Johann Klepsch

Johann Klepsch (born March 1, 1894 in Vienna ; † September 6, 1968 there ) was an Austrian police officer and SS leader.

Life

Klepsch was the son of a chief railway inspector. He graduated from elementary and secondary school and then the infantry cadet school in his hometown. He took as a soldier of the infantry and later the Air Force as an observer and pilot with the Imperial Army throughout the First World War, in part, reaching in 1916 the rank of lieutenant .

After the war ended, Klepsch joined the police force in 1920 and was employed at Aspern Airport . After the " Anschluss of Austria " in March 1938, he switched to the protection police and was assigned the rank of lieutenant colonel in Vienna and in 1940 in Bremen . In February 1941 he returned to his hometown and became commander of the Schutzpolizeigruppe West in Vienna. During the German-Soviet War he was from November 1941 in command of the Ordnungspolizei (KdO) in Minsk at the Higher SS and Police Leader (HSSPF) Central Russia. Under him standing units of the Order Police were in the rear army area center of Jewish deportations , the partisan warfare and the deportation of Belarussian forced laborers in the German Reich involved. Klepsch, a member of the NSKK and the NSV since May 1938, was a member of the SS from April 1943 (SS No. 458.051). From August 1942 to November 1944 Klepsch was KdO in Belarus and Riga and u. a. Involved in the Mala Fever company, where thousands of Jews were murdered during operations against partisans. At the end of January 1945 he was appointed SS-Oberführer . After returning from the Soviet Union, he was still employed by the Ordnungspolizei in Lübeck and Stuttgart .

After the war Klepsch came in May 1945 in American internment from which he was released in February 1947th Klepsch was able to return to the police service as a colonel in the federal police . Against Klepsch was several times u. a. Investigated violent crimes committed by members of the police battalions in the occupied Soviet Union in connection with the complex of proceedings, but there was no conviction.

Klepsch was buried at the Vienna Central Cemetery .

literature

• Wolfgang Graf: Austrian SS generals. Himmler's reliable vassals , Hermagoras-Verlag, Klagenfurt / Ljubljana / Vienna 2012, ISBN 978-3-7086-0578-4 , pp. 329–334.