Herbert Andorfer

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Herbert Andorfer (born March 3, 1911 in Linz ; † October 17, 2003 in Anif ) was an Austrian Obersturmführer of the Waffen-SS , camp commandant in the Sajmište concentration camp and commandant of a unit to combat the resistance in northern Italy that committed serious crimes .

Life

youth

Herbert Andorfer was born out of wedlock on March 3, 1911 in Linz. He grew up with his mother in Salzburg , where he graduated from high school in 1929 and began training as a hotel manager . While still at school he became a member of a German national student union. After completing his professional training, he worked two summers in Bad Ischl as a hotel secretary and, apart from a stint as a door-to-door salesman, was unemployed until 1934. During this time (1931) he joined the still illegal NSDAP ( membership number 610.869) and in September 1933 the also illegal SS (SS number 309.600). In 1934 he became an (illegal) local group leader in Sölden . From 1934 to 1938 he worked in a hotel in Sölden as a hotel secretary or manager.

National Socialism

In May 1938 he went to Innsbruck to work full-time in the staff of the General SS, Section 36. He then reported to the SD and was deployed in Department III (domestic intelligence). He studied for four semesters from the SD service without a degree in political science in Innsbruck and was transferred to Salzburg in 1940. There Andorfer worked in the upper class as an SD clerk in the intelligence service. From there he was sent to the Pretzsch training camp on the Elbe, where he was trained for work in the so-called SS Einsatzgruppen in the rear of the front.

Use in the Balkans 1941–1943

With the German war of aggression against Yugoslavia , he came as a member of the senior management team of the SS commandos Agram the use of Group E after Zagreb . After deployments against resistance groups near Marburg ( Maribor ) in the summer of 1941, he was promoted to SS-Untersturmführer. On October 29th he was transferred to the commander of the security police and SD (BdS) in Belgrade . Until January 1942 he was deployed in the Šabac concentration camp . Jews and Roma were also imprisoned there, many of whom were executed as "reprisals". The Reserve Police Battalion 64, known for its brutal behavior behind the front, was deployed there in 1941. The SD, to which Andorfer belonged, carried out “interrogations” in Šabac of prisoners who had been denounced by the resistance. The survivors of the SD procedures were shot by firing squads of the police battalion. Around 1000 people became victims of the police force in the Šabac concentration camp.

From January 1942 to 1943, Andorfer was the commandant of the Sajmište concentration camp , which was established by the German occupation after the demolition of the existing buildings in Belgrade's Roma district Zemun (German: Semlin) and in which mainly Jews, Roma and relatives and alleged sympathizers of the Yugoslav National Liberation Front were detained. It served as a collection point for thousands of women and children of the Jews and Roma who were shot as hostages. It was guarded by members of the Reserve Police Battalion 64, which Andorfer knew from Šabac. Members of the battalion were also involved in the shooting of Jews imprisoned in Sajmište.

The living conditions of the Sajmište concentration camp were unbearable: overcrowding, rotten potatoes and tiny amounts of water soup for food. Starting in March 1942, a total of between 7,500 and 8,000 Jews were driven through Belgrade in a gas truck every day for two months under Andorfer , killed on the way and then buried in a firing range on the periphery. Andorfer regularly accompanied these trips in the car until the corpses were unloaded. The victims also included those who had survived the Kladovo transport until then . After the end of the murders, the Serbian discharge and burial squad, which was guarded by members of the Reserve Police Battalion 64, was shot dead. In the literature there is an indication that Roma prisoners were excluded from the murder. The detentions continued after the mass crime. In many cases they were followed by murder in the camp.

Sonderkommando Andorfer in Italy 1943–1945

In autumn 1943 Andorfer came to Italy and was appointed commander of the anti-gang unit named after him . The Andorfer mobile Sonderkommando, which is dependent on the security police and SD in Verona, was involved in numerous operations directed against alleged partisans in Lombardy , Piedmont and Liguria . In March 1944 he was entrusted with the management of the SD outpost in Savona and Imperia in Liguria. Between April 6 and 11, 1944, the Andorfer Sonderkommando was involved in the raid on Benedicta monastery near Bosio , during which over 140 partisans captured were shot.

In June 1944 he took over the Macerata outpost in the Marche , before his special command was subordinated to Luftflotte 2 in Parma a month later and was used in anti-gang operations with the code names Wallenstein I, II and III in the Apennines between Emilia-Romagna and Liguria. From September 1944 the Andorfer Special Command was stationed in Rovereto and Feltre .

At the end of September, the Sonderkommando was involved in Operation Piave in Veneto , which was directed against both partisans and civilians. Suspects' houses were burned down with the residents, on September 23 and 24, 1944, 16 suspect young people were shot in a barracks by a German firing squad. Andorfer also intended to publicly execute 30 alleged or actual resistance fighters in every village around Monte Grappa . After most of the potential victims had been able to flee, he had posters stating that every man who volunteered for the flak or the Organization Todt would be killed . Parents persuaded their sons to go there because they hoped they would be able to save themselves this way. 31 young men answered. Andorfer gave the order to kill them, his "right hand", the Waffen SS Rottenführer Karl Franz Tausch, who later received the Italian nickname "German executioner", was responsible for the actual implementation. On September 26, 1944, he had the victims hung on telephone cables from the trees of three streets in Bassano del Grappa with a cardboard box marked “Bandit” on the chest by members of the Italian Fascist Youth Association . They would, was the cynical comment, “save the honor of Italy”. Victims who were still breathing after the strangulation had to be pulled down by the juvenile executioners.

Then the Waffen SS people came together in the Caffè Centrale and in the Hotel Al Cardellino to toast and to celebrate the shootings a few days earlier and the hangings.

In February 1945, the Rovereto outpost was closed and Andorfer was entrusted with the management of the Novara outpost .

Andorfer was awarded the War Merit Cross II. Class with Swords (1942), the Iron Cross II. Class (1944), the Iron Cross I Class (1945) and the SS gang fight badge from the Nazi regime .

After the end of the Nazi regime

Andorfer, who was either in a military hospital in Como near the Italian border or in a Swiss hospital in the final phase of the war in 1945 due to an injury "as part of a gang operation", as it was called in the later trial, got from there on a rat line via Sweden and New York with false papers in the name of "Hans Mayer" went to Venezuela in 1946 and was naturalized there. He later returned to Austria with his false identity. He worked again as a hotel secretary under his real name and was newly naturalized by the Republic of Austria with this identity. He traveled a lot as a tour guide and stayed abroad a lot so his identity was constantly checked.

Since 1964 there had been investigations into the crimes in the Sajmište concentration camp and into Andorfer's role. In May 1967 he was arrested and on January 30, 1969 he was sentenced to 2½ years in prison by the Dortmund Regional Court for aiding and abetting the murder of "at least 5,500" Jewish prisoners from the Sajmište concentration camp in a gas truck. The court was of the opinion that “the statutory minimum sentence of three years imprisonment provided for assisted murder” could “be undercut”, as the mitigation reasons “clearly outweigh” and the “double mitigation possibility” should be taken into account. So a mistake in the prohibition could not be ruled out and finally the “otherwise impeccable” Andorfer suffered a harsh “post-war fate” “through his aiding in the criminal killing” of the thousands: he was “completely homeless”. Moreover, detention is worse for older people than for younger people. Since Andorfer's pre-trial detention was fully credited in Austria and Germany, he was free again when the trial was over. Since he “had no dishonor at the time of the act”, his “civil rights” were not revoked.

There are no known investigations into Andorfer's SD activities in the Šabac concentration camp. His stay there was not an issue in the Dortmund proceedings.

Although the German crimes of "Operation Piave" and in particular the Bassano del Grappa massacre were well known in Italy, it was not until July 2008 that an Italian military prosecutor started an investigation after research by Italian historians initiated by the Simon Wiesenthal Center . This prompted the Darmstadt public prosecutor to initiate proceedings. However, there could be no charges and convictions either in Italy or Germany, since Andorfer had since died in an old people's home in Anif near Salzburg and Bausch committed suicide in the course of the investigation . Up until then, Tausch had spent his old age in Langen (Hessen). In 1947 he was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment and work in a mine in the CSSR for reasons other than Nazi charges, but was given amnesty in 1954 and released to the Federal Republic. There he worked for several years as a criminal investigator in Ludwigshafen before he worked as a programmer and IT specialist in Germany and abroad. He traveled 16 times to Italy, where he always gave his correct personal details in the hotels.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Christiaan F. Rüter / Dick W. de Mildt (ed.), Justice and Nazi crimes . Collection of (West) German criminal judgments for Nazi homicide crimes, 1945–2012, Vol. 31, Case 700, Amsterdam, Munich 2004, pp. 674–691.
  2. ↑ Andorfer, Herbert (1911–2007) on gedenkorte-europa.eu, the homepage of Gedenkorte Europa 1939–1945
  3. ↑ Christopher R. Browning - Fateful months: essays on the emergence of the final solution , Teaneck 1985. p. 75.
  4. ↑ Gabriele Anderl, Walter Manoschek - Failed escape: the Jewish “Kladovo transport” on the way to Palestine. 1939-1942 , 1993 p. 243.
  5. ^ Yad Vashem studies, Volume 15 , 1983, p. 68.
  6. ↑ Karola Fings / Cordula Lissner / Frank Sparing , "… the only country in which the Jewish question and the Gypsy question were resolved." The persecution of the Roma in Fascist-occupied Yugoslavia 1941–1945, Cologne undated (1992), p. 35f.
  7. ^ Walter Manoschek: "Serbia is free of Jews". Military occupation policy and the extermination of Jews in Serbia 1941/42 . Munich 1993, p. 79.
  8. ↑ Stefan Klemp, “Not determined”. Police Battalions and the Post War Justice. A handbook, Essen 2005, p. 37.
  9. ↑ Stefan Klemp, "50 Communists hung up, 350 houses burned down" - The deployment of the Reserve Police Battalion 64 in the Balkans 1941–1943, in: Alfons Kenkmann / Christoph Spieker (eds.), In order. Police, administration and responsibility (Villa ten Hompel, Schriften, Vol. 1), Essen 2001, pp. 200–224.
  10. ^ Walter Manoschek: "Serbia is free of Jews". Military occupation policy and the extermination of Jews in Serbia 1941/42 . Munich 1993, p. 178. The author's statement was adopted in other literature.
  11. ↑ All information in this section, unless otherwise stated: Walter Manoschek: “Serbia is free of Jews”. Military occupation policy and the extermination of Jews in Serbia 1941/42 . Munich 1993, p. 177ff. with note 54, 230f .; Karola Fings / Cordula Lissner / Frank Sparing , “… the only country in which the Jewish question and the Gypsy question were resolved.” The persecution of the Roma in fascist-occupied Yugoslavia 1941–1945, Cologne undated (1992), pp. 34–36.
  12. ^ Pierpaolo Rivello: Quale giustizia per le vittime dei crimini nazisti? L'eccidio della Benedicta e la Strage del Turchino tra storia e diritto. Giappichelli, Turin 2002 ISBN 978-88-348-2234-0 p. 123
  13. ^ A b c Carlo Gentile : Intelligence e repressione politica. Appunti per la storia del servizio di informazioni SD in Italia 1940-1945. P. 24 PDF
  14. ↑ a b Sonia Residori: Il massacro del Grappa. Vittime e carnefici del rastrellamento (September 21-27, 1944). P. 75
  15. ^ History of Bassano: Il Rastellamento del la Grappa e le rappresaglie, see: [1] .
  16. ↑ Aldo Cazzullo ; Viva l'Italia! Risorgiomento et Resistenza , Milan 2010, p. 89; Sebastian Weißgerber, Wehrmacht Crimes. Under suspicion, in: Frankfurter Rundschau, September 25, 2008, see also: [2] .
  17. ↑ Aldo Cazzullo, Viva l'Italia! Risorgiomento et Resistenza, Milan 2010, p. 89.
  18. ↑ Karl Pfeifer, On the year of celebration and reflection 2005: Patriotic introduction, in: haGalil. Jewish life online, January 1, 2005, see: [3] .
  19. ↑ All information according to: Christiaan F. Rüter / Dick W. de Mildt (ed.), Justice and Nazi Crimes . Collection of (West) German criminal judgments for Nazi homicide crimes, 1945–2012, Vol. 31, Case 700, Amsterdam, Munich 2004, pp. 674–691.
  20. ^ "Ho visto il boia di Bassano". Un giornalista dell'Espresso scova exchange, in: La Tribuna di Treviso, July 25, 2008, see also: [4] .
  21. ↑ Per diversi decenni è stato solo un nome storpiato, sepolto tra le carte. In: ilgazzettino.it. September 14, 2014, accessed September 11, 2019 (Italian).
  22. ↑ Wehrmacht Crimes Suspect takes his own life, in: Frankfurter Rundschau, September 26, 2008, see also: [5] .
personal data
SURNAME Andorfer, Herbert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian Waffen SS Obersturmführer, commandant of the Sajmište concentration camp and involved in crimes by an SS commando in northern Italy
DATE OF BIRTH March 3, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Linz
DATE OF DEATH October 17, 2003
Place of death Anif