Helmut Schlierbach

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Helmut Schlierbach (born July 16, 1913 in Offenbach ; † March 21, 2005 there ) was a German lawyer, government councilor and SS-Sturmbannführer . During the time of National Socialism he was head of the Gestapo in Strasbourg and, among other things, responsible for 108 murders of members of the French resistance group Alliance in Schirmeck and for a further 56 murders at the end of November 1944 in Kehl , Rastatt , Offenburg , Freiburg , Bühl , Pforzheim and Gaggenau .

Life

Origin and studies

Schlierbach studied law, after the First State Examination in 1935 he was a trainee lawyer at courts in Bad Nauheim , Frankfurt am Main , Offenbach and Darmstadt and then worked at the State Police Office, a subdivision of the Gestapo, in Frankfurt. In 1933 he joined the SS (membership number 107.970), in 1935 the NS-Rechtswahrerbund and in 1937 the NSDAP (membership number 5.628.167). In 1937 he received his doctorate as Dr. jur. ; In 1938 he passed the second state examination in Stuttgart.

Also in 1938 Schlierbach took part in a weapons exercise with the SS-Totenkopfstandarte Thuringia, which was one of the guards of the concentration camps .

Reich Security Main Office and Einsatzgruppen

From November 1938 to May 1942, Schlierbach sat at his desk in the Main Security Police Office in Berlin , which became part of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA).

From May 1942 Schlierbach was the external command leader of Einsatzgruppe C , the mobile murder units of the security service and security police . Task Force C murdered almost 100,000 people in Ukraine after the German attack on the USSR ; the victims were political opponents, communist functionaries and all people regarded as “racially inferior” (“ Jews and Gypsies ”).

From June 1942 Schlierbach was with the commander of the Security Police and the SD (BdS) in Kiev , then with Sonderkommando 4a, part of Einsatzgruppe C, and himself leader of a special command. After his appointment as SS-Sturmbannführer ( Major ) in 1943, he was in command of the Security Police and the SD (KdS) in Dnepropetrovsk .

Head of the Gestapo in Strasbourg

Since Schlierbach “has proven himself very well in the front line [...]” and as “leader of a command to fight partisans […] has the necessary courage” - so in the assessment, he became head of the Gestapo in Strasbourg at the end of 1943.

In May 1944, “an order, coming from Berlin and signed with Schiebart [Helmut Schlierbach], sent the final death sentence for all members of the Resistance Organization Alliance to Schirmeck.” The order came from Schlierbach on the night of January 1st To murder the 108 members of the Alliance in the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp on September 2, 1944 , including the public prosecutor's office in a futile retrial in 1977. The prisoners had previously been held in the Schirmeck-Vorbruck security camp . Karl Buck , commandant of Schirmeck-Vorbruck, and Julius Gehrum , who played a leading role in the “ Black Forest Blood Week ” at the end of November 1944, named Schlierbach as the person who gave the order “to systematically destroy the Réseau Alliance”, including for the massacres at the end of November 1944 in Kehl (9 murdered), Rastatt (12 murdered), Offenburg (4 murdered), Freiburg (3 murdered), Bühl (8 murdered), Pforzheim (25 murdered) and Gaggenau (9 murdered).

From November 1944 to February 1945 Schlierbach was head of the Gestapo in Karlsruhe .

After the war

In 1946 a British military court sentenced Helmut Schlierbach in Düsseldorf to ten years in prison for the murder of British paratroopers in the Vosges , but he was released in 1952 and was recognized as a late returnee by the Federal Ministry of Justice . Although a French military court in Metz sentenced him to death in absentia in 1954 for the murders in Schirmeck, the Federal Republic did not extradite him. Efforts by the judiciary of the Federal Republic that began later remained ineffective:

Since there were no written orders, an interrogation in 1961 was inconclusive. Schlierbach either could not or did not want to remember or denied participation. In addition, those who knew about it such as Erich Isselhorst and Julius Gehrum or the possible commander at the Reich Security Main Office, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, had meanwhile been executed. Schlierbach's claims could not be refuted in the 1978 investigation in Darmstadt .

After the war, Schlierbach worked as in-house counsel for the Hessian Savings Bank Association.

literature

  • Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 , p. 540.
  • Heinz Höhne : The order under the skull. o. O., o. J., p. 188 u. 201.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Central Office of the State Judicial Administration Ludwigsburg , BA B114 AR-Z 67/67
  2. ^ Elisabeth and Francois Stosskopf: Jacques Camille Louis Stosskopf, 1898–1944. Sarreguemines 2000, p. 157
  3. ^ Andreas Pflock: Schirmeck-Vorbruck security camp. In: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 9: Labor education camps, ghettos, youth protection camps, police detention camps, special camps, gypsy camps, forced labor camps. CH Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-57238-8 , pp. 521-533, here p. 525.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Schlierbach, Helmut
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German government councilor, SS-Sturmbannführer and Gestapo head of Strasbourg
DATE OF BIRTH July 16, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Offenbach
DATE OF DEATH March 21, 2005
Place of death Offenbach