Josef Pospischil (SS member)

Josef Pospischil (born December 20, 1899 in Mährisch-Schönberg , † February 14, 1948 in Rastatt ) was a German-Austrian SS leader and police officer.

Live and act

Pospischil grew up in the Sudetenland . From February 1917 to November 1918 he took part in the First World War, although according to Shlomo Aronson it is unclear whether he belonged to the German or Austrian army . Aronson tends, however, that Pospischil was part of the Reichsheer because he left the army in November 1918 .

After the war, Pospischil was in the police force from September 25, 1919 to August 31, 1921 . From August 1 to December 21, 1921 Pospischil belonged to the Freikorps Oberland . He then returned to his homeland in Czechoslovakia . According to Heinrich Orb , he had to flee from there because of the manslaughter of a border official and returned to the German Reich .

From July 1, 1922 to November 9, 1923 and again from April 9, 1932 to June 22, 1932, Pospischil was a member of the National Socialist Sturmabteilung (SA). He joined the NSDAP on May 1, 1932 ( membership number 1,096,992). On August 16, 1932, Pospischil became a member of the SS (SS No. 53,675), in which he was assigned to the SD at an unexplained time . In 1933 or 1934 he worked for the SD Upper Section East in Berlin. Orb also reports that Pospischil was a representative of Walter Sohst , the liaison between SD chief Reinhard Heydrich and Gestapo chief Rudolf Diels , and later, in early 1934, an SD spy at the defense office of the Reich Defense Ministry . Pospischil had been working in the Gestapo since the summer of 1934 .

On April 20, 1938, Pospischil was promoted to Untersturmführer. According to his regular role at that time he was a leader in the SD main office and a criminal assistant candidate with the Gestapo. At that time he lived in Berlin-Charlottenburg.

In later years Pospischil was responsible for managing the prisoners' meals at Vaihingen concentration camp . He is said to have participated in mass shootings in the Majdanek concentration camp and caused numerous deaths by systematically lowering the prisoner rations.

After the war PospischiL was, among other things, support the SS Death's Head ring the owner and Julleuchters was, in the course of the Natzweiler-process in Rastatt for war crimes and crimes against humanity, accused found guilty and sentenced to death . He was executed in February 1948 .

literature

• Shlomo Aronson : Heydrich and the beginnings of the SD and the Gestapo. 1931-1935 . DVA, Stuttgart 1971, ISBN 3-421-01569-4 (also dissertation, University of FU Berlin 1967).