Paul Salitter

Paul Salitter (* 15. December 1898 in Lakellen , county Oletzko / East Prussia; † 8. January 1972 in Dusseldorf ) was a German police officer, whose report of a deportation of Jews from Dusseldorf in the Riga ghetto a much-quoted Scripture testimony to the deportation of German Jews is .

Life

Salitter grew up in East Prussia and worked as an office assistant after school. He had participated in the First World War as a sergeant major from 1917 to 1919 , had been working in the police service since October 10, 1919 ( Königsberg / East Prussia) and was finally promoted to captain of the police in Düsseldorf. He was married and had two children; during the time of National Socialism he resigned from the Protestant Church. In 1941 he served in the S II (personnel) command of the Düsseldorf Police Department. On March 13, 1942 Salitter was seconded from Düsseldorf to the Brest-Litowsk police administration . Nothing is known about his activities there. From 1942 to 1944 he was deployed in Minsk , in 1944 he worked for the “Sieglind” Schutzmannschaft Brigade in Alsace. In January 1945 he was appointed SS-Sturmbannführer.

The Allied military government initiated investigative proceedings against Salitter in mid-1945. He was then suspended by the police chief and discharged from the police force on October 18, 1945 by order of the military government. In the denazification process in 1946 he was initially classified as “less burdened”, then in 1951 as a “fellow traveler”. Salitter reapplied for employment in 1947 and asserted that he had only done his duty since he took up his post in 1919. He promised "to put my whole personality at the service of the cause even in the new democracy, just as I did under the government of Wilhelm II, Ebert, Hindenburg and in the Third Reich [sic] ..."

Until the 1960s, Salitter tried in vain to return to the police force. He stylized himself as a loyal public servant and stated that he knew nothing about the murder of the deportees. As recently as 1966, Salitter claimed on the occasion of an investigation that he had only learned from Latvian police officers that Jews had been shot en masse in Riga. Until then he had assumed that the deportations would be a pure "resettlement operation".

Organization of the train

According to a decree from the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA), the security police were obliged to accompany deportation transports from the German Reich , which began in October 1941, with a command of 1:15 officers (one officer and 15 crew members). The transport from Düsseldorf to Riga was organized by the Düsseldorf state police headquarters, but guarded by Salitter and his Düsseldorf officials and escorted to Riga. The 1,007 people were collected in the city slaughterhouse and cattle yard in Düsseldorf . The actual transport began on December 11th.

On the following day, the Düsseldorf state police headquarters reported to SS-Sturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann in Section IV B4 of the Reich Main Security Office and the commander of the Security Police and SD in Riga, Rudolf Lange , that “the transport train Do 38 left the station of departure Düsseldorf-Derendorf in the direction of Riga with a total of 1007 Jews had left. The exact departure time was reported for December 11, 1941, 10:45 a.m. In the telex it says: “The transport occupants carry bread, flour and pulses for 21 days for food and 50,000 RM in Reichskreditkassenscheine.” The train reached Riga after a good three days. Salitter wrote a nine-page report on the course of the “evacuation of Jews to Riga”; this was forwarded to the RSHA via the Stapo Düsseldorf. The names of the 15 other accompanying police officers from Düsseldorf are not known.

Salitter report

Salitter led the escort of the Do 38 deportation train from 11th to 13th / 14th. December 1941. Immediately after his return he wrote a confidential report for Adolf Eichmann and Rolf Lange in which he described the trip in detail.

The departure of the transport from the Düsseldorf-Derendorf freight yard was scheduled for 9:30 a.m., but the Jews were already "made available" at the loading ramp at 4:00 a.m. The train consisted of twenty old third-class passenger cars, one second-class passenger car for the escort and seven freight cars loaded with luggage.

The loading was done “with the utmost haste” at 9 am, which is why individual cars were overloaded with up to 65 people. On the way from the slaughterhouse to the loading ramp tried a male Jew to throw himself in front of the tram and suicide to commit. However, he was caught by the tram's arresting device and only slightly injured. An elderly Jew had left the loading dock unnoticed and fled to a nearby house. However, a cleaning lady noticed them.

The next morning the border station Laugszargen was reached at 5.30 a.m. and after 15 minutes the Lithuanian station Tauroggen was reached. From here the travel time to Riga should normally only be 14 hours, but there were often long delays in the onward journey at the stations. Mitau ( Latvia ) was reached in the evening . It started blowing snow with subsequent frost. The arrival in Riga took place at 9:50 pm, where the train was held at the station for 1½ hours. On December 13, at 11.35 p.m., the train reached the military ramp at Skirotowa station. The train stopped unheated. The outside temperature was already 12 degrees below zero. The total travel time was 61 hours.

The handover of the train to Latvian police officers took place at 1:45 a.m. Since it was already after midnight, it was dark and the loading ramp was heavily iced, the unloading and transfer of the Jews to the collective ghetto, which is still 2 km away, should only take place on Sunday morning when it got light.

Further descriptions

There were several survivors of the transport who described this. The report by Hilde Sherman-Zander, who was born in Mönchengladbach in 1923, is one of the best-known texts in memorial literature, in which the Düsseldorf Riga deportation is described . It was used for the 2007 film "Marriage Gone Away", which deals with the demolition of the former Düsseldorf-Derendorf freight yard. The survivor Erna Valk also describes this trip.

A report by the Schutzpolizeihauptmann Wilhelm Meurin, who accompanied a transport from Düsseldorf to Minsk from November 10, 1941, is now easily accessible. This train remained unheated several times for up to eight hours in severe frost and only reached its destination after 96 hours.

Lore

The Salitter report is in the Wiener Library in London today .

A first copy was made in Kurt Düwell's dissertation from 1968. The source is printed in full as document VEJ 6/59.

A copy of the report and Salitter's personal file were handed over to the Israeli Yad Vashem memorial in April 2008 by NRW Prime Minister Jürgen Rüttgers and officials from the Düsseldorf Police Headquarters . This delegation was the first group of uniformed German police officers to take part in an official memorial ceremony in Yad Vashem. Contact with the police headquarters was established in 2007.

See also

• Jews in Düsseldorf
• Order police

literature

• Alois Puyn: Document of Inhumanity, transport report on the "evacuation" of Jews from the Lower Rhine appeared . In: Calendar for the Klever Land, 1985, pp. 17-19.
• Hilde Sherman-Zander: Between day and dark. Girls' Years in the Ghetto , 4th ed. Frankfurt / M. 1993, ISBN 3-548-20386-8 .
• Raul Hilberg : Special trains to Auschwitz , Berlin / Frankfurt 1987, ISBN 3-548-33085-1 , pp. 130-138.
• Kurt Düwell: "Riga is a very beautiful city in terms of urban planning ..." The Düsseldorf deportations of Jews from autumn 1941 . In: moment. Journal of the Düsseldorf Mahn- und Gedenkstätte, No. 20/21, Düsseldorf 2002, pp. 13–15.
• Barbara Materne: The Düsseldorf deportation to the Riga ghetto on December 11, 1941 . In: Moment, No. 20/21, Düsseldorf 2002, pp. 10–12.
• Ingrid Schupetta: Deportation destination Riga - mass murder and labor . In: Moment, No. 20/21, Düsseldorf 2002, pp. 1–6.
• Michels Zimmermann: The Gestapo and the regional organization of the deportation of Jews. The example of the Stapo control center in Düsseldorf . In: Gerhard Paul / Klaus-Michael Mallmann (eds.): The Gestapo - Myth and Reality , Darmstadt 2003, ISBN 3-89678-482-X , pp. 357-372.
• Thomas Köhler: Considerations on the social and professional profile of the Düsseldorf police and their staff. With biographical examples and organizational charts . In: Carsten Dams / Klaus Dönecke / Thomas Köhler (eds.): “Service to the people”? Düsseldorf police officers between democracy and dictatorship, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-935979-99-3 , pp. 55–95.

Web links

• Complete report with comments Salitter report (pdf)
• Facsimile of departure notification and Salitter report (pdf)
• TV report in wdr monitor 2009
• Article about the handover in Yad Vashem: focus.de
• Article about the handover in Yad Vashem: rp-online
• wassenberg.be: Information on the vita
• Paul Salitter , in “History of the Police Headquarters ” of the History Association at Jürgensplatz e. V.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ A photo from 1940 can be seen on www.wassenberg.be  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Accessed March 15, 2011)  
2. ↑ www.wassenberg.be  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
3. ↑ The personnel file is printed in: Klaus Dönecke (Red.): Transparency and shadow. Düsseldorf police officers between democracy and dictatorship . Catalog for the permanent exhibition in the police headquarters in Düsseldorf. Edited by the History Association at Jürgensplatz e. V., Düsseldorf 2007, ISBN 978-3-7700-1306-7 , p. 63.
4. ↑ Susanne Heim (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 (source collection) Volume 6: German Reich and Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, October 1941 – March 1943. Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-11 -036496-5 , p. 238 in note 2.
5. ↑ Susanne Heim (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 (source collection) Volume 6: German Reich and Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, October 1941 – March 1943. Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-11 -036496-5 , 238.
6. ↑ Quoted from www.wassenberg.be  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Accessed March 15, 2011)  
7. ↑ www.wassenberg.be  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Accessed March 15, 2011)  
8. ↑ Telex No. 13.165 of December 12, 1941 from the State Police Headquarters in Düsseldorf under file number II B4 / 71.02 / 1300/41 / printed by Gertrude Schneider : Reise in den Tod. German Jews in Riga 1941-1944. Dülmen 2008, ISBN 978-3-89960-305-7 , pp. 70f.
9. ^ "Before the traces are blown away", Germany 2007, director: Renate Günther-Greene
10. ^ The Wiener Library, Ghetto Riga and Concentration Camp Stutthof P.III. No. 367 - quoted from wp.ge-Mittelkreis ( accessed on March 14, 2011).
11. ↑ Document VEJ 6/42 in: Susanne Heim (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 (source collection) Volume 6: German Reich and Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia October 1941 – March 1943. Berlin 2019 , ISBN 978-3-11-036496-5 , pp. 199-204.
12. ↑ Kurt Düwell: The Rhine areas in the Jewish policy of National Socialism before 1942: Contribution to a comparative contemporary history. Bonn 1968. (Zugl .: University of Cologne, Diss., 1968).
13. ↑ Susanne Heim (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 (source collection) Volume 6: German Reich and Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, October 1941 – March 1943. Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-11 -036496-5 , pp. 238-244.
14. ↑ www.polizei-nrw.de (accessed on March 14, 2011)