Helmut Bischoff

Helmut Hermann Wilhelm Bischoff (born March 1, 1908 in Glogau ; † January 5, 1993 in Hamburg ) was SS-Obersturmbannführer (1943) and senior government councilor , head of various state police stations, leader of Einsatzkommandos 1 of Einsatzgruppe IV in German-occupied Poland in the National Socialist German Reich and defense officer for the construction of V2 rockets in the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp .

Biography until 1933

Bischoff, son of a butcher, attended high school in Glogau . From 1923 to 1925 he was a member of the Wiking Association . After graduating from high school in 1926, Bischoff began studying law at the University of Leipzig , where he joined the Leipzig fraternity in Dresden in 1926 , and at the University of Geneva . After taking the two state examinations in law in 1930 and 1934 as well as his doctorate , he worked as a lawyer in the district offices in Schweidnitz and Strehlen .

On January 1, 1930, Bischoff became a member of the NSDAP ( membership number 203.122).

time of the nationalsocialism

He joined the SA in 1933 and switched from there to the SS in November 1935 (membership number 272,403). In 1934, Bishop was assessor at the Schweidnitz district office, where he also served as an informant for Himmler's SD . On October 1, 1935, he moved to the Gestapo in Berlin . As early as December of the same year, Bischoff was appointed head of the Liegnitz state police station . Until the beginning of the war against the Soviet Union , he was in charge of the following state police stations: from October 1, 1936 Harburg-Wilhelmsburg , from October 1, 1937 Köslin , from October 1939 Posen and from September 29, 1941 State Police Station Magdeburg .

His activity as state police station chief was interrupted in September 1939 when he was appointed leader of Einsatzkommando 1 (EK 1) of Einsatzgruppe IV (EGr IV) during the war against Poland . The task of the task force of the security police, known as " Operation Tannenberg ", was to "fight against all elements hostile to the Reich and German against the fighting force" and at the same time to decimate the Polish intelligentsia as comprehensively as possible .

The EK 1 was set up in Dramburg in Pomerania and followed in the association of EGr IV of the 4th Army to Poland. Bischoff's unit was significantly involved in the reprisals that were triggered by the " Bromberg Bloody Sunday ". In an address to the members of his task force at the beginning of their mission, he made it clear that suspicious Polish men should be shot, regardless of whether they were carrying weapons or not. In the late autumn of 1939, the task forces of the security police were disbanded and converted into stationary units.

In his function as head of the state police station in Posen , which he held until September 21, 1941, Bischoff was also head of Fort VII , which was initially referred to as "Posen concentration camp" and in mid-November 1939 as "Fort VII transit camp". This was the execution site for many Poles and Jews and, in autumn 1939, the first gassing site for the mentally ill. The first commandant of this concentration camp was SS-Untersturmführer Herbert Lange from October 10, 1939 , who was replaced by SS-Hauptsturmführer Hans Weibrecht on October 16, 1939 . The concentration camp was set up in Fort VII of the old Prussian fortifications of Posen by order of the Reich Governor and Gauleiter of the NSDAP in the Reichsgau Wartheland , Arthur Greiser . From the second half of October 1939, psychiatric patients at the nearby Owinska Sanatorium were killed in a bunker at the fort that had been converted into a gas chamber . These were brought in by lorry and brought into the gas chamber, the door of which was temporarily sealed with clay. The killing was probably carried out with carbon monoxide gas.

In Magdeburg he was responsible for the murder of several Polish civilians by hanging from January 19, 1942 to November 27, 1942 and took part in the executions, which were carried out without a judgment.

In December 1943, Helmut Bischoff was as SD representatives to achieve for the A4 program in the satellite camp of Dora concentration camp Buchenwald and the self-employed from October 1944 Mittelbau used. The A4 program involved the manufacture of the first long-range ballistic missile developed by Walter Dornberger and Wernher von Braun , which became known as the "V2". To protect against the omnipresent Allied air bombardment, the rocket production of the Mittelwerk GmbH founded for this purpose was relocated to the newly created tunnels of the Kohnstein near Nordhausen in Thuringia .

In his function as Abwehr Commissioner, Bischoff was also the representative of the head of the A4 program, SS-Obergruppenführer Hans Kammler and, from February 9, 1945, “Commander of the Security Police z. b. V. ". On the orders of the concentration camp commandant, he carried out individual and mass executions. He presumably had the power of attorney from Kammler to impose independent death sentences on prisoners.

After the war

Bischoff initially managed to go into hiding after the war. In January 1946, however, he was arrested by the Soviet secret police and imprisoned first in Magdeburg and then until 1948 in special camp No. 1 in Mühlberg . Then he was sent to special camp No. 2 in Buchenwald until 1950 and then deported to the Soviet Union . In 1955 he was released with the last German prisoners of war. He found a job with the tracing service of the German Red Cross , where he worked from 1957 to 1965.

He was the main defendant in the Essen Dora trial against perpetrators from the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp from November 17, 1967 to May 8, 1970. In addition to his former employee Ernst Sander , the former head supervisor Erwin Busta was also charged. Because of his incapacity to stand trial, the trial against him was suspended on May 5, 1970, four days before the verdict was announced. On May 26, 1970, the proceedings were discontinued on the following grounds:

“The main hearing has meanwhile progressed so far that the pronouncement of the judgment can be expected. If this judgment, which is at least not improbable according to the investigations of the main hearing so far, is that the defendant Bischoff is convicted as a murderer, then according to the result of the appraisal by the expert de Boor it can be expected that it will be with the defendant Bischoff as a result of the pronouncement of the judgment, there was an excessive increase in blood pressure, which resulted in his death - possibly still in the courtroom ".

Bischoff died as a pensioner in 1993.

literature

• Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume I: Politicians. Volume 7: Supplement A – K. Winter, Heidelberg 2013, ISBN 978-3-8253-6050-4 , pp. 93-95.
• Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .
• Helmut Krausnick, Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm: The troop of the Weltanschauung war. The Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and SD 1938–1942. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1981, ISBN 3421019878 .
• Ingo Müller: Terrible Jurists - The unresolved past of our judiciary. 1987, ISBN 3463400383 .
• Alexander Sperk : The state police (head) office in Magdeburg, its leaders and the smashing of the KPD. In: Police & History. Independent interdisciplinary journal for police history , 1/2009, Verlag für Polizeiwissenschaft, ISSN  1865-7354 , pp. 10–11.
• Jens-Christian Wagner: Production of death: The Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp , Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-89244-439-0 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Jens-Christian Wagner: Production of Death: Das KZ Mittelbau-Dora , Göttingen 2001, p. 666.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Ernst Klee: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 51.
3. ↑ hospital Owinska and Poznan Fort VII at deathcamps.org
4. ↑ Online research - Hamburg State Archive 213-12_0593 Bischoff, Helmut Hermann Wilhelm, among others, for the killing of several Polish civilians by hanging in the area of ​​the former police headquarters in Magdeburg in the period from January 19, 1942 to November 27, 1942
5. ^ Ernst Klee: German Medicine in the Third Reich: Careers Before and After 1945 , S. Fischer, 2001, p. 288, ISBN 978-3100393104 .
6. ^ Andrè Sellier: Forced Labor in the Rocket Tunnel - History of the Dora Camp , Lüneburg 2000, p. 518.
7. ^ Quotation from Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich. Fischer Taschenbuch 2005, p. 51, source: 24 Js 549/61 (Z) OStA Cologne.