Josias Kumpf

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Josias Kumpf (born April 7, 1925 in Nova Pazova , Syrmia , Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes ; † October 15, 2009 in Vienna ) was a guard in the Trawniki forced labor camp . He was accused of participating in the murder of 8,000 Jews there in 1943. He denied this until the end of his life.

Life

Kumpf was born in 1925 as a citizen of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes . At the age of 16, Kumpf was evacuated as a ethnic German ( Danube Swabian ) farm worker by the Waffen-SS and conscripted to Germany. In 1942/43, at the age of 17, Kumpf became a member of the Waffen SS. At first he was stationed as a member of the guards in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp . In November 1943, he was in the in occupied Poland located Trawniki concentration camp laid. Immediately afterwards, the so-called “ harvest festival ” took place there, in which 8,000 Jewish men, women and children were shot. At the time of the crime, Kumpf was under 20 years old.

Kumpf testified to have been at the scene, but at the same time denied the allegation of direct involvement in the mass murder.

"I was there, in Trawniki. That night. I was a guard at the fence - you understand? But I was too late. When I got there, they had already been shot. Hundreds. Thousands. With the machine gun. They were lying in." the holes they had to dig themselves before. Some of them weren't dead yet, they crawled out again. Then they were shot again, one after the other. Until they were all dead. "

Post war

After the Second World War , Kumpf first lived in Austria and received German citizenship independently in 1956 . In the same year he emigrated to the USA . There he settled in Racine (Wisconsin) and became an American citizen in 1964, whereby he gave up his German citizenship.

He lived as a worker with wife and children in Wisconsin and Chicago . Kumpf was a house owner and was entitled to a pension.

Research

The US Department of Justice's Office of Special Investigations (OSI) only came across Kumpf in 2001. The fact that Kumpf had concealed his SS membership in 1956 when he entered the USA was the reason that his American citizenship was ultimately revoked. In 2005 the judges came to the conclusion that "Kumpf's actions as an armed guard justify a personal involvement in the persecution" (quote from the judge's verdict). This led to the revocation of his citizenship and thus his pension. However, no war crimes charges were brought. Kumpf became penniless and stateless and the deportation from the USA was prepared.

deportation

Due to international law obligations, the Republic of Austria had to take in the man in need of care in the spring of 2009 because Kumpf had entered the USA from Austria in 1956. On March 19, 2009, American security forces delivered Kumpf to Vienna International Airport .

According to the Ministry of Justice , he could no longer be brought to court in Austria because the crimes of which he was charged were statute-barred under the Austrian laws of 1945.

On behalf of the Republic of Austria, Caritas Austria organized professional care for Kumpf. Initially, the sick and decrepit Kumpf was housed in a hospital in Vorarlberg before he was assigned a nursing home in Vienna at the beginning of June . After the public funding ceased, private care was no longer possible and he was housed in the General Hospital of the City of Vienna .

At the end of May 2009, a judge at the Spanish National Court of Justice applied for international arrest warrants against Kumpf and two other suspected concentration camp guards to be charged with crimes against humanity in Madrid at the instigation of concentration camp survivors .

Josias Kumpf died in October 2009 at the age of 84 in the Vienna Wilhelminenspital .

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Quoted from the concentration camp guard Josias Kumpf died in the Viennese hospital (Der Standard, October 17, 2009)
  2. ↑ Article in Der Standard , July 12, 2009, 17:19; The strange journey of a former concentration camp guard
personal data
SURNAME Kumpf, Josias
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Danube Swabian farm worker, member of the Waffen-SS, guard in the Trawniki forced labor camp
DATE OF BIRTH April 7, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Nova Pazova
DATE OF DEATH October 15, 2009
Place of death Vienna