Karl Hunter

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Karl Jäger (1937/1938)
Visit to the former home of Karl Jäger in Waldkirch as part of the "Day of the Uncomfortable Monument" 2013

Karl Jäger (born September 20, 1888 in Schaffhausen , Switzerland ; † June 22, 1959 in the Hohenasperg Fortress prison ) was a German SS functionary during the Nazi era and a perpetrator of the Holocaust . Since 1940 he was SS-Standartenführer , head of the SD section in Münster , leader of Einsatzkommandos 3 in Lithuania and police chief of Reichenberg / Sudetenland .

origin

Karl Jäger was born on September 20, 1888 in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. At the age of three he came to Waldkirch im Breisgau , where his father had been appointed as a music school teacher and conductor of the town music. He took part in the First World War and received several awards.

Career in National Socialism

In 1923 he founded the local group Waldkirch-Breisgau of the NSDAP (membership number 30.988 according to the curriculum vitae, membership number 359.269 according to the seniority list of the NSDAP protection squadron, as of December 1, 1936). After 1933 he was therefore an “ old fighter ” and because of these activities he was nicknamed “Waldkircher Hitler”. Jäger, who was a trained orchestrion maker, became co-owner and technical director of the Weber orchestrion factory in Waldkirch. When the company went bankrupt in the wake of the global economic crisis in 1931, Jäger became unemployed. According to his own statement, he refused to receive unemployment benefits from the Weimar Republic , which he despised . In the years of unemployment he used up all his fortune. At the same time he separated from his wife Emma; the marriage was not divorced until 1940.

In 1932 Jäger was admitted to the SS (SS No. 62.823). On May 1, 1938, he was appointed SS leader in the SD main office and in 1939 was appointed head of the SD section in Münster .

A page from Jäger's report

With the Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and the SD in Lithuania

During the Second World War , Jäger was appointed leader of Einsatzkommando 3 in June 1941 after a temporary assignment in the occupied Netherlands , which was deployed in the unit of Einsatzgruppe A in the Lithuania area at the beginning of the war against the Soviet Union .

Since September 23, 1941 he was the commander of the Security Police and SD for the General Commissariat of Lithuania, based in Kaunas . His office consisted of 141 people, including interpreters, who were supported by Lithuanian auxiliary police. He became known through the so-called Jäger report of December 1, 1941, in which he detailed the number of Jews killed , but also the mentally ill , Roma and others, to a total of 138,272:

“Today I can say that the goal of solving the Jewish problem for Lithuania is from the EK. 3 has been reached. There are no more Jews in Lithuania, except for the working Jews and their families.

That is around 4,500
in Schaulen,
in Kauen000 " 015,000
in Wilna 000 " 015,000.

I also wanted to kill these working Jews, including their families, which, however, earned me sharp declarations of war by the civil administration (the Reich Commissioner ) and the Wehrmacht and triggered the ban: These Jews and their families must not be shot! The goal of making Lithuania free of Jews could only be achieved by setting up a roll command with selected men under the leadership of SS-Obersturmführer Hamann , who fully appropriated my goals and understood how to work with the Lithuanian partisans and those responsible to ensure civil authorities. "

His commitment to the SS and the goals of National Socialism and the associated mass murder of the Jews was praised by his superiors. In 1937/38 he received the SS skull ring from Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler and later the Reichsführer SS's sword of honor . Hitler awarded him the War Merit Cross 2nd Class and 1st Class with Swords.

Police chief of Reichenberg

On May 24, 1944, Jäger was appointed acting police chief of Reichenberg in the Sudetenland .

After the war

After the war ended , Jäger worked openly, without disguising his name, as a farm worker in Wiesenbach near Heidelberg. He later lived on the Kümmelbacher Hof near Neckargemünd until his arrest . He was wanted by the American investigation authorities in 1948 for murder. But it was not until April 1959 that he was identified and arrested. Was put on trial hunters but not because it is during the pre-trial detention in prison on the Hohenasperg hanged on June 22 1959th

Memorial in Waldkirch

At the beginning of 2017, a memorial was erected in Waldkirch for the people in Lithuania who were murdered under Karl Jäger's responsibility in 1941. The memorial, created from five stone steles by the sculptor Thomas Friedrich, is complemented by text panels explaining the historical events. A poem by Waldkirch lyricist Eva-Maria Berg is addressed to those who will be born afterwards: “Where do we stand / where are you / what do you do from now on / you in your place / when people are questioned because of / appearance / belief / thinking / what you do to counteract / with your strength / because you are asked for. "

Web links

Commons : "Hunter's Report"  - collection of images, videos and audio files

literature

  • Josef Haslinger : The father game . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2000, ISBN 3-10-030054-8 .
  • Helmut Krausnick, Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm: The troop of the Weltanschauung war. The Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and SD 1938–1942. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1981, ISBN 3-421-01987-8 .
  • Ernst Klee , Willi Dreßen , Volker Rieß (eds.): Nice times. The murder of Jews from the perspective of the perpetrators and gawkers. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-10-039304-X .
  • Anton Seljak: Monolithic model and social heterogeneity of an elite. Investigations into the concept of the order of the SS and the social stratification of the SS leader corps. With a sociobiographical excursus about Karl Jäger. University of Basel, 1992 (cf. "Alexandria": Online catalog (OPAC) of the library network of the Swiss Federal Administration )
  • Knut Stang: collaboration and mass murder. The Lithuanian Auxiliary Police, the Hamann Roll Command and the murder of the Lithuanian Jews. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1996, ISBN 3-631-30895-7 .
  • Wolfram bet : Karl Jäger. Murderer of the Lithuanian Jews. Foreword by Ralph Giordano . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2011, ISBN 978-3-596-19064-5 . (Appendix with facsimile of the hunters report)
  • Wolfram Wette: "SS-Standartenführer Karl Jäger - murderer of the Lithuanian Jews from Waldkirch." In: “There was nothing here!” Waldkirch under National Socialism. Edited by Wolfram bet. Bremen 2020. ISBN 978-3-943425-86-4 . Pp. 227-235.
  • Wolfgang Proske (Ed.): Perpetrators - helpers - free riders. Nazi victims from southern Baden (=  perpetrators - helpers - free riders . Band 6 ). 1st edition. Kugelberg, Gerstetten 2017, ISBN 978-3-945893-06-7 , pp. 137 ff .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Vincas Bartuseviécius, Joachim Tauber, Wolfram Wette: Jäger's career in the SS 1936–1941 . In: Holocaust in Lithuania: War, Murders of the Jews and Collaboration in 1941 . Böhlau, Cologne / Weimar 2003, ISBN 3-412-13902-5 , pp. 80-82 .
  2. ↑ on the date cf. Big ghetto, big action. Kaunas, October 28-29, 1941. where it is quoted under note 13: Bubnys, Vokiečių okupuota Lietuva, p. 78.
  3. ^ The Jaeger Report: A Chronicle of Nazi Mass Murder. to: holocaust-history.org ( Memento from October 10, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), accessed January 9, 2014.
  4. ↑ Among the dead were 55,556 women and 34,464 children. Cf. Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm: Racial Policy and Warfare - Security Police and Wehrmacht in Poland and the Soviet Union. Passau 1991, p. 26.
  5. ^ E. Klee, W. Dreßen, V. Riess: Schöne Zeiten. 1988, pp. 52-62.
  6. ^ The Jager Report. (English) In: A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust. Florida Center for Instructional Technology, 2005. (all figures also online)
  7. ↑ By perpetrators who claimed many victims. In: Schwetzinger Zeitung . November 13, 2012.
  8. ↑ Jörg Schweigard: Behind these walls . In: The time . July 22, 2010, ISSN  0044-2070 .
  9. ↑ Sylvia Sredniawa: Waldkirch unveils a memorial for the murdered people in Lithuania , Badische Zeitung, January 29, 2017.
personal data
SURNAME Hunter, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS leader
DATE OF BIRTH September 20, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Schaffhausen
DATE OF DEATH June 22, 1959
Place of death Hohenasperg