Josef Schwammberger

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Josef Schwammberger (born February 14, 1912 in Brixen , Austria-Hungary ; † December 3, 2004 in the Hohenasperg correctional hospital near Ludwigsburg ) was SS-Oberscharführer , ghetto and camp commandant during the Nazi era .

Life

Schwammberger, a commercial assistant by profession, was expatriated from Austria because he joined the SS in 1933 . The Nazi Party , he joined the 1938th During the Second World War he worked as a commander in various SS forced labor camps in the Krakow district and from October 1941 reported to the SS and police leader Julian Scherner in Krakow . Schwammberger headed the Przemyśl ghetto from January 1942 to February 1944 and then headed the Mielec labor camp. In July 1945 he was arrested in Innsbruck as Josef Hackl. After his escape from internment in January 1948, Schwammberger fled until November 13, 1987; he had gone to Argentina via one of the " rat lines " . On May 3, 1990, he was extradited from Argentina to the Federal Republic of Germany. The state of Baden-Württemberg paid almost DM 500,000 for his capture .

In the almost one-year trial from 1991 to 1992 before the Stuttgart Regional Court, Schwammberger always denied the crimes he was accused of . He merely admitted that he was in charge of ghetto A in the Przemyśl camp . On May 18, 1992 he was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Stuttgart Regional Court for murder and aiding and abetting of 650 people , which he served in the Mannheim correctional facility .

In August 2002 the Mannheim Regional Court refused early release because of the seriousness of the guilt. According to the court ruling, Schwammberger murdered arbitrarily out of racial hatred and he acted particularly cruelly towards Jews . When torturing people who had personally struck him negatively, he repeatedly practiced three of his preferred punitive methods: beating and whipping, usually after the victims had to undress; Chasing his trained German shepherd prince on them, and forcing them to choke down their own excrement or earth.

His wife Käthe Schwammberger died in Argentina in 2004 at the age of 87.

literature

  • Kurt Schrimm : Consideration of the proceedings against Josef Schwammberger . In: Alfred Gottwaldt u. a. (Ed.): Nazi tyranny. Contributions to historical research and legal processing . Edition Hentrich, Berlin 2005, ISBN 978-3-89468-278-1 , pp. 420-434.
  • Kurt Schrimm: Guilt that doesn't go away. On the trail of the last Nazi criminals . Heyne, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-453-20119-4 (chapter on Josef Schwammberger pp. 84–123).
  • Ernst Klee : The person lexicon for the Third Reich: Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007. ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .
  • Gerald Steinacher : Nazis on the run. How war criminals escaped overseas via Italy . Studienverlag, Vienna-Innsbruck-Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-7065-4026-1 .
  • Almut Greiser: The commandant Josef Schwammberger. A Nazi perpetrator in the memory of survivors . Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-351-02731-5 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. RP Online: Nazi criminal Schwammberger is dead, December 3, 2004
  2. Kurt Schrimm: Guilt that does not go away. On the trail of the last Nazi criminals . Heyne, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-453-20119-4 , pp. 84–123, here p. 91.