Karl Bömelburg

Karl Bömelburg (born October 28, 1885 in Wuppertal - Elberfeld , † 1946 (?)) Was an SS-Sturmbannführer and one of the Gestapo chiefs in France during the Second World War . He was sentenced to death in absentia in 1950 for his war crimes .

biography

In his youth, Bömelburg stayed in Paris for five years, thanks to which he had an excellent command of the French language . After his return he worked in his parents' bakery. In 1931 he became a member of the NSDAP (membership number 892.239) and of the SA and a little later of the SS (membership number 35.898). In 1933 he became a commissioner with the criminal police in the emerging Gestapo in Berlin .

In 1938 he moved to the staff of the German embassy in Paris. In November 1938 he was involved in the investigation into the murder of the legation secretary at the German embassy in Paris Ernst vom Rath . He then set up a kind of unofficial Gestapo office in Paris and made connections to Lyon and Saint-Étienne . In January 1939, about the organization of extreme right-wing groups in France, contacts were made with Antoine Mondanel , Inspector General of the Political Police in Paris. In 1939 Bömelburg moved to the Gestapo in Prague .

During the Second World War in 1940, during the French campaign , he returned to Paris as a consultant in the command of the SD under SS-Standartenführer Helmut Bone . In August 1940 he was promoted to lieutenant colonel in the SS police. He became head of the Gestapo in Paris, based at 11 rue des Saussaies , then at 84 avenue Foch and finally in an inn - later named the dreaded Villa Bömelburg - on avenue Victor Hugo . Here he was responsible for many terrorist measures and repression from 1940 to 1943.

In November 1943 he was replaced by SS-Sturmbannführer Stindt. In 1943/44 he moved to the seat of the French government in Vichy , where he represented the Higher SS and Police Leader SS-Obergruppenführer Carl Oberg . In June 1944 he replaced the killed SS-Hauptsturmführer Hugo Geissler as head of the Gestapo in southern France. On August 28, 1944, he accompanied the French head of state Marshal Philippe Pétain and his 2,000 companions on their escape to Sigmaringen . In April 1945 he prepared Pétain's move to exile in Switzerland .

In May 1945 Bömelburg went into hiding. He is said to have assumed the identity of a fallen sergeant, Bergmann , and was still recognized near Munich . There is insufficient verifiable information about his death in 1946; at least his son Ralf is said to have entered his name on a family tombstone.

Bömelburg was sentenced to death on March 2, 1950 in the absence of a military tribunal in Lyon for his actions in France. A court in Czechoslovakia also found him guilty of war crimes.

Karl Bömelburg appears frequently in the memoirs of the Catholic priest Raymond Arnette . (1996 in French under the title: "De la Gestapo a l'OAS L'itinéraire atypique d'un homme de Dieu" ; German edition 1997, under the title "As a spy at the Gestapo - The unusual career of a pastor" , Theresia Verlag CH-6424 Lauerz)

literature

• Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich ; S. Fischer: Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3-10-039309-0 .
• Abbé Raymond Arnette, 1996. De la Gestapo à l'OAS L'itinéraire atypique d'un homme de Dieu . Editions Filipacchi, 206 pp. ISBN 2-85018-399-7 .
• Raymond Arnette, autobiography: "As a spy at the Gestapo" , Theresia Verlag, Lauerz, Switzerland, ISBN 3-908542-66-9