Richard Skarabis

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Richard Hermann Skarabis (born May 29, 1895 in Dätzdorf, Jauer district , today: Dzierżków, Gmina Dobromierz ; † March 19, 1990 in Kronberg im Taunus ) was a German SS leader.

Live and act

After attending school, Skarabis learned the profession of lathe operator . In 1929 he joined the NSDAP (membership number 172.453) and became a member of the SS in 1931 (membership number 12.676). In 1934 Skarabis was the leader of the 3rd Sturmbann of the 8th SS Infantry Standard in the Silesian state hat .

The murder of Robert Reh and Ewald Köppel (1934)

In June / July 1934 Skarabis was involved in the Röhm affair . At the end of June he took part in a meeting with Richard Hildebrandt , the commander of SS Section XXI in Görlitz , at which he was initiated into the actions planned for June 30, 1934 and the following days. Skarabis is said to have received a list of 15 names of people who were to be arrested in his area of ​​responsibility after the start of the action.

On June 30, 1934, Skarabis had the local SA commander Seewald and the police chief Groehn arrested. He later sent ten SS men from the 11th Sturmbanns of the 8th SS Standard to arrest the listed people and bring them to the SS headquarters or the prison of the Landeshut District Court.

On July 1, 1934, Skarabis had two local workers shot: the stoker Robert Reh (born November 28, 1904; social democrat) and the miner Ewald Köppel (born February 5, 1905; communist). In the case of Reh, Skarabis expressly instructed his people to liquidate him in a suitable place without witnesses. Since Reh was found at home in the presence of his wife and two children, he was not killed on the spot, but led out of town by the SS men on the pretext that he should show them a communist weapon stash. In the city forest of Landeshut, near the local quarry, he was shot in the head by SS man Bümmel. Another SS man then shot in Reh's body. The body was discovered and autopsied the next day.

At first, Skarabis only had the communist Köppel, who had previously been in a concentration camp , arrested. After Köppel kept screaming and raging in prison, Skarabis went to prison with SS man Hartmann and sent him to Köppel's cell with the order to urgently warn him, to calm himself down and otherwise "make short work of him and shoot him" which Hartmann then also carried out. Skarabis then praised Hartmann for the execution.

Shortly after the murders of Köppel and Reh, the Hirschberg public prosecutor initiated investigative proceedings. Since the names of both men were not on an official list of seventy-seven names that the Nazi government had sent to the Reich Ministry of Justice, the murder of which had been subsequently declared legal by the law on measures of the state emergency service of July 3, 1934 and which was therefore were not allowed to be prosecuted, normal investigations were started in the murder cases Reh and Köppel and the perpetrators were prosecuted. During a meeting at the Nazi Party Congress in September 1934, Heinrich Himmler , who was anxious to protect his SS men from criminal prosecution, was able, in cooperation with Roland Freisler , to persuade Hitler to make use of his right as head of state and to issue a decree that the Hirschberg public prosecutor's office - while maintaining a verbal disapproval of the "incidents" in general - ordered the investigation into the murders of Reh and Köppel - as well as four other murders that had been committed by the SS in Hirschberg on July 1, 1934 - to be closed. Subsequently, the names of Reh and Köppel and the four Hirschberg citizens were added to the list of seventy-seven people kept by the Reich Minister of Justice - which grew to 83 names - and thus also declared legal.

Later activities

During the Second World War , Skarabis was from 1940 to 1941 a consultant at the central office for migrants in Łódź under Hermann Krumey .

In 1941 Skarabis, at that time with the rank of Sturmbannführer, was temporarily provisional camp commandant of Theresienstadt . According to his own statement, he spent about eight weeks in Prague and Theresienstadt. In September 1941 he handed over his command to Siegfried Seidl .

After the Second World War, Skarabis was sentenced to four years in prison for aiding and abetting manslaughter in the Köppel and Reh cases. A little over two and a half years of this were considered served by pre-trial detention, the remaining 486 days were converted into a three-year suspended sentence. In 1987 Skarabis moved from Wolfenbüttel to Kronberg in the Taunus, where he died at the age of almost 95.

literature

  • Tomás Fedorovic: Richard Hermann Skarabis . In: Theresienstädter Studies and Documents = Terezin Studies and Documents . No. 11/2004, ZDB -ID 1233756-0 , pp. 247-260.
  • Otto Gritschneder : "The Führer has sentenced you to death ...". Hitler's “Röhm Putsch” murders in court . Beck, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-406-37651-7 .

Web link

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b List of seniority of the NSDAP Schutzstaffel. As of December 1, 1936, p. 80 f. (JPG; 1.11 MB) In: http://www.dws-xip.pl/reich/biografie/1936/1936.html . Retrieved November 4, 2019 .
  2. ^ Lothar Gruchmann: Justice in the Third Reich 1933-1940. 2001, p. 440.
  3. ↑ Tomás Fedorovic: Richard Hermann Skarabis . In: Theresienstädter Studies and Documents = Terezin Studies and Documents . No. 11/2004, ZDB -ID 1233756-0 , p. 250.
  4. ↑ Lothar Gruchmann: Justice in the Third Reich 1933-1940: Adaptation and submission in the Gürtner era , 1988, p. 464.
  5. ↑ Skarabis, Richard. In: ghetto-theresienstadt.info. Retrieved March 18, 2017 .
  6. ↑ Otto Gritschneder: "The Führer has sentenced you to death ...". Hitler's “Röhm Putsch” murders in court . Beck, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-406-37651-7 , p. 113.
personal data
SURNAME Scarabis, Richard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Skarabis, Richard Hermann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS leader
DATE OF BIRTH May 29, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Dätzdorf, Jauer district , Silesia, today: Dzierżków, Gmina Dobromierz
DATE OF DEATH March 19, 1990
Place of death Kronberg im Taunus