Willi Abendschön

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Willi Abendschön, before 1946

Willi Abendschön (born July 28, 1905 in Mannheim ; † September 21, 1946 in Prague ) was a German Gestapo officer who was involved in tracking down the assassins of Reinhard Heydrich , the deputy Reich Protector in Bohemia and Moravia . Abendschön was the leader of the action in Pardubice .

Life

Willi Abendschön was born as the son of the metal grinder August Abendschön and his wife, Luise Abendschön, née. Dim, born. After attending elementary school, he learned the trade of a bank clerk in 1917. However, he broke off his apprenticeship and became a seaman with the Linden shipping company. In 1924, Abendschön moved to the Baden Police School in Karlsruhe and in 1925 to the Police School Mannheim. In 1927 he left the police service at his own request and then returned to shipping on the Rhine . His marriage on September 15, 1928 resulted in seven children, the first four of whom were born in Karlsruhe and the last three in Prague . Abendschön was unemployed in 1929/30. The family lived with their mother and received welfare benefits. Willi Abendschön started working as a porter in Karlsruhe's “Gloria-Palast” on October 1, 1931, but was dismissed in March 1933. He applied to the police, was hired at the police headquarters and seconded to the Secret State Police. So at the beginning of April 1935 he came with us to Villa Reiss on Gartenstrasse in Karlsruhe, which had been confiscated by the Baden Ministry of the Interior in 1933, where he was employed as a spy clerk in Department III E. I.a. Criminal Secretary Abendschön evaluated wanted papers from the major Gestapo offices.

Willi Abendschön was a member of the NSDAP and held the rank of SS-Sturmscharführer .

The report by the German occupation authorities about their massacre in the German newspaper Der Neue Tag , Prague, June 25, 1942

After the occupation of Czechoslovakia , he worked as a criminal secretary at the Gestapo control center in Prague, but also in the Gestapo field offices in Tábor , Klatovy and Pilsen . From the fall of 1939, when the Second World War broke out, Abendschön began working on treason matters and checked the V men of the Abwehrstelle Prague. He later worked in Department III (Defense) in counter-espionage in the attacking countries of the USA , Great Britain , Switzerland , France , the Middle East , Egypt and the Nordic countries. In the summer of 1941 he headed the "Defense News" department under the code name "Grossmann". In the period from October 1941 to March 1942, Abendschön uncovered the top agent and chief confidante of the Abwehrstelle Prague, Paul Thümmel , and his Czech liaison officer, staff captain Václav Morávek , and in June 1942, after the investigation of the assassination attempt on Reinhard Heydrich, became the most outstanding employee of the Prague Gestapo referred to in the discovery of the parachute organization. He ultimately led the action in Pardubice, in which all adult residents of Ležáky were murdered on June 24, 1942 . He also identified the captain and group leader Alfréd Bartoš , the commander of Operation Silver A , and was promoted to chief secretary for it.

From the summer of 1944, Willi Abendschön was the deputy head of Section IV N (Intelligence and Agents) in a camouflaged shop on the property on Stephansgasse 63 (today Štepánská ulice 63).

Evening beautiful was arrested in May 1945 during the Prague uprising in the city by insurgents, mainly Lucernafilm employees , directly in the office of the Prague company. In May 1945 he was handed over to the Soviet military intelligence service SMERSch by the Czech authorities . On June 21, 1945, Willi Abendschön was sentenced to death by shooting by the Soviet Military Tribunal (SMT) of the 4th Ukrainian Front on the basis of Articles 58-4 and 58-11 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federal Socialist Soviet Republic (RSFSR) . According to a formulation that was generally valid at the time, the accusation was: support for the international bourgeoisie and membership in a counter-revolutionary organization, chief criminal secretary in the Gestapo headquarters in Prague. The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR refused the pardon on August 4, 1945. The sentence was carried out on September 21, 1946. Abendschön was convicted and executed with criminal investigator Werner Drees (1913-1946) and SS-Hauptscharführer Otto Gall (1902-1946).

See also

literature

  • Rudolf Ströbinger : The attack in Prague. Verlag Politisches Archiv, Landshut 1976, pp. 47 f., 88, 892.
  • Karl-Heinz Pieper: History of the Villa Reiss 1886–1997. Badenia Verlag, Karlsruhe 1997, p. 31.
  • Michael Stolle: The Secret State Police in Baden: Personnel, organization, impact and aftermath of a regional prosecution authority in the Third Reich. Dissertation, UVK Verlagsgesellschaft, 2001, pp. 183, 205.
  • Johannes Roschlau: Between Barrandov and Babelsberg. German-Czech Film Relations in the 20th Century. Edition Text + Criticism, Munich 2008, p. 103.
  • Klaus-Dieter Müller, Thomas Schaarschmidt, Andreas Weigelt, Mike Schmeitzner (eds.): Death sentences of Soviet military tribunals against Germans (1944–1947). A historical-biographical study. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-525-36968-5 , p. 8.
  • Matthias Blazek: Letters from the youth during the Nazi era. Ibidem-Verlag, Stuttgart 2020, ISBN 978-3-8382-1507-5 , p. 133.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Karl-Heinz Pieper: History of the Villa Reiss 1886–1997. Badenia Verlag, Karlsruhe 1997, p. 31.
  2. ^ A b c Klaus-Dieter Müller, Thomas Schaarschmidt, Andreas Weigelt, Mike Schmeitzner (eds.): Death sentences of Soviet military tribunals against Germans (1944-1947). A historical-biographical study. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-525-36968-5 , p. 8.
  3. ↑ Nacistické bezpečnostní složky v protektorátu on valka.cz.
  4. ↑ Úřední list Československé republiky , Ministerstvo vnitra, 1943: “In the Commercial Register Section В, the following change was entered for the company: The company wording: 'Kreditversicherungsanstalt AG', registered office: Prague II, Stephansgasse 63, the following change was entered: On June 18 The general meeting of the shareholders held in 1942 decided to amend Sections 36 and 38 of the Articles of Association. "
personal data
SURNAME Good evening, Willi
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Gestapo officer
DATE OF BIRTH July 28, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Mannheim
DATE OF DEATH September 21, 1946
Place of death Prague