Hermann Herz (SS member)

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Erhart Hermann Herz (born April 26, 1908 in Gnölbzig , † January 24, 1978 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was a German SS leader and Gestapo officer .

Life

Herz joined the police force in 1930. After the handover of power to the National Socialists , he became a member of the NSDAP ( membership number 4,340,641) and the SS (membership number 211,028). After his promotion to detective inspector, he worked in the state police station in Halle (Saale) . From 1938, Herz was a lecturer at the border police school in Pretzsch an der Elbe . After the beginning of the Second World War , Herz belonged to the second security police contingent, led by Hans Trummler , of the Einsatzgruppe e.g. V. in German-occupied Poland, which murdered Polish intellectuals. After that, Herz returned to the Pretzsch border police school on the Elbe and resumed teaching. After this training facility was closed, he continued teaching at the Drögen Security Police School in Fürstenberg / Havel .

"Law is what benefits Germany."

- Hermann Herz during his teaching activities in World War II

In February 1943 Herz took over the management of the state police station in Allenstein and rose to SS-Sturmbannführer in April 1943. In early 1944, Hermann Herz was informed and instructed about Operation 1005 , which was subject to secrecy, by the inspector of the security police and SD in Königsberg, Walter Schick . Schick handed Herz a map on which the mass graves of the murder victims of the Einsatzgruppen were recorded. Herz formed an "Enterdungskommando", which, in addition to former task force members, Gestapo officers from his office and gendarmes, also included up to 15 Jewish forced laborers . This command opened the mass graves from February 1944 , burned the corpses and then planted the filled pits to camouflage the crimes. The Jewish slave laborers were shot in April 1944 after the end of this action.

After the end of the war, Herz returned to the police force and worked at the State Office of Criminal Investigation in Baden-Württemberg and the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Baden-Württemberg , as well as teaching at the State Police School in Freiburg . Herz was promoted to chief detective. At his own request, he retired in the early 1960s. In 1964, the public prosecutor's office in Freiburg started an investigation against Herz for aiding and abetting the murder of the Jewish labor prisoners of the Enterdungskommando. On March 18, 1966, Herz was acquitted in proceedings before the Freiburg jury. Herz had admitted that on his instructions the 15 work inmates of the earthmaking squad had been shot; but he was under a state of emergency . Herz was credited with considering the prisoners to be criminals sentenced to death and therefore "the killing of the prisoners (...) was justified".

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Death register of the registry office Freiburg im Breisgau No. 162/1978.
  2. ↑ Investigation files against Hermann Herz, Freiburg State Archives, F176 / 23 No. 171–173
  3. ^ A b c Klaus-Michael Mallmann, Jochen Böhler and Jürgen Matthäus: Einsatzgruppen in Poland: Presentation and documentation . Scientific Book Society, Stuttgart 2008, p. 38
  4. ↑ Hermann Herz on www.dws-xip.pl
  5. ↑ a b c d Peer Heinelt: " Culture and Knowledge - How the Nazis removed the traces of their mass murders in Eastern Europe: 'You can't tell that' ", in: Neue Rheinische Zeitung Online
  6. ↑ Chroniknet
personal data
SURNAME Heart, Hermann
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Herz, Erhart Hermann (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS leader and Gestapo officer
DATE OF BIRTH April 26, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Gnölbzig
DATE OF DEATH January 24, 1978
Place of death Freiburg in Breisgau