Kurt Pompe

Kurt Bruno Pompe (born March 4, 1899 in Schmiedeberg , Riesengebirge , Lower Silesia ; † August 1, 1964 in Schweinfurt ) was the commander of the guards in several internment camps. He performed various functions in forced labor camps for Jews in Silesia . The forced labor camps in Silesia are still hardly known to the public.

Life

On October 25, 1918, Pompe was badly wounded near Tournai, Belgium, and his left leg was amputated below the knee and fitted with a prosthesis. In 1922 he moved to Neisse with his family . Nothing is known about its political development during the Weimar Republic . From 1942 to April 1944 he was found in forced labor camps for Jews in Silesia , which were subordinate to the SS Schmelt office .

Pompe was feared in Blechhammer ( Upper Silesia ) as early as 1942 , but nowhere did he commit as many crimes as in Brande , where “the limping man” was on duty from autumn 1942 to August 1943. This camp was located near the village of Brande ( Falkenberg district, Upper Silesia ). It existed from October 1940 and was one of the thirteen West Upper Silesian Reichsautobahnlager for Jews, which were under the Supreme Construction Management of the Reichsautobahn Breslau. After these camps were taken over by the Schmelt office around mid-1942, Brande was a transit and sick camp, then from the beginning of 1943 until its dissolution in August 1943 one of the most important sick camps of this SS organization.

The camp doctor Hans-Werner Wollenberg vividly described Pompe's activities in Brande. Numerous survivors reported in interviews about the terrible conditions in Brande, for which Pompe, as commander of the guards, was primarily responsible. After this camp was closed, he was on watch in the women's camp in Blechhammer and from November 1943 to May 1944 camp manager in the Schmiedeberg forced labor camp , which was located in Buschvorwerk , in the immediate vicinity of his birthplace Schmiedeberg (from 1945 Kowary ). In both camps he terrorized the inmates and was involved in several murders.

A membership of Pompe in the NSDAP cannot be proven. According to his denazification request of April 23, 1946, he belonged to the Todt Organization and from autumn 1944 to the Speer Transport Corps , where he held the rank of senior squad leader. He classified himself as "unencumbered" and lived under his real name until his death. In 1951 he moved from Höchberg near Würzburg to Schweinfurt , where he worked for several years as a worker in the Vereinigte Kugellager Fabriken AG. When West German judicial authorities came across Pompe in connection with investigations against camp personnel from the Schmelt office , he had already passed away. It was not possible to identify him until 2008.

literature

• Federal Archives Berlin, R 4602/394, fol. 6; Hermann F. Weiss, "From Reichsautobahnlager to Schmelt Camp: Brande, a Forgotten Holocaust Site in Western Upper Silesia 1940-1943." In: "Yad Vashem Studies.", 39.2 (2011) ISSN  0084-3296 , pp. 83-95.
• Hans-Werner Wollenberg, ... and the nightmare became everyday life. Autobiographical letter from a Jewish doctor about Nazi forced labor camps in Silesia (1942-1945) Pfaffenweiler, 1992. ISBN 3-89085-460-5 , pp. 75–115.
• Hermann F. Weiss, Buschvorwerk in the Giant Mountains. A community in Lower Silesia from the war years to the expulsion. Herbolzheim, 2006. ISBN 3-8255-0663-0 , pp. 157-200.
• Hermann F. Weiss: From Reichsautobahnlager to Schmelt Camp: Brande, a Forgotten Holocaust Site in Western Upper Silesia 1940-1943. In: Yad Vashem Studies. , 39.2 (2011) ISSN  0084-3296 , pp. 81-119.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Hermann F. Weiss: From Reichsautobahnlager to Schmelt Camp: Brande, a Forgotten Holocaust Site in Western Upper Silesia 1940-1943. In: Yad Vashem Studies. , 39.2 (2011) ISSN  0084-3296 , pp. 104-105.
2. ↑ Bundesarchiv Berlin, R 4602/394, fol. 6; Hermann F. Weiss: From Reichsautobahnlager to Schmelt Camp: Brande, a Forgotten Holocaust Site in Western Upper Silesia 1940-1943. In: Yad Vashem Studies. , 39.2 (2011) ISSN  0084-3296 , pp. 83-95.
3. ^ Hermann F. Weiss: From Reichsautobahnlager to Schmelt Camp: Brande, a Forgotten Holocaust Site in Western Upper Silesia 1940-1943. In: Yad Vashem Studies. , 39.2 (2011) ISSN  0084-3296 , pp. 98-113.
4. ↑ Hans-Werner Wollenberg, ... and the nightmare became everyday life. Autobiographical letter from a Jewish doctor about Nazi forced labor camps in Silesia (1942-1945) Pfaffenweiler, 1992. ISBN 3-89085-460-5 , pp. 75–115.
5. ^ Hermann F. Weiss, Buschvorwerk in the Giant Mountains. A community in Lower Silesia from the war years to the expulsion. Herbolzheim, 2006. ISBN 3-8255-0663-0 , pp. 176-187.
6. ^ ^{A b} Hermann F. Weiss: From Reichsautobahnlager to Schmelt Camp: Brande, a Forgotten Holocaust Site in Western Upper Silesia 1940-1943. In: Yad Vashem Studies. , 39.2 (2011) ISSN  0084-3296 , pp. 113-114.