Pauline Kneissler

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Pauline Kneissler (born March 10, 1900 in Kurdjunowka , Russian Empire , † after 1948) was a German nurse and as such was involved in Nazi murders in several institutions . P. 733

Life

Origin and education

Pauline Kneissler was the daughter of a wealthy German landowner in the Ukraine who fled with his family to Germany in 1918 when the Bolsheviks took power in Odessa during the Russian Civil War . He bought a small estate in Detmold (Westphalia), which he had to give up again during the economic crisis . He was able to find accommodation with the railroad, daughter Pauline hired herself as a seamstress. P. 205 In 1922 she completed a nurse training in Duisburg with an examination and worked as a private nurse in Berlin from 1923 and in the children's sanatorium in Berlin-Buch from 1925. In the same year, she moved to the HPA (Heil- und Nursing Institution) Berlin-Buch. P. 733

NSDAP and NS organizations

Pauline Kneissler was already attracted to the National Socialist movement in the 1920s and her position of hatred towards the Bolsheviks, who had driven her family out of Ukraine. Although she did not join the NSDAP until 1937 (at the age of 37) , p. 144 belonged to the Protestant NS church organization as early as 1934 and was, among other things, block leader in the NS women's group . She came to the conviction that the Catholic Church was in contradiction to the laws of nature and shared the views of the German Christians (DC) , a racist, anti-Semitic and leader-oriented tendency in German Protestantism, which from 1932 to 1945 to the ideology of Wanted to align National Socialism.

All of this made them familiar with the arguments of the T4 ideology and prepared them for the later ruthless murders on their behalf. P. 205

Action T4

At the end of the 1930s, Kneissler appeared in Nazi killing centers in connection with Aktion T4 , for example in Grafeneck in late 1939 / early 1940 and in Hadamar p. 733 from late 1940 . Her activity there was later judged to only be an assistant , since it was not possible to prove that she had committed killing herself during this time. According to her own admission, she only picked up and accompanied the people destined for killing from other institutions in Grafeneck in 1940 and in Hadamar in 1941 (see The Gray Buses ), helped them undress, brought them to the doctor's room, assisted during the examination and finally the sick to the Bred the vestibule of the gas chamber, where they were killed by others.

The euphemistic, caring-sounding term “help with undressing” appears in a different light, according to statements made by the nuns, who were originally responsible for caring for patients in the Irsee Monastery. At the beginning of the T4 campaign, the sisters believed that the patients could be safely transferred to another nursing home. When, after the second transport of women in November 1940, they saw their laundry and clothing being torn and turned upside down in a heap, they consequently concluded that these were forcibly torn from the victims' bodies and that the people were probably no longer alive. P. 284

Action 14f13

After the immediate adult euthanasia (gas murders) was discontinued in August 1941, “ trained and proven personnel ” became available for “ Aktion 14f13 ” in the six killing centers in the Reich , in which Pauline Kneissler also took part in early 1942 and was later awarded for it.

The operation in the east was carried out under the highest level of secrecy and was assigned to the Todt construction organization for camouflage . There was often speculation about the background. Allegedly it was about the rescue of wounded German soldiers "in ice and snow". Pauline Kneissler, on the other hand, revealed after a friend returned that she had helped in Russia to liquidate wounded German soldiers with injections. The soldiers were insane p. 144 . Apparently she was allowed to devote herself to her specialty, the " destruction of life unworthy of life ". In any case, it was about German soldiers who were seriously injured and traumatized by the fighting and hoped for help and to whom the hospital management gave no short-term prospect of full rehabilitation. The fact that Sister Pauline claimed to have killed the mentally ill indicates that the focus was on mentally disabled people, i.e. soldiers who reacted to the horrors of war with tremors, paralysis, deafness or dumbness p. 235 . Significantly, the male participants of Osteinsatzes were then to Poland offset by there build the extermination camp Belzec , Sobibor and Treblinka as part of Operation Reinhard participate p.144 .

Use in sanatoriums and nursing homes

Back from the east, Kneissler worked in the state sanatorium and nursing home in Weilmünster and the Bernburg killing center . "T4" ordered her back to the Hadamar LHA in August 1942, p. 733 . After her return in December 1942 she killed there on Station IIA just as independently and personally responsible as she did in Irsee from April 1944. P. 310

Pauline Kneissler was also a nurse in the Eichberg institution .

In 1944 she left Hadamar and continued to work in Eberswalde .

From April 15, 1944, she worked in the Kaufbeuren / Irsee institution. The head there, Valentin Faltlhauser , had requested experienced and suitable personnel from the T4 headquarters in Berlin in order to quickly implement the killing operations he carried out.

Irsee Monastery

Valentin Faltlhauser , who was already active as a T4 expert , continued to liquidate mentally ill people in his Kaufbeuren asylum. His self-developed methods of killing, such as the malnutrition legalized with the hunger food decree , were not implemented consistently enough within the facility in the former Irsee Monastery, which was also under his control . He was disturbed by the care-oriented way of working of the nuns responsible here, who even occasionally undermined his dietary orders and slipped bread to the starving sick. At his request to assign a reliable and proven euthanasia sister, the T4 central office sent Pauline Kneissler, who arrived on April 15, 1944. Faltlhauser set up a special department for her in Irsee and the death rate immediately jumped to the desired level, which only fell temporarily when Pauline was absent (vacation, etc.). The pastor in charge - overwhelmed by the many unexpected deaths - needed Pauline's support for his day-to-day organization and received it: From then on, Sister Pauline named the sick who would die unexpectedly that night or the following day.

Medals

On December 22, 1942, she received the Medal for German People's Care and on January 20, 1943, the Eastern Medal .

Arrest and conviction

Pauline Kneissler was arrested shortly after the end of the war in June 1945 at her new place of work, the Hohenschwangau military hospital. The Landgericht Frankfurt am Main sentenced on 28 January 1948 for the so-called sister process for the crimes committed by their Nazi euthanasia killings in Nazi death camps Hadamar and Grafeneck and in Kaufbeuren and most recently in April 1944 in Irsee to four years in prison for aid to Murder . The jury justified the low sentence with the fact that it is not the acts themselves that count, but the criminal will. Because Kneissler had subordinated her own will to the criminal will of others, she was only to be condemned as an assistant. P. 309f. In the appeal proceedings , the Frankfurt Higher Regional Court sentenced her on October 20, 1948, for murder and aiding and abetting, confirming the sentence.

“ On the other hand, the further activity of the accused was no longer mere complicity, but an act of perpetrator. […] Die Kneissler also gave the patients fatal tablets and syringes on the order of the doctor in Hadamar from September 1942 to May 1943 and from April 1944 to early 1945 in Irsee. […] In all of these cases the defendants themselves fulfilled the criteria of §211 StGB and they should have been convicted of murder instead of aiding and abetting, as explained above. The fact that these are not doctors but nursing staff does not make any difference. [...] But that can stand alone [with regard to the sentencing], since the provision of Section 358, Paragraph 2 of the Code of Criminal Procedure does not allow higher penalties than the penal sentences imposed by the criminal chamber and jury. "

- Frankfurt Higher Regional Court : reasons for judgment in appeal proceedings

Sister Pauline, who, by her own admission, had "hosed" thousands of disabled people in Grafeneck, Hadamar and Kaufbeuren / Irsee for five years, felt unjustly persecuted and commented on the verdict: "My life was devotion and sacrifice, [...] I was never hard on people [...] I have to suffer and suffer for this today ” .

After one year, the convict was waived from serving the remaining three years.

Aftermath

After Pauline Kneissler was sentenced to four years imprisonment, which means a proportional sentence of less than a week per victim for the more than 200 murders proven in Kaufbeuren / Irsee alone, she was released after serving a quarter. Only the book about the fate of Ernst Lossa brought her name back to mind decades later. All in all, it can be considered largely unknown in Germany. Different abroad. This is how the Italian author Marco Paolini did it in his play Erischen. Vite indegne di essere vissute ( Pauline ) based on an idea by Giovanni de Martis and the psychoanalyst Mario Paolini as a symbol for criminal murders during the Nazi era.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e see web link Biographical data on Pauline Kneissler in Landeswohlfahrtsverband Hessen (LWV) pp. 691–788.
  2. ↑ a b see literature Michael Mann: The dark side of democracy
  3. ↑ see literature Götz Aly: Singling out and death
  4. ↑ a b see web link Findings of the Court of Appeal of the Higher Regional Court Frankfurt am Main of October 20, 1948
  5. ↑ a b see literature Hans-Ludwig Siemen: Psychiatrie im Nationalozialismus
  6. ↑ a b see literature Frank Hirschinger : released for extermination
  7. ↑ see literature Hans-Walter Schmuhl: Rassenhygiene, Nationalozialismus, Euthanasie
  8. ↑ see web link information about Pauline Kneissler at the State Welfare Association Hessen (LWV) pp. 511–690.
  9. ↑ a b c see literature Michael von Cranach, Hans-Ludwig Siemen (Hrsg.): Psychiatrie im Nationalozialismus. The Bavarian sanatoriums and nursing homes between 1933 and 1945
  10. ↑ see web link Ingo Müller: The criminal handling of the Nazi past. 2004
  11. ↑ see web link Claire Sanders: The darkest days of a caring profession. 2004
  12. ↑ see web link Antonella Beccaria: Pauline. 2008
personal data
SURNAME Kneissler, Pauline
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German nurse and participated in the T4 campaign
DATE OF BIRTH March 10, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Kurdjunowka , Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH after 1948