Karl Rath (SS member)

Karl Rath (born January 9, 1909 in Lüdenscheid , † April 5, 1993 in Bückeburg ) was a German SS-Obersturmführer , Teilkommandofführer of the Einsatzkommando 9 of the Einsatzgruppe B and convicted war criminal .

Life

Rath, the son of a businessman, moved with his parents to Bückeburg in 1921 and attended the local high school, which he left in 1924. He did vocational training in a household goods store in Bückeburg and after completing his apprenticeship in 1927, he worked for various companies as a commercial clerk . From 1925 to 1927 he was a member of the Young German Order . Rath became unemployed in 1932 and joined the NSDAP and the SA in the same year . From April 1933 he ran a bookstore in Bückeburg that also sold NSDAP supplies. He gave up this business in 1934. He then found employment as a temporary worker at the Bückeburg district office. The state government of Schaumburg-Lippe hired him as a clerk in August 1934. From May 25, 1935 he worked as a temporary worker at the Gestapo Bückeburg. On January 1, 1938, he was taken over by the Bielefeld Gestapo as a detective. From August 1939 Rath headed the Gestapo in Bückeburg.

At the end of May 1941 he was transferred to Düben in Saxony and assigned to Einsatzkommando 9. In September 1941 he took part in the murder of 1,025 Jews in the Janowitschi ghetto . From October 1941 he was the leader of a partial command that was deployed in Vitebsk . There he directed the shooting of at least eight Jews in January 1942 , followed by the execution of at least 50 Jews. In the summer of 1944, Rath was transferred to the Gestapo in Bad Eilsen , where he stayed until the end of the war.

After the end of the war he went into hiding under the false name of Arnold Raabe . In August 1948 he reported to the British occupation forces in Bielefeld under his real name. He was arrested on September 21, 1948 and taken to the Fallingbostel internment camp for a month . Because of his membership in the Gestapo, the Bielefeld Spruchkammer sentenced him to 6 months in a prison camp on January 20, 1949 . This sentence was converted into a fine at Christmas 1949 . The fine was also waived because of the Impunity Act of December 31, 1949 . Rath then lived undisturbed with his family in Bückeburg, where he worked as a commercial clerk for an installation and electrical company. In April 1959, he was heard as a witness in a trial in the Einsatzkommando 9 case . He was arrested on January 13, 1960. Four days later, he was released due to insufficient evidence. But from January 17, 1961 to January 29, 1961 and again from February 4, 1965, he was held in custody in the Moabit correctional facility . The Berlin Regional Court sentenced him on 6 May 1966 for aid to the murder in two cases to five years in prison. He was released from prison in May 1968.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} Christina Ullrich: "I don't feel like a murderer" - The integration of Nazi perpetrators in post-war society , Darmstadt, 2011, pp. 263–264.
2. ↑ Alex J. Kay : The Making of an SS Killer: The Life of Colonel Alfred Filbert , 1905–1990. Cambridge University Press , Cambridge 2016, ISBN 978-1-107-14634-1 , p. 105.

literature

• Christina Ullrich: "I don't feel like a murderer" - The integration of Nazi perpetrators into post-war society . WBG , Darmstadt, 2011, ISBN 978-3-534-23802-6 .