Wilhelm Metz (Chief of Police)

Wilhelm Metz (* 1893 ; † March 31, 1943 ) was a German police officer and SA functionary, most recently with the rank of SA brigade leader . Metz was, among other things, police chief of the Upper Silesian industrial district and of Katowice .

Live and act

Metz, a farmer by profession, worked for the Eastern Border Guard in Upper Silesia until 1921 after the First World War . He joined the NSDAP and SA in 1930 . In the early 1930s he led the SA of the Upper Silesian industrial area as standard leader. From 1934 to 1935 he then acted as leader of the SA Brigade 17 in Opole . He reached his highest rank in the SA on January 30, 1942 when he was promoted to SA Brigadefuhrer.

After the seizure of power , Metz - despite a Jewish great-grandfather - was appointed police director in Opole in 1933 and, according to the Munich Agreement in 1938/39, police chief in Troppau . After the beginning of the Second World War, he was employed as the chief of police in the Upper Silesian industrial area with headquarters in Katowice. In German-occupied Poland , he was also responsible for "the police organization in the annexed eastern strip with headquarters in Sosnowiec ". Since Heinrich Himmler viewed Metz as too "timid" on the Jewish question, he was replaced in 1940 by the more radical Alexander von Woedtke and relegated to the post of Police President of Katowice with responsibility for the city and district of Katowice and the city of Königshütte , to which he was relegated up to remained after his death.

literature

• Sybille Steinbacher : "Model City" Auschwitz. Germanization Policy and the Murder of Jews in Eastern Upper Silesia , 2000.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Klaus-Peter Friedrich (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews ... , Volume 4: Poland - September 1939-July 1941 , Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-58525-4 , pp. 409
2. ^ Helmut Heiber (editor): files of the party chancellery of the NSDAP. Reconstruction of a lost inventory , Munich 1983, process no.13193.