Martin Weiss (SS member)

Martin Weiss (born February 21, 1903 in Karlsruhe ; † September 30, 1984 ibid), also spelled Martin Weiss , was a German SS-Hauptscharführer . He was a member of the Einsatzkommando 3, then with the commander of the security police and SD Lithuania , branch office Vilna . On February 3, 1950, in Würzburg, he was sentenced to life imprisonment for aiding and abetting the murder of at least 30,000 Jews ; after a petition for clemency, his imprisonment was suspended in 1971.

Murder of Jews

From October 1941 to July 1943, Weiß directed the executions of Ponary . Contemporary witnesses describe his presence in 1943 at the shooting of 4,000 Jews and the selection of children and Jews unfit for work from the Wilna Army Power Park.

Special Command 1005

In April 1943, during a guided tour of the Ponary cemetery, Weiss had already identified the places where the mass graves of the “Kinderaktion”, “Yom Kippur Massacre” or the graves of executed Poles were. In September 1943 he was selected to coordinate the work of Sonderkommando 1005 to ditch and burn the corpses. Work began at the end of November / beginning of December 1943. About 80 prisoners, who were closely guarded and also prevented from escaping with ankle chains, had to open the graves, drag the corpses out, put them on pyre and sift through the ashes for dental gold. In an attempt to break out, eleven prisoners who joined the partisans survived. A new prisoner detachment continued the removal of a total of 80,000 to 90,000 corpses; as “keepers of secrets” they were finally shot. Weiß stayed in Vilna until July 11, 1944 .

Witness in the Murer trial

Weiss appeared on June 14, 1963 in the Graz trial of Franz Murer , the so-called butcher of Vilnius, as a defense witness. At the trial, he claimed that Murer only monitored food distribution in the Vilnius ghetto .

Web links

Martin Weiß (1903-1984), on gedenkorte-europa.eu

literature

Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007. ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 . (Updated 2nd edition)
Christina Ullrich: The first German trial against a task force perpetrator . in Martin Cüppers , Jürgen Matthäus , Andrej Angrick : Nazi crimes. Perpetrators, deeds, coping attempts , Darmstadt, WBG , 2013, ISBN 978-3534263110 .

Individual evidence

↑ Source: 5 (7) AR-Z 14/58 Central Office of the State Judicial Administration in Ludwigsburg. Ernst Klee : Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Edition Kramer Koblenz, 2003, p. 664.
↑ Bert Hoppe, Hiltrud Glass (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 (source collection) Volume 7: Soviet Union with annexed areas I - Occupied Soviet areas under German military administration, the Baltic States and Transnistria. Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-58911-5 , p. 701 in note 3.
↑ Bert Hoppe, Hiltrud Glass (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews ..., Volume 7, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-58911-5 , p. 701.
↑ documents VEJ 7/267 and VEJ 7/278 In: Bert Hoppe, Hiltrud Glass (Ed.): The persecution and murder of European Jews ..., Volume 7, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-58911-5 .
↑ Andrej Angrick : "Aktion 1005" - Removal of traces of Nazi mass crimes 1942–1945: A "secret Reich matter" in the area of conflict between the turn of the war and propaganda. Göttingen 2018, ISBN 978-3-8353-3268-3 , vol. 2, p. 721.
^ Andrej Angrick: "Aktion 1005" - removal of traces of Nazi mass crimes 1942–1945. Göttingen 2018, ISBN 978-3-8353-3268-3 , Vol. 2, pp. 721-712.
^ Franz Murer (1912-1994). Retrieved March 24, 2019 .
↑ Sachslehner, Johannes: "Roses for the murderer." The two lives of the SS man Franz Murer. Molden Verlag Wien-Graz-Klagenfurt, 2017, Kindle edition item 2983 of 3508.

personal data
SURNAME	Weiss, Martin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German NCO and SS-Hauptscharführer
DATE OF BIRTH	February 21, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH	Karlsruhe
DATE OF DEATH	September 30, 1984
Place of death	Karlsruhe

[1] Source: 5 (7) AR-Z 14/58 Central Office of the State Judicial Administration in Ludwigsburg. Ernst Klee : Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Edition Kramer Koblenz, 2003, p. 664.

[2] Bert Hoppe, Hiltrud Glass (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 (source collection) Volume 7: Soviet Union with annexed areas I - Occupied Soviet areas under German military administration, the Baltic States and Transnistria. Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-58911-5 , p. 701 in note 3.

[3] Bert Hoppe, Hiltrud Glass (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews ..., Volume 7, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-58911-5 , p. 701.

[4] uments VEJ 7/267 and VEJ 7/278 In: Bert Hoppe, Hiltrud Glass (Ed.): The persecution and murder of European Jews ..., Volume 7, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-58911-5 .

[5] Andrej Angrick : "Aktion 1005" - Removal of traces of Nazi mass crimes 1942–1945: A "secret Reich matter" in the area of conflict between the turn of the war and propaganda. Göttingen 2018, ISBN 978-3-8353-3268-3 , vol. 2, p. 721.

[6] Andrej Angrick: "Aktion 1005" - removal of traces of Nazi mass crimes 1942–1945. Göttingen 2018, ISBN 978-3-8353-3268-3 , Vol. 2, pp. 721-712.

[7] Franz Murer (1912-1994). Retrieved March 24, 2019 .

[8] Sachslehner, Johannes: "Roses for the murderer." The two lives of the SS man Franz Murer. Molden Verlag Wien-Graz-Klagenfurt, 2017, Kindle edition item 2983 of 3508.