Helmut Kallmeyer

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Helmut Kallmeyer (born October 8, 1910 in Hamburg ; † September 27, 2006 ) was a German chemist who served as a consultant for gassing methods to the “ Chancellery of the Führer ” during the Nazi era . Later he was employed in the Forensic Institute of the Security Police (KTI).

Life

Kallmeyer was the son of a senior building officer and studied chemistry at various universities from 1929 . In 1939 he completed his studies at the Technical University of Berlin and received his doctorate the following year. Kallmeyer was then drafted into the Navy and served there until September 1941.

Kallmeyer was never a member of the NSDAP , but was included in the SA , which he allegedly got into without his own involvement through corporate membership of the German High Seas Sports Association.

At the end of 1940 he married Gertrud Fröse, who had served temporarily in the Grafeneck killing center that year . Among the wedding guests was Viktor Brack , who organized the T4 campaign from the “ Chancellery of the Führer ” and for whom the bride had worked as a secretary. In September 1941, Kallmeyer was released from the Navy to perform special tasks on the home front .

The assumption is that Viktor Brack asked the chemist Kallmeyer and found in him an expert whom he urgently needed to help set up extermination camps . As can be seen from the so-called gas chamber letter of October 25, 1941, Jews unfit for work near Riga were to be gassed with "Brack's aids". In this context Viktor Brack offered to send his chemist Dr. Send Kallmeyer and other assistants. In fact, this plan was not carried out in the Baltic States ; In the extermination camps of Aktion Reinhard , however, numerous people who were previously employed in "Aktion T4" were employed.

After the war, Kallmeyer stated that he had never been to Riga. Kallmeyer was verifiable in Lublin at the beginning of 1942 . Later he couldn't remember a particular assignment. Allegedly he returned to Berlin after a week , was supposed to analyze drinking water there and was transferred to the Forensic Institute in the summer of 1942 after an illness. A letter from Kallmeyer's dated May 2, 1944, with which he ordered “15 bottles of carbon dioxide” on behalf of the Forensic Institute has been preserved.

After the end of the war

Kallmeyer was questioned as a witness in 1946 in connection with the Nuremberg medical trial . He denied knowing anything about the euthanasia murders. He also downplayed his subsequent work at the CTI; he never had anything to do with gas or poison. The couple only admitted what could be proven by found documents. Even if the investigating authorities did not believe the assertions, the couple could not be proven to have participated in the various murders.

After the war, Kallmeyer worked as a senior government councilor in the State Statistical Office in Kiel and later for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Cuba and Ghana . There he met Horst Schumann in 1960 , who was wanted because of his work in the Nazi killing center in Sonnenstein .

Interpretations

The historian Henry Friedlander judges that the chemist Kallmeyer, like Albert Widmann and August Becker, was indispensable for the T4 campaign: “These three men did not make any decisions and did not carry out any murders; Instead, they worked as specialists who provided professional services that were crucial for the success of the murder. "

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Henry Friedlander: The way to the Nazi genocide. From euthanasia to the final solution. Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-8270-0265-6 , p. 343.
  2. ^ Andrej Angrick, Peter Klein: The 'Final Solution' in Riga: Exploitation and Destruction 1941-1944. Darmstadt 2006, ISBN 978-3-534-19149-9 , p. 201.
  3. ↑ Ernst Klee: What they did - What they became. Frankfurt / Main 1986, ISBN 3-596-24364-5 , p. 105.
  4. ^ Raul Hilberg : The annihilation of the European Jews. Frankfurt / Main, ISBN 3-596-24417-X , vol. 3, p. 1172 / vol. 2, p. 938, note 27.
  5. ↑ Ernst Klee: What they did ... , p. 105.
  6. ^ Henry Friedlander: The way to the Nazi genocide. P. 337.
personal data
SURNAME Kallmeyer, Helmut
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German chemist
DATE OF BIRTH October 8, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH September 27, 2006