Horst Richter (SS member)

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Horst Richter (born September 28, 1921 in Berlin ) was a German SS squad leader of the Waffen SS and a war criminal convicted in Italy. On June 22, 2005, he was sentenced - in absentia - to life imprisonment for the massacre of Sant'Anna di Stazzema with nine other SS men. About 560 civilians were killed in this massacre on August 12, 1944.

Military career

Richter was in the Hitler Youth from 1936 and made it up to the Scharführer. In 1939 he signed up as a volunteer with the SS for 12 years . The judge, who had also joined the NSDAP , came to Warsaw in 1940 after the beginning of the Second World War to a unit of the SS division “Totenkopf” , which also included Alfred Schöneberg . The latter was later also one of the co-defendants in the trial for the massacre in Sant'Anna di Stazzema.

He made a career in the Totenkopf Division and was promoted to SS-Unterscharführer on January 1, 1943 . During his time in the division he was wounded several times, in April 1942 and in March 1943 during the retaking of Kharkov . After a long recovery period, he was assigned first to the SS Totenkopf Replacement Battalion in Warsaw and then to the SS escort battalion.

From the SS escort battalion he was transferred to Italy to the newly established 16th SS Panzer Grenadier Division "Reichsführer SS" and placed under the command of the 5th Company of the 2nd Battalion of the 35th SS Panzer Regiment. The division was formed in autumn 1943 by the Reichsführer SS command staff from the 3rd SS Panzer Division Totenkopf and the SS escort battalion. These two aforementioned units "are considered (according to Martin Cüppers ) as pioneers of the Shoah ", which began the extermination of the Jews in the Soviet Union . In Italy, the 16th SS Panzer Grenadier Division was deployed to defend the Goths in the northern Apennines . When the Allies advanced in the summer of 1944, partisans intensified their activities and the SS carried out “retaliatory measures” against the “gangs”, which were terrorist measures against civilians. Richter was a platoon leader in the 5th company of the 2nd battalion of SS Panzergrenadier Regiment 35, commanded by SS-Hauptsturmführer Anton Galler , in the massacre of Sant'Anna di Stazzema on August 12, 1944, in which mainly innocent children and women were involved and old people were murdered. In September and October 1944 Richter was twice wounded slightly and on November 1, 1944 promoted to SS-Scharführer. In May 1945 he was finally taken prisoner by the US .

Legal processing

The name Horst Richter appeared for the first time in connection with the events in Sant'Anna di Stazzema in September 1944, when a German defector mentioned him to the investigative commission set up by the 5th US Army .

2002 opened the military prosecutor's office in La Spezia proceedings against alleged perpetrators of the massacre in Sant'Anna di Stazzema. This only became possible after the files, which had already been set up after the end of the Second World War, had been kept in the so-called closet of shame for a long time . In 2004 the trial began at the La Spezia Military Tribunal. In the same year Richter admitted in an interview with the journalist Christine Kohl that he had been in Sant'Anna di Stazzema during the war.

In 2005 Richter, Karl Gropler Gerhard Sommer , Alfred Schöneberg , Werner Bruß , Heinrich Schendel, Ludwig Heinrich Sonntag , Georg Rauch , Ludwig Göring and Alfred Mathias Concina were sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia. The judgment was upheld in 2006 by the Court of Appeal in Rome in the second instance and in 2007 by the Supreme Court of Cassation in the third and last instance.

Richter was never brought before the Italian judiciary and was not charged in Germany either. His last known place of residence was Krefeld .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Sentenza del Tribunale militare di La Spezia, in data 22 giugno 2005, depositata il 20 September 2005. La posizione degli imputati. In: difesa.it. Retrieved October 2, 2019 (Italian).
  2. ↑ Historical report in the preliminary investigation of the Stuttgart public prosecutor's office against members of the 16th SS-Pz.Gren.Div. "Reichsführer-SS" for murder in Sant'Anna di Stazzema on August 12, 1944, written by Dr. Carlo Gentile (PDF; 1 MB). Retrieved October 2, 2019. p. 47
  3. ^ Carlo Gentile : Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS in Partisan War: Italy 1943–1945 . Schöningh, Paderborn 2012, ISBN 978-3-506-76520-8 . P. 201
  4. ↑ Silvia Buzzelli, Marco De Paolis, Andrea Speranzoni: La ricostruzione giudiziale dei crimini nazifascisti in Italia. Questioni preliminari. Giappichelli, Turin 2012 ISBN 978-88-348-2619-5 . Pp. 145-146
  5. ^ The massacre of Sant'Anna di Stazzema , on Resistenza . Retrieved October 2, 2019
personal data
SURNAME Judge, Horst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS squad leader and convicted war criminal
DATE OF BIRTH September 28, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin