Werner help

Werner Helfen (born July 16, 1914 in Brotdorf ; † December 20, 2004 in Gernsbach ) was a German police officer and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Werner Helfen was born in Saarland. After elementary school and labor or military service , he trained as a police officer . Among other things, he worked in Mannheim, Offenburg, the Saar region , Heidelberg and Wiesbaden. From June 1941 was deployed in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia . Helfen made friends with some Czechs whom he warned of the Gestapo's plans . In 1942 he was stationed near Kolin in Czechoslovakia , where he was the deputy commander. He often reported false reports to the Gestapo control center in Prague without this causing him serious trouble.

In May 1944 he came to Châlons-en-Champagne , where he had weapons and cartridges in violation of international law sunk in the Marne . Although formally in the right, as the weapons violated the Hague Land Warfare Regulations , this brought him the attention of the Gestapo, which had him arrested on August 21, 1944. The SS and Police Court in Vittel then sentenced him to death and loss of civil rights for serious damage to his military equipment . He was housed in the Schirmeck-Vorbruck security camp in Alsace, where he witnessed an SS massacre of prisoners of war.

When the camp was closed, he was taken to the Rotenfels alternate camp . He was then to be transferred to Strasbourg . On the transport in November 1944, however, he managed to escape with the help of Chief Police Officer Ostertag. He returned to his wife in Offenburg , where he hid for a while. On December 3, 1944, he was officially pardoned by Heinrich Himmler , but he was immediately drafted into the SS Storm Brigade Dirlewanger . Helfen escaped being drafted into the special task force headed by Oskar Dirlewanger , which was notorious for numerous war crimes by hiding until the end of the war .

In 1948 he was appointed head of the protection police in Offenburg. However, he was dismissed from service without notice on February 23, 1956 after the Interior Ministry ruled that he had rightly been charged during the Nazi era. Among others, Die Zeit , Der Spiegel and the Süddeutsche Zeitung published comments that this dismissal was a scandal. He was only reinstated after another trial. He was transferred to Rastatt, where he headed the police station until his retirement in 1974.

literature

• Adalbert Metzinger : People in Resistance - Central Baden 1933–1943 (=  special publication of the Rastatt district archive, volume 13 ). regional culture publishing house, Rastatt 2017, ISBN 978-3-89735-978-9 , p. 101-103 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Benjamin F. Jones: Eisenhower's Guerrillas: The Jedburghs, the Maquis, and the Liberation of France . Oxford University Press, 2016, ISBN 978-0-19-935183-1 ( google.de [accessed February 14, 2018]).