Rolf-Heinz Höppner

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Rolf-Heinz Höppner (born February 24, 1910 in Siegmar ; † October 23, 1998 in Bad Godesberg ) was a German lawyer and SS-Obersturmbannführer in the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA).

Career

Höppner studied law at the University of Leipzig and passed both state exams. At the beginning he did voluntary work with the press work for the security service of the Reichsführer SS (SD) and was employed there as a permanent advisor in early 1934. Later he was concerned with personnel and organizational issues and rose to become the leader of the SD-Leitabschnitt Posen .

Höppner was a member of the SS (SS No. 107.136) and the NSDAP ( membership number 321.209). This membership number indicates that he joined the party in 1931.

As head of the migrant center in Poznan, Höppner was responsible for the "evacuation of foreigners", namely the deportation of Jews and Poles to the General Government , as well as the settlement of ethnic Germans in the Wartheland . At the beginning of 1943 he became the head of the "Gauamt für Volkstumsfragen". In July 1944 Höppner - in the meantime promoted to SS-Obersturmbannführer - was ordered to Berlin to head Office Group III A "People's and Legal Order" in the Reich Security Main Office.

Entanglements

On July 16, 1941, Höppner sent a memo to Adolf Eichmann in which he had summarized "various discussions of the local Lieutenancy" on the " solution of the Jewish question in the Reichsgau". Höppner noted that "some of the things sound fantastic, but in my opinion they could be implemented."

Some of the proposals related to the establishment of a camp in which all 300,000 Jews of the Warthegau should be concentrated. Jews capable of working could be pulled out as columns. All Jewish women of childbearing age should be sterilized. The following consideration was added as a fourth point:

“This winter there is a danger that the Jews will no longer be able to be fed all. Serious consideration must be given to whether it is not the most humane solution to kill the Jews, insofar as they are unable to work, by some quick-acting means. In any case, this would be more pleasant than starving them to death. "

Such a "fast-acting means", namely gasification by means of carbon monoxide gas from steel bottles, was used by a special command under Herbert Lange in the Warthegau since 1939 to murder inmates of psychiatric institutions. The search for an extermination site for Jews unable to work began in the Warthbrücken district in July 1941; By November 1941, almost 4,000 Jews were shot by mobile commandos or suffocated in gas vans . The killings in the Kulmhof extermination camp began in December 1941 .

On September 3, 1941, Höppner suggested in a 13-page letter to the RSHA that the work of the regional migrant center be supplemented by a Reich center. After the end of the war, Soviet territory could offer adequate space for such evictions. However, the fundamental question must first be clarified whether the “undesirable parts of the population” should be “guaranteed a certain life forever” or whether “they should be completely eradicated”.

Höppner was later among the audience of the first Poznan speech on October 4, 1943, at which Heinrich Himmler openly addressed the extermination of the Jews, which was far advanced under Nazi rule.

After the end of the war

Höppner was arrested near Flensburg in July 1945 . He appeared as a defense witness in the Nuremberg trial against the main war criminals in order to deny the responsibility of the Reich Security Main Office for the murder of the Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and the SD .

Höppner was extradited to Poland in 1947 and allegedly sentenced to death on March 15, 1949. According to other sources, Höppner was sentenced to life imprisonment in Poznan. In the course of the great Polish amnesty after October 1956, Höppner was released in early 1957, worked as a senior councilor in the housing ministry and later lived undisturbed in a Cologne old people's home.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ IMT: The Nuremberg Trial of the Major War Criminals. Reprint Munich 1984, ISBN 3-7735-2510-9 , Volume XX, pp. 207f
  2. ^ SS data on the Internet ( Memento from June 28, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ Björn Weigel: 'Märzgefallene' and admission stop in spring 1933. P. 92 In: Wolfgang Benz (Ed.): How did one become a party member? FiTb, Frankfurt / M. 2009, ISBN 978-3-596-18068-4 .
  4. ^ Philippe Burrin: Hitler and the Jews. The decision to commit genocide. Frankfurt / M. 1993, ISBN 3-10-046308-0 , p. 137
  5. ↑ Source of the IfZ from July 16, 1944 (PDF; 13 kB)
  6. ^ Peter Longerich: Politics of Destruction. Munich 1998, ISBN 3-492-03755-0 , p. 425.
  7. ↑ Loewy, Hanno; Schoenberner, Gerhard: Our only way is work Vienna 1990, ISBN 3-85409-169-9 , p. 169 / on the Internet in Chronology of the Holocaust ( Memento of the original from March 9, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link became automatic used and not yet tested. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Accessed September 15, 2009) / reprinted as document VEJ 4/314. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.holocaust-chronologie.de
  8. ^ Peter Klein: Kulmhof / Chelmno. In: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 8: Riga, Warsaw, Vaivara, Kaunas, Płaszów, Kulmhof / Chełmno, Bełżec, Sobibór, Treblinka. CH Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-57237-1 , p. 305.
  9. ^ Peter Longerich: Politics of Destruction. P. 451 / Philippe Burrin: Hitler ... , p. 137ff
  10. ↑ Johannes Jäger: The right-wing extremist temptation. Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-8258-5722-0 , p. 82
  11. ↑ IMT: The Nuremberg Trial ... Volume XX, pp. 207–261.
  12. ^ Ernst Klee: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Actual Edition Frankfurt / M. 2005, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 / Klee also states that Hoeppner was executed in 1951; Klee falsely invokes Wildt.
  13. ↑ Martin Pollack: "Why were the Stanislaws shot?" Paul Zsolnay Verlag, Vienna 2008, pp. 24–48 --- Pollack therefore interviewed Höppner in 1982. / Michael Wildt: Generation of the unconditional. The Leadership Corps of the Reich Security Main Office , 2nd edition Hamburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-930908-87-5 , p. 740 in note 35 / "ORR in the housing ministry" in: Klaus-Peter Friedrich (edit.): The tracking and Murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 (source collection) Volume 4: Poland - September 1939-July 1941 , Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-58525-4 , p. 681, note 2.
personal data
SURNAME Höppner, Rolf-Heinz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Höppner, Rolf Heinz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS Obersturmbannführer
DATE OF BIRTH February 24, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Siegmar
DATE OF DEATH October 23, 1998
Place of death bad Godesberg