Michael Seifert

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Michael "Misha" Seifert (* 16th March 1924 in Landau, today Shyrokolanivka , Mykolaiv Oblast , Ukraine ; † 6. November 2010 in Caserta , Italy ) was a Nazi - war criminals , who from 1950 to 2002 in Canada was submerged and 2008 Italy was extradited.

Life

Seifert was born as a Black Sea German in the Ukrainian town of Landau, which was founded by German immigrants in the colonist district of Beresan at the beginning of the 19th century. He was the second child of Michael Seifert (senior) (born May 17, 1886 in Landau) and his wife Berta (née Fritz; born February 9, 1892 in Rosental). His father worked at the post office, but lost his job in 1933 because he was suspected of being a Hitler sympathizer. The family left Landau and initially lived with an aunt Seifert's on the Crimean peninsula . A few months later the family moved to Dzhankoy in the northeast of the peninsula. In 1939 they returned to Ukraine and earned their living by working in the fields at a collective farm near Schönfeld (about 25 km from Landau). Eventually she moved to Nikolayev, northeast of Odessa , hoping to find better work there. Seifert also found a job here as a mechanic in a tool factory.

Second World War

After the attack by the German Wehrmacht on the Soviet Union in June 1941, so-called Einsatzgruppen (A – D) were immediately deployed behind the front. Nikolayev was in the area of ​​Einsatzgruppe D (area of ​​the 11th Army in southern Ukraine, Bessarabia , Kishinev , Crimea ). Auxiliary workers were recruited - preferably from the ethnic German population groups, as they behaved largely loyally and, above all, had knowledge of Russian. Seifert was initially called in to guard a shipyard in Nikolajew as an assistant. When the shipyard ceased operations in 1943, he was employed as a kind of auxiliary policeman by the SD as a guard and interpreter. He was an eyewitness to so-called "interrogations", abuse - but (according to his own statements) did not act himself.

In April 1944, he was given permission to visit his parents - who had already been resettled to Kallies (today: Kalisz Pomorski ) due to the advance of the Soviet troops . While he was still with his parents, Nikolayev fell to the Soviet troops and was ordered to report to the SD in Verona . Here he was assigned to the security team of the transit camp (DuLa) Fossoli .

In late 1944 he was convicted of rape by a German military court. Together with Otto Sein (who had been convicted of the same crime), he was transferred to a sentence. Both came in December 1944 to the Bolzano police transit camp in today's Reschenstrasse in Bolzano , which was built in mid-1944. The commandant was the former commandant of the Fossoli transit camp, SS-Untersturmführer Karl Friedrich Titho . His deputy was SS-Hauptscharführer Hans Haage (1905-1998).

The function of the DuLa Bozen was initially to take in the prisoners of the DuLa Fossoli, which - because of the advance of the Allied troops - had been given up on August 2, 1944. The detainees were mostly people who came from “political” (resistance fighters, anti-fascists, deserters, strikers or simply suspects) or for racist reasons ( Jews , Sinti ) or as “clan prisoners” (often family members of deserters ) had been arrested. The detainees were of both sexes and of all ages - over 80 years of age and children were among the detainees.

Around 9,500 people - other estimates assume up to 11,000 people - were imprisoned in the DuLa Bozen. 3,405 were deported to concentration camps - in 1930 to Mauthausen concentration camp , 636 to Flossenbürg concentration camp , 609 to Dachau concentration camp , 68 women to Ravensbrück concentration camp , 136 to Auschwitz concentration camp . 2050 of them never returned, died or were murdered. Before deportation, they had to do forced labor within the camp (laundry, electromechanical workshop, printing, carpentry, tailoring) or in one of the sub-camps (e.g. Virgltunnel / IMI, ball bearing factory or Sarntal / road construction work). The detainees were housed in a series of barracks (called "blocks"). A prison with around 30 so-called “cells” was built inside the camp in October 1944. In these isolation cells, which were closed day and night and built completely impermeable to light, numerous prisoners were crammed into a very small space. The monitoring of these "cells" was in the hands of Albino Cologna and his subordinates Michael Seifert and Otto Sein. Seifert murdered 18 people in the camp as a guard.

Escape to Canada and first attempts at a concern

Seifert went into hiding immediately after the camp was closed in Germany. In mid-1951 he applied for a visa for Canada in Hanover , which he was granted because he gave false information about his origin and, above all, withheld his activities during the war.

On June 10, 1954, Italy issued an arrest warrant for Michael Seifert, Karl Friedrich Titho, Hans Haage and other National Socialists and applied for extradition to the Federal Republic of Germany . According to Article 16 of the Basic Law , Germany refused to extradite Titho and Haage. Since Seifert was already in hiding at this point, nothing happened in his case.

In 1956, in an exchange of letters between the Italian Foreign Minister Gaetano Martino and the defense minister Paolo Emilio Taviani decided that the opening of trials against former German members of the armed forces to upset with the Federal Republic could have led, as these on 12 November 1955, the Bundeswehr had built up and since May 6, 1955 wanted to integrate politically and militarily into the alliance against the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact as a member of NATO . In 1960, by order of the then general military prosecutor Enrico Santacroce , 695 bundles of files, including files on Michael Seifert's war crimes, were "temporarily archived". This archiving lasted 34 years and the files were only rediscovered in 1994 in a sealed cabinet with the door facing the wall in the Palazzo Cesi , the seat of the General Military Prosecutor's Office in Rome , in the so-called “ cabinet of shame ”. This archiving was deemed wholly unlawful in 1998 following the conclusion of the Military Tribunal's investigation.

Resumption of proceedings from 1999

After the Italian authorities found his whereabouts in Canada in 1999 - through an article in the newspaper La Stampa - they served him the indictment or asked him in three letters (August 1999, November 1999 and September 2000) to attend the upcoming trial in the military court. Seifert decided not to take part in the trial.

From 20 to 24 November 2000 Seifert crimes he (his arrival in Bolzano Transit Camp) had committed in 1945 (the camp was closed) until May 3, during the period from December 1944 were in front of a Italian military tribunal in Verona treated . Seifert has been accused of murder and torture in 15 cases. Six murders could not be conclusively proven - also because of the lack of witnesses who have since died. In international media Seifert was and is therefore referred to as the "Beast of Bolzano" (Boia di Bolzano). However, there remained nine murders for which there was sufficient evidence. The military court then sentenced Seifert in absentia to life imprisonment.

Seifert then hired lawyers in Italy and went into revision . The next higher instance (Corte Militare di Appello di Verona) rejected the revision of the judgment on October 18, 2001. The Italian Court of Cassation ( Corte Suprema di Cassazione ) , which Seifert then tried, decided on February 8, 2002 that his objection had no basis, as the judgment of the military court was lawful. In October 2002, the judgment became final.

Italy had already submitted an extradition request to Canada on April 26, 2002 , and Seifert had been arrested on May 1, 2002 in Vancouver while the appeal proceedings were still going on before the Court of Cassation . A decision had to be made about his expulsion and Seifert had to be heard about it. The hearings took place from April 2, 2003 to August 27, 2003. Seifert also defended himself through all Canadian instances against the (threatened) expulsion and the simultaneous withdrawal of his Canadian citizenship , so that his case finally reached the Court of Appeals for British Columbia , the highest court in British Columbia , and was decided (Trial March 12-14, 2007 - decision August 3, 2007). In mid-February 2008 Seifert was extradited to Italy and imprisoned in the military prison of Santa Maria Capua Vetere in the southern Italian region of Campania .

Seifert died on November 6, 2010 in the hospital in Caserta at the age of 86. Since his wife, who lived in Vancouver, and their son did nothing to transfer Seifert's body to Canada, he was buried in a cemetery not far from Caserta.

literature

  • Friedrich Andrae: Also against women and children. The war of the German Wehrmacht against the civilian population in Italy 1943–1945. Piper, 2nd edition, Munich 1995.
  • Christiane Kohl : The sky was bright blue. About the raging of the Wehrmacht in Italy. Picus Verlag, Vienna 2004.
  • Gerhard Schreiber: German war crimes in Italy. Perpetrator, victim, law enforcement. CH Beck, Munich 1996.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sentenza di Tribunale di Verona of November 24, 2000
  2. ↑ a b c d Canada (Min. Of Citizenship and Immigration) v. Seifert 2007 FC 1165 , Federal Court decision of November 13, 2007
  3. ↑ Men, women and children in the transit camp in Bolzano. An Italian tragedy in 7,800 personal stories. Research report by Dario Venegoni, Bozen 2004 (PDF; 316 kB), p. 23
  4. ↑ Men, women and children in the transit camp in Bolzano. An Italian tragedy in 7,800 personal stories. Research report by Dario Venegoni, Bozen 2004 (PDF; 316 kB), p. 26 / overview of the individual transports p. 27
  5. ↑ Men, women and children in the transit camp in Bolzano. An Italian tragedy in 7,800 personal stories. Research report by Dario Venegoni, Bozen 2004 (PDF; 316 kB), p. 25f.
  6. ↑ Report from the library of the Bolzano City Archives on the “Shame Cabinet”: 1960–1994
  7. ↑ On June 26, 1999 an article appeared in this with the title: "The two (?) Ukrainian SS men, accused of 14 murders and torture of prisoners, have been discovered" Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v. Seifert 2007 FC 1165 - Federal Court decision of November 13, 2007
  8. ↑ a b c d e Decision of the Court of Appeal for British Columbia of August 3, 2007 on the legality of the revocation of Seifert's Canadian citizenship or his extradition to Italy ( Memento of the original from November 11, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: Der Archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www2.ca.nizkor.org
  9. ↑ Sentenza della Corte Militare di Appello di Verona of October 18, 2001 (Italian)
  10. ↑ Canada delivers Nazi war criminal Seifert in: Spiegel Online from February 16, 2008
  11. ^ SS camp supervisor Seifert died ( Memento from November 15, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) in: RP Online from November 6, 2010
  12. ^ "Beast of Bolzano" buried in Caserta ( memento from March 19, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) at suedtirolnews.it, accessed on October 1, 2012
personal data
SURNAME Seifert, Michael
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Seifert, Mischa (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Ukrainian Nazi war criminal
DATE OF BIRTH March 16, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Landau, today Shyrokolanivka , Mykolaiv Oblast , Ukraine
DATE OF DEATH November 6, 2010
Place of death Caserta , Italy