RSHA was suspended. Himmler decided in January 1945 that Jost should leave the SS with a pension .

After 1945

In April 1945 Jost was arrested near Gardelegen (Saxony-Anhalt). In the Nuremberg Einsatzgruppen trial he was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1948. In 1951, his sentence was reduced to ten years. In 1952 he was released from the Landsberg War Crimes Prison .

Jost then worked as a lawyer for a real estate company in Düsseldorf . He had been working for the BND since 1961 at the latest , so his continued work in the real estate company was a camouflage.

In 1964 Jost died in Bensheim an der Bergstrasse.

literature

  • Thilo Figaj: The bloody career of Heinz Jost. In: Darmstädter Echo . Pages 16–17, from March 23, 2012
  • Florian Altenhöner: “The Case of Heinz Maria Karl Jost” : An MI5 interrogation report from 1945, in: Journal for Intelligence, Propaganda and Security Studies, 2 (2008) H. 2, pp. 55–76.
  • Heinz Höhne : The order under the skull . S. Mohn, Gütersloh 1967.
  • Helmut Krausnick , Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm: The troop of the Weltanschauung war. The Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and SD 1938–1942 . DVA, Stuttgart 1981, ISBN 3-421-01987-8 .
  • Michael Wildt : Generation of the Unconditional. The leadership corps of the Reich Security Main Office . Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-930908-75-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Kösener Corpslisten 1996, 66 , 1164
  2. ^ Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Updated edition. Fischer TB, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 , p. 290.