Richard Nitsch

Richard Heinrich Georg Nitsch (born November 1, 1908 in Tostedt -Todtglüsingen ( Lower Saxony ), † 1990 ) was a German police officer during the National Socialist era . During the Second World War , as a member of the Security Police (SiPo) in the province of Limburg, he was responsible for the deaths of large numbers of people in the occupied Netherlands .

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Nitsch was the son of a railroad worker. He grew up in a family of three brothers and two sisters. Nitsch first worked in a shop for seven years before he got a job with the railway police. He checked the passenger documents on the Bentheim - Osnabrück - Hanover route . In 1932 he became a member of the NSDAP, which took power a year later with Adolf Hitler at its head. In 1935 Nitsch was appointed as a criminal assistant candidate with the border police. He dealt with counter-espionage in the border area. He obtained information about communist and Jewish affairs through contacts with the Dutch National Socialist Movement .

After the German invasion of the Netherlands, he was stationed with the security police in Arnhem . The organization there was still in its infancy and there wasn't much work for Nitsch. From October 1940 to April 1941 he was on duty in Enschede . There he supervised the then still legal political parties on behalf of the SiPo. His next post was at the SiPo in Maastricht . In the following years he grew up to be one of the most notorious Nazis in Limburg.

He was a notorious interrogator who mistreated many of his prisoners. In the course of the war he used violence against more and more prisoners. He even went so far as to exceed the rules of the Nazi leadership on this point. He was able to do this because the SiPo headquarters in The Hague had little oversight of the six outposts, of which Maastricht was a part. In addition, Nitsch was probably encouraged by his boss Max Strobel to use force. One final explanation is that the workload increased sharply. The Germans received less and less cooperation from the Dutch police, while the resistance became more and more active.

After Limburg was liberated, Nitsch fled to the Dutch province of Friesland in November 1944 , which was still in German hands. On May 22, 1945 he surrendered to the Canadians in IJmuiden . It was not until June 1946 that it was discovered that prisoner Nitsch had a lot to do. He was brought to the Netherlands from a German prisoner-of-war camp in Esterwegen .

In the Netherlands, the death penalty was requested in a case against Nitsch before the special court in Maastricht. He was ultimately sentenced to life imprisonment for nine executions and multiple tortures. His sentence was converted to 22 years and nine months in April 1959. He was released the following year and deported to the Federal Republic as an "undesirable foreigner" . This was in line with the Dutch policy of the time to release most war criminals early. Shortly after his release, he and his wife moved in with his son, who lived in Bad Bentheim . He died in 1990. Nitsch fell asleep peacefully, probably as a result of a metabolic disease from which he had suffered for several years.

Personally

Nitsch was married to Gesine ten Thoren. Together they had a son and a daughter.

List of events in which Nitsch was involved

Nitsch was involved in several executions and shot several people himself. Below is a list of the incidents in which Nitsch was involved. This list is incomplete.

• Nitsch was involved in the execution of seven strikers. They took part in the strikes in April and May 1943 . That was also called mine strike ( minestaking ) in the local area . The reason for this was the German decision that former Dutch soldiers who had fought in May 1940 should be taken prisoner again. The Germans struck the strike by randomly executing strikers across the country. The execution of the seven took place on May 3, 1943 on the Wellse Heide. After the war, Nitsch showed where the mass grave was.
• Together with Max Strobel and Hans Conrad , Nitsch was responsible for the execution of the resistanceist Derk van Assen on September 14, 1943. He was shot in the Schadijker forests near Horst aan de Maas . Van Assen had been arrested a month and a half earlier for helping Jews and crashed pilots. He had developed paratyphoid . It is possible that he was infected intentionally to enable a rescue operation. Instead of taking Van Assen to the hospital, it was decided to shoot Van Assen to prevent contamination of others.
• On November 3, 1943, a raid took place in Heerlen , during which 18 Jews were arrested.
• Together with his colleague CW Klonen, Nitsch set out to arrest the hairdresser Hendrik Johannes Korrel, known as anti-German, in Echt . It was agreed with his boss Strobel that Korrel would allegedly be shot while trying to escape. Cloning shot Korrel, who died instantly, in the back. The action took place in retaliation for an attack on an NSB member who was injured.
• Strobel and Nitsch raided Sevenum on May 1, 1944, with the aim of arresting Eugénie Boutet, a resister. She wasn't present at the moment.
• Resistance activist Jo Lokerman was arrested on May 9, 1944 through the betrayal of Aldegonda Zeguers-Boere , a lover of Strobel. On behalf of the resistance, Lokerman tried to buy Jules Janssen, who had been arrested in July 1944, free. Nitsch and Strobel stood behind the curtains in Zeguers-Boere's house while she talked to Lokerman. After the interview, he was arrested. In connection with his arrest, 50 local resistance members were arrested in and around Maastricht. Lokerman and four others died in German concentration camps.
• On June 21, 1944, the Reich Security Main Office (SD and Sipo) of Amsterdam and Maastricht, under the leadership of Nitsch, attacked the St. Louis monastery in Weert, and a large part of the top of the Landelijke Organizatie voor Hulp aan Onderduikers (LO) in Limburg was arrested. Only a few managed to escape. This was Nitsch's greatest coup. He interrogated the prisoners first on site and then in the Herzogenbusch concentration camp , also known as Kamp Vught.
• One of the results of these interrogations was that the Germans, led by Nitsch and Strobel, broke into a house in Simpelveld on July 22, 1944 . There they hoped to arrest Sjeng Coenen , the subdistrict head of the LO in Simpelveld. At that time his uncle was about to be buried. Coenen was able to leave the house on time. One and a half months later, on September 5th ( Dolle Dinsdag ), however, he was caught by German soldiers with a gun in his pocket and shot dead.
• In Helden he was responsible for the arrest of 52 people on May 17, 1944, some of whom were taken to concentration camps in Germany. Some people did not return. A few days earlier, the local resistance leader Wiel Houwen had already been arrested and badly beaten by Nitsch.
• In August 1944, Nitsch was involved in the arrest of some Jewish people who were hiding in Wessem .
• From interrogations it became clear to Nitsch that Piet Hoeben and a certain Korsten were members of the Knokploeg heroes. Both Hoeben and Peter Korsten were surprised in their sleep at home on the morning of August 10, 1944 in their home village of Panningen . What Nitsch did not know: Korsten had nothing to do with it, he had been mistaken for someone with the same surname. Both men were shot dead in the street almost immediately.
• Through the above-mentioned Zeguers-Boere, Nitsch had been informed about the resistance fighter Henri Hubert Scheepers, who had to do with the Belgian Witte Brigade (White Brigade). She arranged to meet him on August 18, 1944 in Meerssen . When he arrived he was attacked by four SD men, including Nitsch and Conrad. Before he could put his hands up, he was shot.
• Around September 20, 1944, Nitsch, together with Conrad and Frebig, shot three young people from Sittard near the German border near Maasniel. They had been arrested two days earlier when they were going to downtown Sittard to celebrate the liberation. The center was not yet completely cleaned and they were arrested by German soldiers and handed over to the security police. Two victims died instantly. One was seriously injured and shot by Nitsch or one of his employees the next day.
• On November 1, 1944, four Jews were arrested in Hout- Blerick . Two were shot on orders from Nitsch.
• On February 8, 1945, Nitsch, now stationed in Friesland, carried out a major campaign in Scharnegoutum (municipality of Wymbritseradiel ). He himself visits a farm where the resistance activist Gerard Reeskamp was hiding shortly before . Several weapons are found in a courtyard a little further away. Some soldiers are left behind. Two members of the resistance, Heinrich Roth and Pieter Ane Glastra van Loon, were hiding in a confined space and had to keep quiet for several days. After a few days, Roth collapsed from exhaustion and Glastra van Loon decided to see a doctor. Both men are caught and shot a month later.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Ad van Liempt ea (2013). De jacht op het verzet: Het meedogenloze optreden van de Sicherheitsdienst en Nederlandse politie tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog . Amsterdam: Balans, p. 66
2. ↑ Van Liempt et al., P. 67
3. ↑ Van Liempt et al., P. 67
4. ↑ Van Liempt et al., P. 68
5. ↑ Van Liempt et al., P. 68
6. ^ Gé Reinders (2010). Het zakdoekje: een zoektocht naar het verzetsverleden van mijn moeder . Amsterdam: Van Nijgh & Ditmar, pp. 189-191
7. ↑ Richard Nitsch rekenschap gevraagd over menige laffe moord , Limburgsch Dagblad , November 16, 1948
8. ↑ Nitsch dead levenslang veroordeeld , De Waarheid, November 30, 1947
9. ↑ ^{a b} Van Liempt et al., P. 80
10. ↑ Ad van Liempt ea, p. 66
11. ↑ Het graf massaging the zeven Limburgsche heroes , Limburgsch Dagblad , July 3, 1946
12. ↑ Van Liempt et al., P. 76
13. ↑ Fred Cammaert (1994). Het hidden front: geschiedenis van de georganiseerde illegaliteit in de provincie Limburg tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog (dissertation). Leeuwarden: Eisma, p. 667
14. ↑ Van Liempt et al., Pp. 69-70
15. ↑ Gerard Sonnemans (1999). A Limburgse onderwijzer in het verzet: Het levensverhaal van Fons Mertens . Zutphen: Walburg Pers, p. 103
16. ↑ Cammaert, p. 651
17. ↑ Cammaert, p. 563
18. ↑ Cammaert, p. 697
19. ↑ Paul Weelen (1995). Limburg bevrijd .
20. ↑ Weelen, p. 40
21. ↑ Reinders, pp. 116-118
22. ^ HAJ van Rens (2013). De vervolging van joden en Sinti tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog in de Nederlandse provincie Limburg (dissertation). Amsterdam: Universiteit van Amsterdam, p. 231
23. ↑ Cammaert, pp. 602-603
24. ↑ Cammaert, p. 652
25. ↑ Cammaert, pp. 623-624
26. ↑ Cammaert, p. 555
27. ^ Ad van Liempt (2013). De drogist: hoe een verzetsheld na de oorlog in ongenade a lot . Balans: Amsterdam.