Soeren Kam

Soeren Kam

Sören Kam (actually Søren Kam , born November 2, 1921 in Copenhagen ; † March 23, 2015 in Kempten (Allgäu) ) was a member of the Danish SS units .

In 1943, Kam and two helpers killed a Danish journalist; however - after the Second World War - extradition for prosecution to Denmark was refused several times. In February 2007, it became known that Kam had also participated in the persecution of Danish Jews. He was the fifth most wanted Nazi war criminal on the Operation Last Chance wanted list at the Simon Wiesenthal Center .

Life

Second World War

In 1941, 20-year-old Kam volunteered for the Waffen SS . In the 5th SS Panzer Division "Wiking" he served on the Eastern Front in the war against the Soviet Union , where he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross , the Iron Cross 1st and 2nd Class, the Infantry Assault Badge and the Close Combat Clasp. He is also the bearer of the Wound Badge. His last military rank was that of SS-Obersturmführer , which corresponds to a first lieutenant in the army .

In Denmark, Kam was in 1943 co-founded by Christian Frederik von Schalburg nominated collaboration - militia undertook "Schalburg Corps" that directed against the Danish resistance of terror and retaliation. As SS-Obersturmführer Kam headed the SS school “Schalburg” in Copenhagen, which was considered an institution for Danish SS volunteers. The so-called “Peter Group” within the corps, to which Kam also belonged, was considered to be the most notorious death squad against opposition members. On August 30, 1943 Kam and two comrades of the Waffen SS - Jørgen Valdemar Bitsch and Knud Flemming Helweg-Larsen - killed the Danish journalist Carl Henrik Clemmensen in Lyngby near Copenhagen . The act was part of a "cleanup" in which the German occupiers and their collaborators murdered at least 125 people in autumn 1943. Clemmensen was followed to his apartment and then killed with eight pistol shots. The occasion for this was that Clemmensen - during the German occupation reporter for the Berlingske Tidende - recently a colleague of the Nazi newspaper Fædrelandet happened to run into an S-Bahn on the way to spit out before that and him as a traitor cursed.

The following September edition of the illegal resistance newspaper De frie Danske (The Free Danes) proclaimed Flemming Helweg-Larsen and Søren Kam as "Schalburg bandits" and murderers of Carl Henrik Clemmensen. In 1944, the June issue wrote about a woman that she had “Nazi friends like the murderers of Carl Henrik Clemmensen, namely Flemming Helweg-Larsen and Søren Kam”.

Participation in the Holocaust

On February 7, 2007, it was announced through Efraim Zuroff that Kam was also involved in the capture of Danish Jews. Kam got the names and addresses of all Danish Jews through a robbery shortly before the German police tried to arrest them in October 1943.

In August 1943 Kam was involved in a robbery as a soldier in the Waffen SS, in which the registers of the Jewish community in Copenhagen were stolen. In doing so, he had ensured that the German police could register the Jews as fully as possible before the arrest campaign began.

The majority of Danish Jews could be brought to safety in Sweden in good time (see Rescue of Danish Jews ); However, 481 were arrested and taken to the Theresienstadt concentration camp , where 54 of them died.

After 1945

Helweg-Larsen was the only one of the three perpetrators to be sentenced to death and executed in 1946, while Bitsch and Kam disappeared. Kam emigrated to the Federal Republic of Germany, where he lived for years under a false name. In 1956, Kam received German citizenship .

The Danish authorities have requested the extradition of Kam several times to investigate criminal proceedings against him. In 1968, the Munich II public prosecutor's office initiated an investigation against Kam. The latter did not deny having shot at Clemmensen, but asserted that Helweg-Larsen fired first and that he only pulled the trigger "as an act of solidarity" when Clemmensen was already dead on the ground. In 1971 the case was closed again for lack of evidence. Kam found a job as a sales manager at a brewery in Kempten im Allgäu , where he lived until his death on March 23, 2015 at the age of 93, two weeks after his German wife died.

Extradition efforts after 1995

In 1995, Kam hit the headlines when he took part in the Ulrichsberg meeting of the veterans of the Waffen SS in Krumpendorf in Carinthia . At this annual meeting, in which Jörg Haider and Gudrun Burwitz ( Heinrich Himmler's daughter) also regularly attended, Kam was filmed. When the film report was broadcast on ARD , Kam was recognized by Danish viewers.

In 1997 the autopsy report of the murdered man reappeared in Denmark . This shows that all eight bullets fired hit the journalist almost simultaneously while he was still standing. On August 3, 1998, Kam therefore revised his statement and admitted to having shot at Clemmensen, who was still standing, but appealed to emergency aid . Since a European arrest warrant cannot be retrospectively put into effect in Germany as in Denmark, Kam was not extradited in 2005 after a decision by the Federal Constitutional Court on the validity of the German implementation law on the EU arrest warrant.

On September 20, 2006, Kam was arrested at his place of residence, taken to the correctional facility in Munich after the demonstration at the Kempten District Court , but released on October 12. The decision on whether extradition to the Danish judiciary would be admissible was initially postponed by the Munich Higher Regional Court . In February 2007 the court ruled that the offense should not be regarded as murder but manslaughter and that it was therefore statute-barred. A spokeswoman for the court said the decision was based on Kam's explanations.

After Kam's involvement in the persecution of the Jews in Denmark became known in February 2007, Efraim Zuroff from the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Denmark called on them to repeat the demand for extradition. Justice Minister Lene Espersen announced on February 8, 2007 that she would hand over the new information to the Copenhagen police, who would have to comment on the eventual reopening of the matter.

Discussion in Denmark

There has been a discussion in Denmark about the legitimacy of legal proceedings since the 1990s, when new extradition efforts were made. Some insist that the old man should not be prosecuted for the crime that took place 60 years ago, while others argue that the Danish government should not have let the matter rest that long.

Movie

Min morfars morder

In 2004 the director Søren Fauli shot the documentary Min morfars morder ("My grandfather's murderer"). Fauli, himself a grandchild of the murdered Clemmensen, seeks out Kam with the intention of carrying out a reconciliation. The director's mother and daughter of the murdered journalist, Mona Clemmensen, is rather critical of the project, but in the end admits that part of her pain was resolved by this reworking. The film does not deal with any legal or historical aspect, but rather deals with the human-existential. However, some criticized the film as naive, as the reconciliation was unilateral on the part of the victims.

Web links

• Munich Higher Regional Court: Ex-SS man free again. on: time online . October 12, 2006.
• Min morfars morder in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Born men . In: church book (=  1921-1934 ). Saint Paul parish, Copenhagen 1921, p. 16 (Danish: Fødte Mandkøn .).
2. ↑ Danish Most-Wanted Nazi Dies a Free Man in Germany (English) . In: Newsweek , March 30, 2015. Retrieved March 31, 2015. 
3. ↑ Sören Kam. in one day on: Spiegel online.
4. ↑ Fra DE FRIE DANSKEs Løbesedler gentager vi (Danish) . In: De frie Danske , September 23, 1943, p. 2. Accessed November 21, 2014. "Redaktør CH Clemmensen blev myrdet af Schalburg-Banditterne Flemming Helweg-Larsen og Søren Kam" 
5. ↑ Fra den BLAA BOG (Danish) . In: De frie Danske , June 11, 1944, p. 12. Accessed November 21, 2014. "Blandt hendes Nazi-Venner he Carl Henrik Clemmensens Mordere, nemlig Flemming Helweg-Larsen og Søren Kam" 
6. ↑ Søren Kam angav danske JODER. In: Politiken. February 7, 2007. (Danish)
7. ^ Jørgen H. Barfod: Helvede har mange navne. (Hell has many names). Copenhagen 1969. Lists of names of the Danish Jews deported to Theresienstadt.
8. ^ Danish ex-SS officer Sören Kam died at the age of 93. ( Memento from March 11, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) In: Tiroler Tageszeitung from March 30, 2015.
9. ↑ Tysk landsret: Kam nødværge handlede i. In: Politiken. February 5, 2007. (Danish)
10. ↑ Danmark bør Gene Days krav om udlevering af Søren Kam. In: Politiken. February 8, 2007. (Danish)
11. ↑ Politiet efterforsker nye spor i Kam-sag. In: Politiken. February 7, 2007. (Danish)