Werner Schönemann

Werner Schönemann (born November 27, 1911 in Berlin ; † September 6, 2003 in Altenahr ) was German SS-Hauptsturmführer , part of the commando leader of Einsatzkommando 8 of Einsatzgruppe B and a convicted war criminal .

Life

Schönemann was the son of a police officer and later an innkeeper. In 1930 he passed the Abitur. Then he studied in Berlin and Konigsberg (Prussia) economy and consisted in 1934 diploma examination in Berlin. In 1933/34 he was a member of the SA . At the end of 1935 he began his service with the Berlin Criminal Police . A year later he became a member of the SS . In 1937 he was transferred to the Cologne Gestapo , where he headed the department for countering industrial espionage and industrial security. In 1940 he joined the NSDAP . In early 1941 he began his law studies in Frankfurt am Main .

In early July 1941 he was assigned to Einsatzkommando 8 under the leadership of Otto Bradfisch . Schönemann led a partial command which, according to the incident report, shot 1,075 Jews with members of the 322 police battalion in Slonim in July 1941 . From Minsk the sub-command was sent to Borissov with an extermination order , where it remained until the end of September and carried out numerous executions . Schönemann also directed the shooting of the inmates of the Borissow prison, whereby at least 100 Jews and other inmates were murdered. With his sub-command, he was also responsible for the selection and shooting of at least 30 to 80 prisoners of war , the shooting of a Jewish work detail from the ghetto in Borissow and numerous other shootings against Jews in the region around Borissow.

In October 1941 Schönemann continued his studies and made a suicide attempt for reasons unknown . In 1942 he was transferred to the Stapo control center in Vienna , where he headed Section IV 3b (economic affairs and industrial security) until September 1944. He was then sent to Einsatzkommando 13, with which he was deployed until the evacuation in Slovakia . In this function Schönemann was involved in the deportation of Slovak Jews. In April 1945, he said he was in charge of a Gestapo field service in Steyr .

After the end of the war he went into hiding with a false name. He was arrested on July 16, 1945 . He was suspected of having participated in shootings in Poland and Slovakia in 1944. On December 22, 1947, the Regional Court for Criminal Matters in Vienna sentenced him to ten years in heavy prison . In 1949 the sentence against him was overturned. On October 8, 1951, he was sentenced to nine months of heavy imprisonment in Vienna for threats of death against inmates in Žilina , which counted towards his previous imprisonment. From 1953 he worked in a company that manufactured parts for motorcycles, bicycles, sewing machines and typewriters. In April 1954, he switched to the beverage wholesaler Matthias Harzheim KG in Cologne as a commercial department manager . In May 1959 he decided to flee, which led him to Austria , Egypt and Switzerland . He was supported in this by his wife in Cologne and a former SS comrade in Vienna and other acquaintances. He explained his absence to his employer with health problems. Since November 20, 1959, there was an arrest warrant against him from the Munich District Court . He had been in custody since May 26, 1961 .

The Cologne Regional Court sentenced him on 12 May 1964 as joint accessory to murder in 12 cases of 2 170 people to six years in prison . The judgment became final in October of the same year . The investigation of the public prosecutor's office in Dortmund against him for inciting murder and deprivation of liberty during his time with Einsatzkommando 13, which was taking place at the same time, was discontinued in February 1966, then resumed and finally discontinued again in 1975. In December 1990 the new proceedings against Schönemann were discontinued.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l} Christina Ullrich: "I don't feel like a murderer" - The integration of Nazi perpetrators into post-war society , Darmstadt, 2011, pp. 271–273.
2. ^ Fritz Bauer: Justice and Nazi Crimes: Collection of German criminal judgments for Nazi homicidal crimes 1945-1966 , Vol. 20, Amsterdam University Press , ISBN 9789060420201 , p. 165.
3. ^ Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 555.

literature

• Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945 . 2nd Edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .
• Christina Ullrich: "I don't feel like a murderer" - The integration of Nazi perpetrators into post-war society . WBG , Darmstadt, 2011, ISBN 978-3-534-23802-6 .