Wilhelm Schäfer (lawyer)

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Wilhelm Schäfer (born February 24, 1902 in Blaubeuren ; died December 27, 1979 in Tübingen ) was a German district administrator under National Socialism and in the German-occupied Government General .

Life

Wilhelm Schäfer was the son of a senior clerk and attended the Protestant Latin school . He studied from 1921 to 1925 in Tübingen and Munich Law and received his doctorate in 1926 when Korporierter he belonged to the Tübingen Lichtenstein. After completing his legal clerkship, he was first deputy magistrate in Eßlingen am Neckar and Backnang in 1928 . In 1931 he became police director in Ulm and in Göppingen the following year . Since he had once forbidden an SA deployment, he was first placed on the list of civil servants who were to be dismissed in 1933 for political activities under the law for the restoration of the civil service . In addition, he and the Württemberg district administrators Karl Knapp ( Freudenstadt district ), Karl Zeller (Herrenberg) and Fritz Geißler ( Mergentheim ) belonged to the Order of St. George, a secret society that was viewed with suspicion by the National Socialists , in 1934 as a "self-protection association" however received their recognition. Schäfer's professional career therefore took a detour from 1933 to April 1935 as deputy district administrator in Ulm, and then returned to normal channels as district administrator in the Crailsheim district . The fact that he joined the NSDAP on May 1, 1933 and the SA on November 24, 1934 , had also contributed to this .

With the German occupation of Poland after the outbreak of World War II , he was on 29 September 1939 Kreishauptmann in district Busko in Radom district , his district governors were Karl Lasch (to 1941) and Ernst Kundt (until 1945). Schäfer returned to his district administrator post in Crailsheim in February 1945, which he still held nominally during his time in the Generalgouvernement.

After the end of the war he was interned until December 1, 1945 and then worked in a vinegar factory in Tübingen , where he received power of attorney . During the denazification he was classified as a fellow traveler . The investigative proceedings initiated after 1959 because of his involvement in the Nazi crimes in occupied Poland were stopped by the Stuttgart public prosecutor's office on November 30, 1967, after German public prosecutor's offices had postponed the investigation since 1963 in order not to have to deal with it, although the Central body considered participation in the crime possible.

Participation in the Nazi crimes

Schäfer served as the highest administrative officer in the Busko district for five years. The district town of Busko had a Jewish population of 37% in 1931, 1,500 out of 5,000 inhabitants. In December 1940 1.500 were Jews from the district capital of Radom in the county seat Busko deported , another 1,000 in February 1941. Two ghettos were set up in Busko in 1941 to capture, concentrate, and hold captive the Jews of the district. As the population increased to up to 20 people per apartment, a typhus epidemic broke out there . In the summer of 1941 a forced labor camp for Jews was set up in a stone quarry in Stolpia Nowa, and in the Stopnica community a ghetto with around 5,000 inmates and one labor camp each for men and women. The ghettos in Busko County were dissolved in October 1942 when their residents were deported to the Treblinka extermination camp .

literature

  • Markus Roth: Gentlemen. The German District Chiefs in Occupied Poland - Career Paths, Rule Practice and Post-History. Wallstein Verlag: Göttingen 2009, ISBN 978-3-8353-0477-2 . (Also: Jena, University, Dissertation, 2008), (also as an e-book in Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-8353-0728-5 ).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Markus Roth: Herrenmenschen , p. 109.
  2. ↑ For Fritz Geißler see short biography at the Calw district  ( 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. (PDF; 2.7 MB)@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.kreis-calw.de  
  3. ^ Michael Ruck , Korpsgeist und Staatsconsciousness: Officials in the German Southwest 1928 to 1972 , Munich: Oldenbourg 1996 ISBN 3-486-56197-9 , p. 55.
  4. ↑ Markus Roth: Herrenmenschen , p. 352f.
  5. ↑ Alek Silver, Memorial Anniversary for a Jewish Town in Poland 2001 (PDF; 6.7 MB)
  6. ↑ Operation Reinhard death camps
  7. ↑ Stock overview
personal data
SURNAME Shepherd, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (NSDAP), district administrator
DATE OF BIRTH February 24, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Blaubeuren
DATE OF DEATH December 27, 1979
Place of death Tübingen