Kurt Schlesinger

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Kurt Schlesinger (approx. 1942)

Kurt Schlesinger (born December 17, 1902 in Schmalkalden , † 1964 in the United States ) was a German-Jewish mechanic and Nazi collaborator .

Life

Kurt Schlesinger lived in his hometown Schmalkalden until 1939, where he married Thea Francis Klein (* 1913) from Nuremberg two years earlier. After being threatened during the Reichskristallnacht , Kurt and Thea Schlesinger fled to Amsterdam on January 12, 1939 , where they were quarantined until the end of the year . On March 6, 1940, the German-Jewish couple was interned in the Westerbork transit camp , where they were initially obliged to work as a miner in the field .

In February 1942, Schlesinger was promoted to head of the Jewish Order Service . His deputy was Heinz Todtmann , the head of service area I (headquarters). The main task of Schlesinger was the administration of the prisoner index and the production of the deportation lists for the transports of Jews and Sinti and Roma Westerborks to the Auschwitz concentration camp , the Sobibor extermination camp and the Theresienstadt ghetto . Since the first inmates of Westerbork were predominantly German Jews and therefore most of the security service as well, Schlesinger used his leadership position to protect his compatriots from deportation and to put the Dutch-Jewish inmates primarily on the deportation lists.

Schlesinger dressed like an "over prussian" in riding breeches, boots, a leather coat and officer's cap. He regularly took money, valuables and sexual favors in exchange for protection from deportation or for a “better” deportation destination such as Theresienstadt instead of Auschwitz. He led the black market in the camp and ordered the deportation of competing prisoners. Etty Hillesum , contemporary witness and Auschwitz victim, described Schlesinger as "the right hand" of the camp commandant SS-Obersturmführer Albert Gemmeker . On the days of the deportations, he and the SS guards appeared on the platform to supervise the transports. Adolf Eichmann said of the Dutch deportations at his trial in 1961: "The trains ran like a dream."

On April 11, 1945, Gemmeker transferred the camp management to Oberdienstleiter Schlesinger, who on the same day handed it over to Adrianus van As, a non-Jew who had been in charge of food management in the camp since 1942. The Westerbork transit camp was liberated by Canadian Army troops the next day . The SS had destroyed the deportation lists in the days before, but Schlesinger hid a copy of it and handed it over to the Allies . In 1946, proceedings against Schlesinger and other prisoner functionaries began, but were discontinued. In the Gemmeker trial in 1949 before the Leeuwarden Special Court , the defense witness Schlesinger testified for him.

Schlesinger and his wife Thea emigrated on January 19, 1951 by ship from Rotterdam to New York , United States. Schlesinger was only found by investigators in 1973 in the second trial against Gemmeker. According to his wife Thea, Schlesinger died in 1964. In addition, Thea Schlesinger refused to testify against Gemmeker in the German consulate. She died in Jacksonville , Florida in 2002 .

As a prison officer of the corrupt German-Jewish security service at the Westerbork transit camp, Kurt Schlesinger was actively involved in the deportation and murder of more than 100,000 Jews.

literature

  • Guido Abuys and others: Verhalen uit kamp Westerbork (= Westerbork Cahiers. Vol. 3). Herinneringscentrum Kamp Westerbork et al., Hooghalen et al. 1995, ISBN 90-232-3024-8 (Dutch).
  • Jacob Boas: Boulevard des Misères. The Story of Transit Camp Westerbork. Archon Books, Hamden CT 1985, ISBN 0-208-01977-4 (English).
  • Mirjam Bolle: "I know this letter will never reach you". Diary letters from Amsterdam, Westerbork and Bergen-Belsen. Eichborn, Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 3-8218-5768-4 .
  • Saul S. Friedman : A History of the Holocaust. Vallentine Mitchell, London et al. 2004, ISBN 0-85303-435-4 (English).
  • Anna Hajkova: The Westerbork Police Transit Camp . In: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (Ed.): Terror in the West. National Socialist camps in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg 1940–1945 (= history of the concentration camps 1933–1945. Vol. 5). Metropol, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-936411-53-0 , pp. 217-248.
  • Jacob Presser: Ashes in the wind. The destruction of Dutch Jewry. Paperback edition, reprinted. Souvenir Press, London 2010, ISBN 978-0-285-63813-6 (English).
  • Sandra Ziegler: Memory and Identity of the Concentration Camp Experience. Dutch and German eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust (= Epistemata. Series Literary Studies. Vol. 543). Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2006, ISBN 3-8260-3084-2 (also: Freiburg (Breisgau), university, dissertation, 2005).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Stadsarchief Amsterdam, Record cards from Personal Cards (1939–1994).
  2. ^ Jacob Boas: Boulevard des Misères. 1985 (translated from English "super-Prussian").
  3. ^ Etty Hillesum : Etty. The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum 1941-1943. Edited by Klaas AD Smelik. Translated by Arnold J. Pomerans. Complete and unabridged. Erdmans et al., Grand Rapids MI et al. 2002, ISBN 0-8028-3959-2 (translated from English).
  4. ↑ Jacob Presser: Ashes in the wind. 2010, p. 457 (translated from English).
  5. ↑ Westerbork Concentration Camp 1943-44. In: filmhauer.net. Retrieved April 27, 2015 .
personal data
SURNAME Schlesinger, Kurt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Jewish mechanic and Nazi collaborator
DATE OF BIRTH December 17, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Schmalkalden
DATE OF DEATH 1964
Place of death United States