Hermann Blache

Hermann Blache (born May 16, 1900 in Exau , Wohlau district , province of Silesia ; † June 25, 1985 in Bochum ) was a German SS Oberscharführer and from January 1943 to February 1944 head of the forced labor camp in the Tarnow Ghetto . Blache was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964 for the murder of 22 people and an accessory to the murder of 4,000 people.

Life until 1939

Blache was the son of a farm worker . He was married and had four children.

He finished primary school in 1914 after 8th grade. He then led an unsteady life and took on various auxiliary activities in agriculture and forestry until he was drafted in 1918 for military service in an artillery regiment in Wroclaw . Until the end of the First World War he did not take part in any acts of war.

He initially resumed his activity in forestry. Until 1928 several shorter jobs followed as workers in various areas, most recently as a foreman in a sawmill . He sold the small farm that his father had taken over in 1928 in order to pursue various activities as a worker again. Shortly before the beginning of the Second World War , Blache took the aptitude test for the police service .

National socialist career

In 1937 Blache, who had been a member of the SS reserve since 1933 , was appointed Rottenführer of the general SS . At the beginning of the war he was drafted into the replacement division of a Totenkopf SS and promoted to Rottenführer of the Waffen SS in the following year . Until the end of 1940 he was on guard duty in the Buchenwald concentration camp . After a few months as a recruit trainer in Weimar , Blache, meanwhile SS-Unterscharführer , was again transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp in 1941 .

In 1942 he was appointed SS-Oberscharführer and transferred to the service of SS and Police Leader Krakow , SS Oberführer Julian Scherner , who in January 1943 made him head of the forced labor camp in the Jewish ghetto of Tarnow. Blache held this position until the ghetto was dissolved in February 1944. During this time he shot at least 22 people who had violated the regulations issued in the ghetto. In the 1964 trial against Blache, several witnesses confirmed that he had also had his eldest son executed in the ghetto. In addition, Blache contributed to the removal of at least 4,000 other people to be killed in the Auschwitz concentration camp , which was led by SS-Untersturmführer Amon Göth , as Blache did not feel himself capable of organizing this action.

Blache then led an SS guard company that guarded the forced labor camp in Cracow- Plassow . At the end of 1944 he was placed under the command of the Groß-Rosen concentration camp . At the end of the war, Blache was taken prisoner by the Americans.

Life after 1945

In the internment Recklinghausen one was against him Spruchkammer procedures performed. Because of his SS membership, he was sentenced to three months in prison in 1948, against which his internment detention was counted. He was therefore released from custody.

After Blache found employment as an unskilled worker in Bochum , he had his family follow suit. In the following years he found changing jobs as an unskilled worker in Bochum.

In September 1961 he was on suspicion of murder in custody taken. Blache was sentenced to life imprisonment in April 1964 for the alleged murders of 22 people . Because aid for murder of 4,000 people, he was also sentenced to six years in prison, on remand was taken into account. He was released on November 30, 1979.

literature

• LG Bochum, April 30, 1964. In: Justice and Nazi crimes . Collection of German convictions for Nazi homicidal crimes 1945–1966. Volume XX, edited by Irene Sagel-Grande, HH Fuchs, CF Rüter . University Press, Amsterdam 1979, No. 571, pp. 107–143 Subject matter of the proceedings: individual shooting of at least 22 Jewish prisoners from the ZAL Tarnow. Participation in the liquidation of the Tarnow Ghetto, during which at least 4,000 Jewish men, women and children were transported to KL Auschwitz. Shooting of Jews who had hidden themselves or their children and thus escaped deportation.
• Andreas Disselnkötter, Karin Schiele (ed.): Orna Birnbach. Life after the Shoah. Texts and documents . Ruhr-Echo-Verlag, Bochum 2002, ISBN 3-931999-09-2 .
• Gudrun Schwarz: A woman by his side. Wives in the "SS clan community". Aufbau-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Berlin 2000, pp. 219–222.
• Melanie Hembera: The Shoah in the Kraków district: Jewish life and German occupation in Tarnów 1939–1945. WBG, Darmstadt 2016, ISBN 978-3-534-26786-6 .

Web links

• The story of Orna Birnbach

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Bochum City Archives: Death certificate No. 2473/1985 of the Bochum registry office district
2. ^ Fritz Bauer, Karl Dietrich Bracher, Ch (ristian) J (ustus) Enschedé, Hans-Heinrich Jescheck, GE Langemeijer, C. Offringa, CF Rüter, I. Schöffer: Justice and Nazi crimes. Collection of German convictions for Nazi homicidal crimes 1945–1966. Prepared in the “Seminarium voor Strafrecht en Strafrechtspleging Van Hamel” at the University of Amsterdam . tape 20 : The sentences passed from April 12, 1964 to April 3, 1965. Serial No. 569-590. University Press Amsterdam BV, Amsterdam 1979, p. 109-143 .
3. ↑ Gudrun Schwarz: A woman by his side. Wives in the "SS clan community" . 1st edition. Aufbau-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-7466-8050-6 , p. 219-222 .