Henry Schmidt

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Lothar Henry Schmidt (born October 2, 1912 in Chemnitz ; † May 15, 1996 in Schmölln ) was a German SS-Obersturmführer and, as a detective commissioner, head of Section IV 4 (previously II B) of the Dresden State Police .

Life

Early years

As the son of the saddler and upholsterer Hugo Schmidt and his wife, the stocking seamstress Alma Uhlig, he attended elementary school from 1919 to 1923, then the secondary and advanced school in Chemnitz until 1929. He was one of the first 30 in Chemnitz to join the Hitler Youth .

In April 1929 he began training as a businessman in the Fischer construction business in Chemnitz, which ended on March 31, 1932 with his graduation. He continued his career under the National Socialists when he joined the SA in January 1930, taking part in battles with SA-Sturm 104. He joined the NSDAP ( membership number 321.297) on October 1, 1930. He became a member of the SS and SD (SS number 9.926) in October 1933.

Training as a criminal detective of the Gestapo

In the Nazi regime, he initially guarded a prison as an auxiliary policeman. After being promoted to SS-Scharführer, he was employed at the Secret State Police Office of Saxony in Dresden. Here, too, he still performed simple security and reporting services. He knew the head of the office from the time of the SA in Chemnitz. He was recruited to serve in the Gestapo by SS Standartenführer Friedrich Schlegel.

Another officer of the office, who later became the chief of the secret field police , SS-Oberführer Wilhelm Krichbaum , advocated his acceptance into the Gestapo. In 1936 he was promoted to SS-Untersturmführer. In Berlin-Charlottenburg he attended the security police's driving school from May to June 1937 to train as a criminal assistant. On October 16, 1937, he married the office employee Gertrud Richter.

After a probationary period at various state police stations in Austria and Poland, he served in the Opole state police station in June 1939 . He was summoned as a witness before the People's Court on February 26, 1940 by the senior Reich attorney at the People's Court. In 1941 he attended a course to become a detective commissioner at the driving school of the security police . After the occupation of Austria, Schmidt was transferred to Klagenfurt, where he was part of the counterintelligence department and was responsible for setting up the registry there.

Participation in the Holocaust in Dresden

He then served in the Trier state police station . In the order sheet of the chief of the security police number 53 of November 28, 1942, the transfer of SS-Untersturmführer and detective superintendent Henry Schmidt to Dresden is noted at his personal request. There he took over the management of Department II at the Gestapo as well as the responsibility of the departments for Freemasons , emigrants and Jews, economics and the press. In April 1942 he moved into his office in the Gestapo building in Bismarckstrasse (later Bayerische Strasse) opposite the main train station , where the Hotel Continental was previously located.

In order to find accommodation, he had the Jewish citizen Klara Weiß and her daughter Eva evicted from the apartment at Schlueterstrasse 22b by the chief criminal secretary Rudolf Müller (called "Juden-Müller"). After its establishment and the reunification of his family, he began collecting and registering Jewish citizens in order to prepare for their deportation .

In Dresden, Henry Schmidt was responsible for implementing the radical annihilation of the entire Jewish population in Europe decided at the Wannsee Conference .

From July 1942, the so-called overall schedule began, which Henry Schmidt characterized as follows: “It contained the schedule, i.e. when the transports should take place, the timing, when the transport participants should appear, when they should leave and also the approximate time of arrival in Theresienstadt. The accompanying command of the vehicles to be used and the route were also determined.

From June 1942 to September 27, 1944, he participated in ten transports to the Theresienstadt ghetto . The Jews had to report to the “Städtische Entseuchungs-Anstalt”, Fabrikstrasse 6. Of the 375 deportees, 311 were killed. The whereabouts of 39 victims could not be clarified. When he wanted to organize a remaining transport of 100 people on February 10, 1945, this was prevented by the air raid on Dresden on February 13. During the air raids, the state police station in Bismarckstrasse was completely destroyed, including all documents. In a letter dated February 12, 1945, all registered Jewish residents of Dresden, including Victor Klemperer , were asked to go to the property at Zeughausstrasse 1 on the ground floor on the right on February 16, 1945 at 6:45 a.m. with hand luggage and for two to three days " March food ".

Construction of the Hellerberg Jewish camp and end in Dresden

On November 11, 1942, regulated in a meeting in Schmidt's presence on the Dresdner Heller for Goehle-Werke company Zeiss Ikon in the Great Straße 101 at the corner of Heath Street a transit camp set up for the approximately 300 Dresden Jews who Goehle- Work were active. Schmidt promised the director Johannes Hasdenteufel to organize the management of the camp. A documentary film of the deportation of the workers to the camp has been preserved, which also shows scenes in the camp with Schmidt on November 23 and 24, 1942. At the end of February and beginning of March 1943, the camp was used as a collection point for the factory campaign ; the arrested Jews were deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp .

When Dresden was bombed, Schmidt's apartment on Schlueterstrasse was not hit. Nevertheless, Schmidt immediately settled in the surrounding forests of Dresden and built a group of " werewolves " there.

Before the time of the surrender , Schmidt was in the area around Altenberg , where he wanted to set up a base. However, he preferred to flee to his family in Teplitz before the Soviet troops . There he had the National Committee located there issue a document for him to leave the Reich. He reappeared at his sister-in-law in Chemnitz on May 8, 1945. There he had the SS tattoo of the blood group removed by a nurse .

Escape and immersion

When Schmidt learned that he was being wanted, he moved to live with his wife's relatives in Oelsnitz . Later he worked as a worker in a sand pit near Frohnsdorf . When the company was nationalized, he had achieved the position of administrator, which he also retained under VEB Starkstromanlagenbau Halle. He lived under his real name in Altenburg , Erich-Weinert-Höhe 29. On April 1, 1963, he became managing director of the workers' housing cooperative (AWG) Glückauf . Employers rewarded his work with awards such as activist of socialist work . In 1977 he retired.

Search, arrest and trial

The search for Schmidt continued for many years. His date of birth and other features of his identity could be reconstructed from files in Poland and other offices. On April 9, 1986, he was arrested by the Altenburg district attorney. In the indictment of July 27, 1987 by the State Attorney General of the GDR (Az .: 211-87) he was accused of various crimes as the legal basis of Article 6 of letter c of the statute of the Nuremberg International Military Court of August 8, 1945. Furthermore, the UN Convention of November 26, 1968, according to which the statute of limitations for war crimes and crimes against humanity is not applicable , was cited as applicable law .

From September 15 to 28, 1987, the criminal trial against Henry Schmidt was held before the Dresden District Court . Numerous witnesses were heard, whose relatives had been mistreated and violently harmed by Schmidt himself. His involvement in the deportation of Jewish citizens to concentration camps has been proven. On September 28, 1987, the chairman of the 1st Criminal Senate of the Dresden District Court, Siegfried Stranovsky, announced the verdict on life imprisonment and the deprivation of civil rights .

With its judgment of December 22, 1987, the GDR Supreme Court rejected the appeal against the judgment as unfounded. In the grounds of the judgment, reference was made to the principle that the more serious the crimes committed by the perpetrator, the less the circumstances of the perpetrator's personality and his behavior after the offense have an influence on the assessment of the sentence (Neue Justiz 1988/3, p. 123).

His life imprisonment was suspended for nine months on March 21, 1996 because of serious illness. From April 1996 Schmidt lived in the Lumpzig retirement and nursing home , shortly afterwards he died in Schmölln .

Literature (selection)

  • Beate Meyer: The "Eichmann von Dresden". "Judicial coping" with Nazi crimes in the GDR using the example of the trial against Henry Schmidt. In: Jürgen Matthäus, Klaus-Michael Mallmann (ed.): Germans, Jews, Genocide. The Holocaust as past and present (= publications of the research center Ludwigsburg. Vol. 7). WBG (Scientific Book Society), Darmstadt 2006, ISBN 978-3-534-18481-1 , pp. 275-291.
  • Irina Suttner, Gunda Ulbricht: Henry Schmidt. Head of the Jewish Department of the Dresden Gestapo. In: Christine Pieper, Mike Schmeitzner, Gerhard Naser (Eds.): Braune Karrieren. Dresden perpetrators and actors in National Socialism. Sandstein Verlag, Dresden 2012, ISBN 978-3-942422-85-7 , pp. 72-77.

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Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Christine Piper / Mike Schmeitzner / Gerhard Naser, (Eds.): Braune Karrieren. Dresden perpetrators and protagonists in National Socialism , Sandstein Verlag, Dresden 2012; Softcover, 319 pages, ISBN 978-3-942422-85-7
  2. Christine Piper / Mike Schmeitzner / Gerhard Naser, (Eds.): Braune Karrieren. Dresden perpetrators and protagonists in National Socialism , Sandstein Verlag, Dresden 2012; Softcover, ISBN 978-3-942422-85-7 , p. 74.
  3. Spit, thugs, screamers . In: Der Spiegel . No. 29 , 1998 ( online - 13 July 1998 ).
  4. ^ The development of the Red Cross in Altenburg. P. 21