Hermann Krumey

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Hermann Krumey in custody by the US Army

Hermann Alois Krumey (born April 18, 1905 in Mährisch Schönberg , † November 27, 1981 in Erftstadt ) was a German SS leader who played a key role in the extermination of the Jews during World War II . As head of the Umwandererzentralstelle (UWZ), Krumey coordinated the expulsion of Poles from the areas of Wartheland , Danzig-West Prussia and East Upper Silesia annexed by the German Reich from 1940 to 1943 . As a senior member of the Eichmann Special Task Force , he organized the deportation of the Hungarian Jews to the extermination camps in 1944 as Eichmann's deputy . Krumey was sentenced to life imprisonment by German courts for murder in 1969 . He served this prison term until shortly before his death in 1981. In the context of the legal processing of the Nazi acts in the Federal Republic of Germany, the judgment had a "clearly exceptional character" due to the type of guilty verdict (conviction for murder and not for complicity in murder of a desk perpetrator ) and the level of the sentence .

Life

Origin and entry into the SS (1905–1939)

Krumey was born in 1905 in the predominantly German-speaking northern part of Moravia , when it still belonged to the Austro-Hungarian monarchy . After the end of the First World War in 1918, his hometown Mährisch Schönberg then belonged to Czechoslovakia as Šumperk . Krumey passed the apprenticeship examination to become a druggist and later "temporarily" ran a drugstore as managing director .

At the beginning of 1935, Krumey joined the Sudeten German Party (SdP) (then still the Sudeten German Home Front ), which was led by Konrad Henlein . After the Sudetenland fell to the German Reich in October 1938 as a result of the Munich Agreement , Krumey and all SdP party members were automatically incorporated into the NSDAP . Even before the Sudetenland was "annexed", Krumey had worked undercover for the Wehrmacht and the foreign secret service in the SD . In November 1938 he was taken on full-time with the SS (SS no. 310.441). The highest SS rank that Krumey was to achieve during the Second World War was Obersturmbannführer (equivalent to Lieutenant Colonel).

Deployment in Poland (1939–1944)

In November 1939, after the attack on Poland ended , Krumey was transferred to the staff of the Higher SS and Police Leader (HSSPF) Wilhelm Koppe in Wartheland by the SS Personnel Main Office and there to the "Office for Resettlement of Poles and Jews" under SS-Obersturmbannführer Assigned to Albert Rapp . The office was subordinated to the chief of the security police and the SD in March 1940 , the new name was Umwandererzentralstelle Posen (UWZ). Part of the office was located in Łódź , it was called "Umwandererzentralstelle Posen / Dienststelle Lodz" (Łódź was only renamed Litzmannstadt in April 1940). With the reorganization date in March 1940, Krumey became the independent head of the UWZ office in Lodz.

As a result, Krumey, as a member of the Security Police (Sipo) or the SD, was responsible for the deportation of “ foreign nationals ” (Poles and Jews ) in the Warthegau , who fell victim to a total of more than 390,000 people. To this end, Krumey maintained up to twelve branch offices and operated at least five concentration camps for the Polish families who had been expelled from their homes. As part of the Zamość campaign , with which large parts of the Lublin district were to be Germanized , he had almost 10,000 Poles expelled, working closely with Odilo Globocnik . In 1942 he organized at least six transports of Jews from the Zamość camp to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp .

In the summer of 1941, a special detachment under Krumey's leadership was sent to Croatia to promote the internment of Jews in concentration camps.

In June 1942, 98 children were orphaned in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia after their fathers and all the other men were murdered in the Lidice massacre and their mothers and the other women were brought to the Ravensbrück concentration camp . After three of the 98 children were selected by representatives of the SS Race and Settlement Main Office (RuSHA) as "capable of Germanization" on site, and seven children under one year of age who were too young for a "racial examination" were given to a children's home in Prague, they remained 88 children between the ages of one and 15 who were deported by train to the youth concentration camp on Gneisenaustrasse in Litzmannstadt . In Litzmannstadt, the RuSHA director there, Walter Dongus, selected another seven children who were able to return German, who were given German names after a stopover in a home in Puschkau and then left to German foster families. Krumey reported in a telex to Standartenführer Hans Ehlich from Section III B of the RSHA on June 22, 1942 that he had contacted Eichmann's RSHA Section IV B4 about the whereabouts of the remaining 81 children , assuming the children should have one " Special treatment " are supplied. The 81 children were then taken to the Kulmhof extermination camp (Chełmno), where they were gassed. 14 days after Lidice, the inhabitants of the Bohemian village Ležáky were also murdered. Again, the RuSHA selected orphaned children on the basis of racial criteria; it sent twelve children “not able to Germanize” (together with six other children for “Germanization”) to Krumey in Litzmannstadt. The twelve children were handed over to the Gestapo in Litzmannstadt on July 25, 1942, which took them to Kulmhof for gassing. Krumey's telex to Eichmann dated June 22, 1942 was used as Exhibit T / 1094 in the Eichmann trial .

Deployment in Hungary (1944)

Krumey volunteered from the Sipo / SD to the Reich Security Main Office , where he was assigned to Section IV B 4 . With the beginning of the occupation of Hungary by the Wehrmacht on March 19, 1944 (" Operation Margarethe "), Krumey was transferred to Hungary. He was part of the Eichmann Sonderkommando , which was tasked with exterminating the Hungarian Jews. Krumey was Adolf Eichmann's deputy and organized a Judenrat and the transports to Auschwitz. He became known through the perfidious postcard campaign from the Thuringian spa town of Waldsee . In addition to Eichmann and Krumey, Otto Hunsche (administration and legal issues) and Dieter Wisliceny were also part of the command of the Sonderkommando .

After negotiations with an aid committee headed by Joel Brand , Krumey separated 21,000 Jews into the Strasshof camp in order to receive supplies in exchange for the prisoners, including 10,000 trucks (“blood for goods”). Most of the segregated prisoners survived the war; of the 377,000 Jews deported from Hungary to extermination camps, at least 290,000 were murdered. Most recently, he headed the Vienna branch of the Eichmann Special Command.

Post-war period and legal review (1945–1981)

In May 1945 Krumey was arrested by the Allies in Italy , but released on the basis of a testimony from the Hungarian Rudolf Kasztner . On the Jewish side, Kasztner took part in the negotiations with the 21,000 Hungarian Jews. Krumey went to Germany, where in 1948 a panel of rulings classified him as a “fellow traveler” in the denazification process . As a displaced person , he received a loan of DM 12,000 and from 1956 ran the Hubertus drugstore in Korbach, Hesse . He was a member of the Federation of Expellees and Disenfranchised (BHE) in the district assembly of Korbach and district chairman in the Sudeten German Landsmannschaft .

Krumey was arrested for the first time in April 1957, but released in June 1957 for lack of suspicion of having escaped. According to statements by Adolf Eichmann in the Eichmann trial , criminal prosecution began again in 1960. May 24, 1960 Krumey was arrested and remained there until his first conviction in 1965 in custody . The criminal case was jointly conducted against Krumey and Hunsche for "collective murder in an indefinite variety of cases" and came to be known as the Krumey-Hunsche trial .

After nine months of hearing, the Frankfurt am Main Regional Court sentenced Krumey to five years in prison for aiding and abetting the murder of Hungarian Jews . By offsetting the prison sentence against the time he had already spent in custody, Krumey was released. Both the public prosecutor's office and the defense went into appeal , which the BGH decided by overturning the judgment. The case was referred back to the LG, who recommended increasing the sentence for Krumey. In August 1969, Krumey was sentenced to life imprisonment. In January 1973 Krumey's renewed appeal was rejected by the BGH, so that the judgment became final.

He died in Erftstadt in late 1981 after being released from prison on grounds of illness.

literature

  • Fritz Bauer , Joachim Perels , Irmtrud Wojak : The humanity of the legal order. Selected Writings. Campus, Frankfurt / Main 1998, ISBN 3-593-35841-7 .
  • Kerstin Freudiger: The legal processing of Nazi crimes. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2002, ISBN 3-16-147687-5 .
  • Isabel Heinemann: "Race, Settlement, German Blood" - the SS Race and Settlement Main Office and the racial reorganization of Europe. Wallstein, Göttingen 2003, ISBN 3-89244-623-7 .
  • Ernst Klee : Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices, victims and what became of them. A dictionary of persons . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2013, ISBN 978-3-10-039333-3 .
  • Gerhard Mauz : vicious circle of blood and ink . In: Der Spiegel . No. 7 , 1965, pp. 35–36 ( online - on the judgment in the Krumey-Hunsche trial).
  • Joseph Poprzeczny: Odilo Globocnik, Hitler's Man in the East. McFarland, Jefferson NC 2004, ISBN 0-7864-1625-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Kerstin Freudiger: The legal processing of Nazi crimes . Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2002, p. 107. ISBN 3-16-147687-5 .
  2. ↑ a b c Kerstin Freudiger: The legal processing of Nazi crimes . Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2002, p. 97. ISBN 3-16-147687-5 .
  3. ↑ Joseph poprzeczny: Odilo Globocnik, Hitler's Man in the East . McFarland, Jefferson (North Carolina) 2004, p. 192. ISBN 0-7864-1625-4 .
  4. ↑ a b c Ernst Klee: Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices and victims and what became of them. A dictionary of persons. Frankfurt am Main 2013, p. 239.
  5. ^ Kerstin Freudiger: The legal processing of Nazi crimes . Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2002, pp. 97-98. ISBN 3-16-147687-5 .
  6. ^ Kerstin Freudiger: The legal processing of Nazi crimes . Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2002, p. 99. ISBN 3-16-147687-5 .
  7. ↑ Eberhard Jäckel (editor): Encyclopedia of the Holocaust . Argon, Berlin 1993, Vol. 2., p. 831. ISBN 3-87024-302-3 .
  8. ↑ Isabel Heinemann: "Race, settlement, German blood" - the race and settlement main office of the SS and the racial reorganization of Europe . Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2003, pp. 515-516. ISBN 3-89244-623-7 .
  9. ↑ Volker Koop: Giving the Führer a child - the SS organization “Lebensborn” e. V. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne 2007, pp. 155–159 ISBN 978-3-412-21606-1 .
  10. ^ Isabel Heinemann: "Until the Last Drop of Good Blood": The Kidnapping of "Racially Valuable" Children and Nazi Racial Policy in Occupied Eastern Europe , pp. 251-252. In: A. Dirk Moses (editor): "Genocide and Settler Society". Berghahn Books, 2004. ISBN 1-57181-410-8 .
  11. ^ Haim Gouri: Facing the Glass Booth: Reporting the Eichmann Trial . Wayne State University Press, 2004, pp. 86-87. ISBN 0-8143-3087-8 .
  12. ^ Kerstin Freudiger: The legal processing of Nazi crimes . Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2002, p. 103. ISBN 3-16-147687-5 .
  13. ↑ Thilo von Uslar: The "honorable" Karmasin. In: Die Zeit , No. 26/1966.
  14. ↑ a b Gerhard Mauz : vicious circle of blood and ink . In: Der Spiegel . No. 7 , 1965, pp. 35-36 ( online ).
  15. ↑ The final redeemer . In: Der Spiegel . No. 25 , 1960 ( online ).
  16. ^ LG Frankfurt / Main dated February 3, 1962, file number Ks 1/63.
  17. ↑ BGH of March 22, 1967, file number 2 StR 279/66.
  18. ^ LG Frankfurt / Main dated August 29, 1969, file number Ks 1/63.
  19. ↑ BGH of January 17, 1973, file number 2 StR 186/72.
  20. ↑ Eichmann's helper in Hungary ( Memento from May 18, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Krumey, Hermann
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Krumey, Hermann Alois (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Sudeten German National Socialist and perpetrator of the Holocaust
DATE OF BIRTH April 18, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Moravian Schönberg
DATE OF DEATH November 27, 1981
Place of death Erftstadt