Jakob Reimer (SS member)

Jakob Reimer , also Jack Reimer (born November 6, 1918 in Friedensdorf ; † August 3, 2005 in Fort Lee , New Jersey ) was a Red Army soldier during the Second World War and served as a soldier after his capture by the German Wehrmacht in 1942 Volunteer and belonged to the auxiliary troops of the SS . After the war he emigrated to the USA and worked there as a salesman and restaurant manager.

Life

He was born the son of Mennonites . Reimer studied library science before he was drafted into the Soviet army in 1940. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Reimer was captured by German troops on July 6, 1941. Two months later he was sent to the Trawniki forced labor camp as an ethnic German , where he was trained as an SS assistant. His personal sheet led him there with the number 865. Reimer was promoted four times in the service of the SS.

For Reimers time as auxiliary volunteers in Trawniki American authorities brought against him the charges in several ways: He had on a winter 1941-42 mass murder part of a group of Jewish prisoners in woods near the camp in Trawniki, he was also in 1942 at the Deportation of Jews from the ghetto in Częstochowa and the ghetto in Lublin , participated in the evacuation of the Warsaw ghetto in 1943 . Reimer claimed to have slept through the ordered shooting at Trawniki and therefore arrived too late there. He admitted to having shot a man after his request for a coup de grace, which was later decisive for his expatriation.

On February 19, 1944, Reimer said he was involuntarily naturalized to Germany, while retreating from the Red Army, his unit was relocated to Dresden. The commandant of the SS training camp Trawniki Karl Streibel promoted Reimer to SS-Oberzugwachmann on April 17, 1945 , after proposing him on September 26, 1944 for the award of the German Cross . In 1952 he applied for a visa to the USA and became a US citizen on April 28, 1959. During his time in the United States, Reimer worked as a salesman and restaurant manager. He lived in Brooklyn . After retiring, he moved to Carmel and lived in Fort Lee, New Jersey until his death.

In 1980 Reimer was investigated for the first time in connection with the John Demjanjuk case. However, no progress has been made in this investigation. It wasn't until 1992 when the Soviet Union fell apart that investigators made significant strides. That year, Reimer was charged with expatriation by the Office of Special Investigations . In 1998 this was heard in a court. Reimer was expatriated from the United States on September 5, 2002. He appealed against his expatriation. On January 27, 2004, the judgment was upheld by a United States Court of Appeals . In 2005 Reimer was supposed to be deported. He agreed to be deported to Germany, but died before the execution.

literature

• Eric C. Steinhart: The Chameleon of Trawniki. Jack Reimer, Soviet Volksdeutsche, and the Holocaust . In: Holocaust and Genocide Studies , Vol. 23 H. 2 (2009), pp. 239-262, doi: 10.1093 / hgs / dcp032

Web links

• "List of Nazis captured in the USA"
• Colin Miner: Onetime Nazi Guard Who Settled In Brooklyn Misses Court Date . In: New York Sun (2002-2008) , June 14, 2005. 
• Speech by Eli Rosenbaum in front of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum on Remembrance Day on April 11, 2013

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The Chameleon of Trawniki: Jack Reimer, Soviet Volksdeutsche, and the Holocaust , book preview on Project Muse, accessed February 16, 2019
2. ^ ^{A b} Mennonites and the Holocaust: From collaboration to perpetuation , Mennonite Historical Society, 2010
3. ^ New York Magazine. by New York Media, LLC New York magazine was born in 1968 after a run as an insert of the New York Herald Tribune and quickly made a place for itself as the trusted resource for readers across the country. With award-winning writing and photography covering everything from politics and food to theater and fashion, the magazine's consistent mission has been to reflect back to its audience the energy and excitement of the city itself, while celebrating New York as both a place and an idea . , P. 34 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
4. ↑ ^{a b} Court record on case 356 F.3d 456 - UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Jack REIMER, a / k / a Jakob Reimer, Defendant Appellant. Docket No. 02-6286. United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit. , accessed on February 16, 2019.
5. ^ ^{A b} Dan Barry: About New York; A Face Seen And Unseen On the Subway. In: The New York Times . September 17, 2005, accessed February 17, 2019 .