Herbert Aust

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Herbert Aust (born May 14, 1913 ; † unknown) was SS-Sturmbannführer in the Race and Settlement Main Office of the SS (RuSHA), expert for SS selection and commissioner for the Lebensborn campaign .

Life

The trained chemist had been a member of the RuSHA since 1938. Since an aptitude test for the Waffen-SS Nordwest was set up in The Hague in 1941 , Aust was the director there until 1942. This aptitude test was carried out according to the criteria that were determined by Heinrich Himmler's marriage order and the specifications of the SS race selection.

Aust taught SS members and checked a "species-appropriate celebration" for marriage consecrations, naming and so-called "clan evenings". His tasks, however, went far beyond the examination of such SS conventions. He organized training for Dutch doctors so that they could draw up hereditary biology reports for members of the Dutch Waffen SS and their wives.

From August 1, 1942, he was the “Rasse- und Siedlungsführer” (RuS) of the Waffen SS Northwest until the end of the occupation in the Netherlands . With the year 1943 new tasks arose for him as a representative for the facility "Lebensborn" and race questions. In doing so, he checked the children of German soldiers in the Netherlands who they had with Dutch women.

For the “Lebensborn” campaign, he checked the selection of Dutch women who were to take part in the campaign. Those who were selected as suitable should receive funding from the SS and the German Reich . Aust had received the provisions for this in a letter dated January 21, 1943 from SS-Obergruppenführer Otto Hofmann as head of the RuSHA.

Hofmann had already informed the Reichsführer SS Personal Staff on January 21, 1943 that the HSSPF would act in the Netherlands regarding the approval of mixed marriages between Germans and Dutch. Aust executed this instruction as well.

But Aust also developed initiatives that were particularly aimed at Jewish Dutch people. He was interested in recording the "mixed Jews" (Nazi jargon). On July 14, 1942, he warned the HSSPF Nordwest, SS group leader Hanns Albin Rauter , to resolve the “mixed race question in the Netherlands”. In the letter he stated the number of "mixed race" based on non-European relationships as 200,000, while he estimated the number of Jewish mixed race at 50,000.

Aust's field of activity also included the sterilization of “half-breeds”. One of Aust's cases was even dealt with in the Nuremberg Trials , which concerned a German “half-breed” whose residence permit in the Netherlands had expired. Before the end of the war, he had files that a Dutch clan researcher put together confiscated for further recording.

From September 1, 1943, Aust's operational area expanded to include Belgium . Here he took over the duties of the RuS guide Flanders . During the trial of the SS-Gruppenführer and Lieutenant General of the Police Wilhelm Harster in 1967 it was revealed that Aust had been active in the Westerbork transit camp in February 1944 , where it was a question of testing Jewish people from Portugal . Aust's verdict, which was revealed in a letter dated February 21, 1944, meant the death sentence for 273 people. His assessment was clear: "racial subhumanity ". In his assessment, Aust turned against the opinion of other scientists on this question, which he dismissed as "attempted evasion by Judaism".

These acts were probably reserved for investigations into Nazi crimes, because Aust was obviously never charged, but was only questioned in the 1948 investigation.

After the Second World War , he became politically active in the German party , for which he ran in 1953 in the Bundestag constituency of 232 Bad Kissingen .

literature

  • Isabel Heinemann: Race, Settlement, German Blood - The Race and Settlement Main Office of the SS and the new racial order in Europe , Göttingen 2003 ISBN 3-89244-623-7 .
  • Robert Kempner : Edith Stein and Anne Frank. (=  Herder library . Volume 308 ). Herder, Freiburg / Basel / Vienna 1968, OCLC 252237588 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Herbert Aust . In: Martin Schumacher (Ed.): MdB - The People's Representation 1946–1972. - [Abatz bis Azzola] (=  KGParl online publications ). Commission for the History of Parliamentarism and Political Parties e. V., Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-00-020703-7 , pp. 37 , urn : nbn: de: 101: 1-2014070812574 ( kgparl.de [PDF; 187 kB ; accessed on June 19, 2017]).
personal data
SURNAME Aust, Herbert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS functionary
DATE OF BIRTH May 14, 1913
DATE OF DEATH after 1953