Kurt Lindow
Kurt Erwin Arthur Lindow (born February 16, 1903 in Berlin ; † January 18, 1972 in Regensburg ) was a German police officer and SS-Sturmbannführer .
Live and act
Education and early career
Lindow was a son of the cartographer chief inspector Julius Lindow and his wife Ida, geb. Ash. He attended the Lessing High School and the Kirchner Oberrealschule in Berlin, where he passed his Abitur in 1921. He then studied economics and law , but dropped out of the course due to the inflation of 1923 without a degree.
From 1922 to 1928 Lindow worked as a commercial assistant / clerk at various companies, u. a. in the oil and fat trade. In April 1928 he joined the criminal investigation department in Berlin as a trainee detective . In 1930 he was assigned to the Police Service of the Political Police and transferred to Altona , where he stayed until mid-1932. During this time he was promoted to detective superintendent in 1930. In 1932 he was transferred to the state police administration in Elbing as a scheduled commissioner . Politically, he was a member of the German Democratic Party and the Democratic Association of Police Officers from 1929 to 1932.
time of the nationalsocialism
In October 1933, a few months after the National Socialists came to power, Lindow was transferred to Hanover , where he was a member of the Gestapo (until May 1938). From 1935 he was head of the counter-espionage department in Hanover. Lindoew joined the SS in 1933 (SS.no.272.350) and the NSDAP in 1937 (possibly no.4.699.289). In October 1937 he reached the rank of criminal councilor in the police service.
In June 1938, Lindow was transferred to the Secret State Police Office in Berlin. There he initially served as deputy head of the protective custody department from 1938 to 1940 . He then headed Section IV E 1 (general defense matters, reporting of reports in matters of high treason and treason, factory security and security trade) in Department IV E (defense) of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA).
Second World War
On October 1, 1941, Lindow was appointed deputy head of Section IV A 1 Communism, Marxism and Ancillary Organizations, War Crimes, Illegal and Enemy Propaganda in Section IV A Counter-Opposition in the Secret State Police Office. Also in 1941, Lindow achieved the rank of detective director in the police service. On July 1, 1942, he replaced Josef Vogt as head of the department, which he headed until mid-1944. Among other things, the deployment reports of the so-called deployment groups of the security police and the SD entered Lindow's department . In addition, this office directed the selection of political commissars and Red Army soldiers of Jewish origin from the remaining Soviet prisoners of war, with the aim of bringing the groups of people concerned to concentration camps and killing them ("special treatment").
From the middle of the year to the end of 1944, Lindow was an instructor at the driving school of the security police in Rapka near Cracow , where he had a teaching position for high treason and treason and forensics at the local commissioner's course. He spent the last months of the war with Department I of the Reich Security Main Office, which was relocated to Hof in Bavaria at the beginning of 1945. From there, he and a few colleagues later moved further south. At the end of the war he stayed in Jachenau am Walchensee, where he was automatically arrested by the US Army in July 1945.
post war period
After the Second World War , Lindow was held in various prisons and camps from July 1945 to June 1949 (Tölz, Freising, Oberursel, Butzbach, Darmstadt camp, Zuffenhausen, Dachau, Nuremberg, again Dachau and finally in the Darmstadt internment camp). During this time he was questioned as part of the Nuremberg Trial and the Einsatzgruppen trial .
On June 2, 1949, he was released from the Darmstadt internment camp and placed in Group II . He first went to Nonnenroth near Giessen. He then lived in the household of a friend in Beilngries. In November 1949 he found a sub-agency for the cigar factory Gebrüder Ungewitter in Wahnfried an der Werra.
In March 1950, Lindow was arrested by the Frankfurt public prosecutor's office and charged before the Frankfurt am Main regional court for his involvement in the murder of Soviet prisoners of war, but acquitted on December 22, 1950 for lack of evidence.
family
Lindow had been married to Anneliese since 1930, who was killed in an air raid in 1945. The marriage resulted in two daughters, Eva Maria (* 1931) and Dorit (* 1939). He got his second marriage in 1961.
Promotions
In the police force
- 1930: detective inspector
- 1937: Chief Detective
- 1941: detective director
In the Schutzstaffel:
- 1941: SS-Sturmbannführer
literature
- Ronald Headland: Messages of Murder. A Study of the Reports of the Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and the Security Service, 1941–1943. 1992.
- Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. 2., updated Edition. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .
- LG Frankfurt am Main, December 22, 1950. In: Adelheid L. Rüter-Ehlermann, HH Fuchs, CF Rüter (edit.): Justice and Nazi crimes . Collection of German convictions for Nazi homicidal crimes 1945–1966. Volume VIII, University Press, Amsterdam 1972, No. 260, pp. 1-10. Participation of the accused - head of Section IVA1 of the Reich Security Main Office ('Combat Communists') - in the mass killing of Soviet prisoners of war by 'special treatment' according to 'Operation Order No. 8' of the Chief of the Security Police and the SD of July 17, 1941.
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Lindow, Kurt |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Lindow, Kurt Erwin Arthur (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German SS leader and policeman |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 16, 1903 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Berlin |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 18, 1972 |
| Place of death | regensburg |