Wilhelm Altenloh

Wilhelm Altenloh as a witness at the Nuremberg trials

Karl Wilhelm Altenloh (born June 25, 1908 in Hagen ; † February 24, 1985 there ) was a German lawyer and SS leader. During the Second World War , Altenloh played a leading role in the extermination of the Jews in occupied Białystok from 1941 to 1943 as commander of the security police and the SD (KdS) .

Life

Altenloh, the son of a factory owner, had three younger siblings. He visited after the private preschool the local grammar school , where 1926 he the High School took off. He then completed a law degree at the universities of Heidelberg, Munich and Bonn, which he completed in 1931 with the first state examination in Cologne. After during his Rechtsrefendariats law was in the compartment in December 1931 at the University of Erlangen for Dr. jur. PhD .

After the handover of power to the National Socialists in early April 1933, Altenloh became a member of the SA and in early May 1933 of the NSDAP ( membership number 3,196,549). In November 1934 he passed the second state examination in law. In February 1935 he was transferred to the Secret State Police Office in Berlin , where he was initially employed in the "Sects" department, then in the "Monitoring of associations" department and finally in the press department. In September 1935 he switched from the SA to the SS (SS membership number 272.245) and was appointed government assessor at the same time. In November 1938 he was promoted to government councilor and at the same time to SS-Hauptsturmführer within the SS . In 1938 he joined the SD main office . At the end of January 1939 he was promoted to SS-Sturmbannführer .

After the beginning of the Second World War , he was appointed head of the Stapostelle in Allenstein in East Prussia in February 1940 . After the German invasion of the Soviet Union , the Białystok district was taken under civil rule on August 1, 1941 . In August 1941 Altenloh was appointed commander of the Security Police and SD (KdS) Białystok; However, he kept his office in Allenstein until October 1942. The Gestapo personnel for the new district came from the administrative districts of Königsberg , Tilsit, and Allenstein ; the district was practically led as a sub-district of Allenstein. The first Gestapo chief in the Białystok district was Waldemar Macholl (previously Tilsit), his deputy was Richard Dibus. After the Białystok district was expanded to include Grodno in September 1941 , another Gestapo office was added in Grodno, headed by Heinz Errelis. He held this post until May 1943, when he was replaced by Obersturmbannführer Herbert Zimmermann . Altenloh was then transferred to France, where he first worked as KdS Nancy and later with the commander of the Security Police and the SD (BdS) in Paris . After the advance of the Allies in France, Altenloh was transferred to the Reich Main Security Office in the summer of 1944 , where in October 1944 he took over the department head “Corruption in the Supreme Reich Authorities” at Amt V. At the end of the war he was drafted into the Waffen SS , but shortly before the end of the war he was released from military service for health reasons.

In the post-war period he was interned in January 1946 for his Gestapo work. After a court hearing in Benefeld-Bomlitz , he received a three-year prison sentence. An English extradition court rejected Altenloh's extradition to Poland, where he was to be charged as a war criminal. As KdS Białystok, he is said to have ordered mass shootings of Polish civilians, ordered the burning of villages and, as chairman of a court martial, pronounced death sentences . After his release from prison in July 1949, he worked as an authorized signatory at Altenloh und Falkenroth GmbH and later in the same position at a foundry.

Altenloh was first indicted by the Dortmund public prosecutor in 1961 together with Zimmermann . In the summer of 1965 he was briefly taken into custody twice. In a trial before the Bielefeld Regional Court on April 14, 1967, Altenloh was sentenced to eight years in prison for complicity in the murder of at least 10,000 Jews from Białystok and Grodno . His co-defendants Lothar Heimbach (nine years), Richard Dibus (six and a half years) and Heinz Errelis (five years) were also convicted. Altenloh received exemption from custody due to his state of health. Altenloh died in 1985 and was buried in the Buschey cemetery in Hagen.

Gravestone Wilhelm Altenloh
Funerary inscription on Altenloh's grave in the Buschey cemetery in Hagen

literature

Freia Anders (editor): Białystok in Bielefeld: National Socialist crimes before the Bielefeld Regional Court from 1958 to 1967 . Publishing house for regional history, Bielefeld 2003. ISBN 3-89534-458-3 . ( Review of the work on H-Soz-u-Kult )
Katrin Stoll: Establishing the truth: criminal proceedings against former members of the security police for the Białystok district . Contemporary legal history: Department 1. General Articles, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2012, ISBN 978-3-11-028009-8 .

Web links

Commons : Wilhelm Altenloh - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Literature by and about Wilhelm Altenloh in the catalog of the German National Library
Institute for Contemporary History Munich-Berlin: Witness literature online. ZS 806, Altenloh, Wilhelm (PDF; 1.5 MB). Minutes of Altenloh's interrogation on August 4, 1947.

Individual evidence

↑ Death register of the registry office in Hagen No. 419/1985.
^ Wilhelm Altenloh: The capital increase of a stock corporation without issuing new shares. Hagen (Westphalia) 1932 (submitted as a dissertation at the University of Erlangen, Faculty of Law, 1931; approved on December 7, 1931).
^ Katrin Stoll: The production of the truth: criminal proceedings against former members of the security police for the Białystok district. Berlin / Boston 2012, p. 304.
^ Sara Bender: The Jews of Białystok During World War II and the Holocaust . University Press of New England, Hanover 2008, ISBN 1584657294 , p. 101.
^ Katrin Stoll: The production of the truth: criminal proceedings against former members of the security police for the Białystok district. Berlin / Boston 2012, p. 305.
^ Katrin Stoll: The production of the truth: criminal proceedings against former members of the security police for the Białystok district. Berlin / Boston 2012, p. 305 f.
↑ File number StA Dortmund 45 Js 1/61, on this David F. Crew: Nazism and German society, 1933–1945 . Routledge, London 1994, ISBN 0415082390 , p. 314.

personal data
SURNAME	Altenloh, Wilhelm
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Altenloh, Karl Wilhelm (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German lawyer and SS leader, commander of the security police and SD (KdS) in Białystok
DATE OF BIRTH	June 25, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH	Hagen
DATE OF DEATH	February 24, 1985
Place of death	Hagen

[1] Death register of the registry office in Hagen No. 419/1985.

[2] Wilhelm Altenloh: The capital increase of a stock corporation without issuing new shares. Hagen (Westphalia) 1932 (submitted as a dissertation at the University of Erlangen, Faculty of Law, 1931; approved on December 7, 1931).

[3] Katrin Stoll: The production of the truth: criminal proceedings against former members of the security police for the Białystok district. Berlin / Boston 2012, p. 304.

[4] Sara Bender: The Jews of Białystok During World War II and the Holocaust . University Press of New England, Hanover 2008, ISBN 1584657294 , p. 101.

[5] Katrin Stoll: The production of the truth: criminal proceedings against former members of the security police for the Białystok district. Berlin / Boston 2012, p. 305.

[6] Katrin Stoll: The production of the truth: criminal proceedings against former members of the security police for the Białystok district. Berlin / Boston 2012, p. 305 f.

[7] File number StA Dortmund 45 Js 1/61, on this David F. Crew: Nazism and German society, 1933–1945 . Routledge, London 1994, ISBN 0415082390 , p. 314.