Willy Papenkort

Willy Papenkort (born August 9, 1908 in Tilsit ; † 1973 ) was a German police officer and, as a company commander of Reserve Police Battalion 11 , was involved in the murder of the Jewish population in Slutsk , Belarus in October 1941 . After the war he became chief inspector of the Kripo in Essen and organized a “comrade aid” for former members of the regulatory police , who were being investigated for war crimes .

Life

Papenkort was the son of a butcher in Tilsit, first attended elementary school , then high school and did an internship in technical companies. On April 1, 1927, he went to the police force as a candidate , passed the so-called police high school diploma in March 1931 and thus acquired the prerequisites for entry into a career as a police officer.

Papenkort joined the NSDAP on March 1, 1930 and was temporarily block leader . According to the Brown Book published in the GDR , he was registered with the NSDAP with membership number 206.471 and belonged to the SS (SS no. 313.915), where he is said to have made it up to SS-Sturmbannführer .

time of the nationalsocialism

After his marriage in June 1933 - the marriage had three children - Papenkort was first transferred to the barracked state police and in 1935 transferred to the Wehrmacht , before he returned to the police in 1937 and passed his examination as a police officer. He then did service at the Königsberg police administration . In 1939 he was promoted to lieutenant and first lieutenant, in 1941 to captain and in 1944 to major in the police force.

As a captain, Papenkort led the 2nd company of Reserve Police Battalion 11 in 1941 and led the battalion's operation in the murder of the Jewish population in Slutsk on October 27, 1941. It was assigned to the 707th Infantry Division of the Wehrmacht and subordinated to General Bechtolsheim Police battalion 11 under its commander Franz Lechthaler had from the beginning of October 1941, supported by Lithuanian auxiliary troops, murdered around 11,000 Jews in a three-week "Aktion Judenrein", starting near Uzlany and other places southeast of Minsk to Sluzk and Klezk , including in Sluzk more than 3,000. According to Papenkort in an interrogation on May 16, 1961, the order to the battalion was issued “by the security division ” of Bechtolsheim. The main task of Papenkort's 2nd Company of the Battalion was to implement the appropriate barricade measures for the shootings , but when his commander Lechthaler left the shooting site on October 27, 1941 during the massacre in Sluzk, Papenkort took over command.

In April 1942, Papenkort was transferred to the staff of the commander of the Ordnungspolizei (BdO) in Königsberg . From April 1942 until the end of the war he was with the staff of the BdO in military district 12 in Wiesbaden .

post war period

At the end of the war, Papenkort was taken prisoner by the Americans , from which he was released at the end of 1946. Until the beginning of the 1950s he worked as a representative in various industries. In 1952 he succeeded in returning to the police force in Essen; he was a member of the Essen District Police Department until 1960, most recently as Chief Inspector.

He was arrested on May 12, 1960 and spent almost a year in custody before he and his battalion commander Lechthaler were charged with the murders in Slutsk. While Lechthaler because of " aid for manslaughter to three and a half years' prison was sentenced Papenkort received an acquittal for lack of evidence. Since the Federal Court (BGH) picked up the judgment after both prosecutor and defense in revision had gone, the new trial Lechthaler brought a reduction of the sentence to two years and a renewed Papenkort acquittal. In the grounds of the judgment, the court stated that it had not been clarified whether the defendant Papenkort had recognized the illegal content of the security order to cordon off.

At the age of 55, Papenkort applied for a declaration of incapacity and was retired in 1963. From October 1964 he worked at the Chamber of Crafts in Arnsberg as a representative for apprenticeships. At this point he began to set up and organize a "network of alumni", a so-called help for comrades. The "Kameradenhilfe" provided, among other things, "targeted legal advice" for former law enforcement officers who were now being investigated for war crimes. The originators of the "help for comrades" were the colonels of the protection police Hanns Wirth from Leverkusen and Fritz Göhler from Neuss . Her "main character" was Papenkort, who did most of the work. The organization received support from Lieutenant General of the Ordnungspolizei a. D. Adolf von Bomhard , the former SS-Obergruppenführer Werner Best also helped occasionally . She worked with the so-called silent help . From the summer of 1967 the public prosecutor's office in Dortmund investigated Papenkort as the main actor of the "help from comrades" after incriminating material had been found against former members of the security police in the course of a court case by the Bochum regional court . In the opinion of the Dortmund public prosecutor's office and the central office of the state justice administrations for the investigation of National Socialist crimes in Ludwigsburg , the activity of Papenkort meant illegal advice because, among other things, he had suggested:

“Calling for an order emergency . […] To simulate the instructions. Procedures should be sabotaged by feigning illness. […] Not being able to remember the instructions. [...] Influencing witnesses, exerting pressure: 'Don't testify against former comrades, that's not proper.' [...] Making certain witnesses impossible to make them appear untrustworthy. Example Dr. Klaus Hornig , who, as first lieutenant and company commander in Police Battalion 306, refused to take part in the murder of prisoners of war. "

Papenkort carried out such "advice" on at least 32 suspects. Among them were 19 police officers and two members of the security police , such as the former head of Sonderkommando 4b of SS Einsatzgruppe C , Waldemar Krause . Papenkort's work involved at least 21 investigative and judicial proceedings. In 1968 this activity turned into an affair when the news magazine Der Spiegel made it public.

The linchpin of Papenkort's advice was the appeal to the “command emergency”, which “[became] a kind of worldview of the 'help comrades'”. Papenkort was particularly "a thorn in the side" of "Klaus Hornig, who had survived the denial of a murder warrant" and who now testified against the appeal to this alleged emergency.

After the house searches ordered by the judge had been carried out at Papenkort, he tried to take action before the Federal Constitutional Court , but unsuccessfully. Before the Essen regional court in 1970 there were proceedings for favoritism , evading offenders of punishment, inciting false statements and violations of Article 1 § 8 of the law to prevent abuse in the field of legal advice . Papenkort was sentenced to a fine of 600 DM for such violations . He was acquitted of the first two charges because it could not be proven that he wanted to avoid just punishment for his "comrades" with his help, nor had his advice led to a specific false statement.

literature

• Stefan Klemp : Not determined. Police Battalions and the Post War Justice. A manual. Klartext, Essen 2005, ISBN 3-89861-381-X .

Web links

• Judiciary. Nazi trials. In hardness and size . In: Der Spiegel . No. 17 , 1968, p. 96.98 ( Online - Apr. 22, 1968 ).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Year of death after Bert Hoppe , Imke Hansen, Martin Holler (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 , Volume 8: Soviet Union with annexed areas , Part 2: General Commissioner of Belarus and Reich Commissioner of Ukraine . De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-486-78119-9 , p. 103
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Stefan Klemp: Not determined. Police Battalions and the Post War Justice. A manual. Klartext, Essen 2005, p. 395.
3. ↑ Norbert Podewin (Ed.): Braunbuch. War and Nazi criminals in the Federal Republic and in Berlin (West) . Edition Ost, Berlin 2002 (reprint of the edition of the Staatsverlag der DDR, Berlin 1968), p. 97.
4. ↑ Stefan Klemp: Not determined. Police Battalions and the Post War Justice. A manual. Klartext, Essen 2005, p. 110 and p. 395; See also the report by Heinrich Carl, District Commissioner of Sluzk of October 30, 1941 to the General Commissioner for Belarus Wilhelm Kube , printed as Doc [ument] 19 in the source collection: Bert Hoppe (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews through National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 . Vol. 8. Soviet Union with annexed areas II. De Gruyter, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-486-78119-9 , pp. 122–125 (on Papenkort, p. 123).
5. ^ Christian Gerlach : Calculated murders. The German economic and extermination policy in Belarus from 1941 to 1944 . Hamburger Edition , Hamburg 1999, ISBN 3-930908-54-9 , pp. 610-613; Hannes Heer : Extreme normality: Major General Gustav Freiherr von Mauchenheim called Bechtolsheim . In: Zeitschrift für Geschichtsforschung 51, 2003, Issue 8, pp. 729–753.
6. ↑ Hannes Heer: Extreme normality: Major General Gustav Freiherr von Mauchenheim called Bechtolsheim . In: Zeitschrift für Geschichtsforschung 51, 2003, issue 8, p. 729.
7. ↑ Stefan Klemp: Not determined. Police Battalions and the Post War Justice. A manual. Klartext, Essen 2005, p. 110 f. and p. 395.
8. ↑ Stefan Klemp: Not determined. Police Battalions and the Post War Justice. A manual. Klartext, Essen 2005, p. 111.
9. ↑ Stefan Klemp: Not determined. Police Battalions and the Post War Justice. A manual. Klartext, Essen 2005, p. 390.
10. ↑ Stefan Klemp: Not determined. Police Battalions and the Post War Justice. A manual. Klartext, Essen 2005, pp. 390–396 (on “Comrade Help” and Papenkort's role as a whole), p. 391 (on cooperation with bests “Stiller Hilfe”).
11. ↑ Stefan Klemp: Not determined. Police Battalions and the Post War Justice. A manual. Klartext, Essen 2005, p. 390 ff. (Quote p. 393).
12. ↑ ^{a b} Stefan Klemp: Not determined. Police Battalions and the Post War Justice. A manual. Klartext, Essen 2005, p. 397.
13. ↑ Justice / Nazi trials. In hardness and size . In: Der Spiegel . No. 17 , 1968, p. 96, 98 ( Online - Apr. 22, 1968 ). ; also Stefan Klemp: Not determined. Police Battalions and the Post War Justice. A manual. Klartext, Essen 2005, p. 391.