I wonder what they will be using these for now. Some less common occupations for Americans named Ohlendorf were Clerk and Bookkeeper. That sick feeling comes over me again. [46], In May 1945, Ohlendorf participated in Himmler's flight from Flensburg. His only criterion was that justice must be done. He says this takes considerable time. Attached to the SS with the rank of SS-Hauptsturmfhrer, by 1939, he had obtained the rank of SS-Standartenfhrer and was appointed as head of Amt III (SD-domestic branch), of the Reichs Main Security RSHA ) , a position he kept until 1945. Referring first to the charge that the delay in carrying out the death sentences was inhuman, he said that if they had been carried out within four weeks after the final verdict, many men might have been unjustly executed: a good number of war criminals had already been released, after reviews of their sentences and their trials. After the sentencing, Ferencz decided to meet with Ohlendorf in a courtroom holding cell. At age 27, Benjamin Ferencz was the chief prosecutor in the Nuremberg trial of the commanders of the Einsatzgruppen, the special squads that conducted mass killings of Jews, Gypsies and other civilian enemies on the Eastern Front before the killings shifted to the gas chambers in the camps. Preparations are being completed. ; Crimes against humanity: extermination, enslavement, rape, persecution on political, racial, or religious grounds whether or not such persecution violated the laws of the country in which it was perpetrated; membership in organizations declared criminal by the International Military Tribunal (that a man had acted pursuant to the order of his government or of a superior does not free him from responsibility for a crime, but may be considered in mitigation). Colonel Graham, whose office is the nerve center, makes pointed reference to the possibility of suicide. The suppers were served by GIs. Otto Ohlendorf was convicted of crimes against humanity and war crimes committed during World War II. Their names were Paul Blobel, Werner Braune, Erich Naumann, Otto Ohlendorf, Oswald Pohl, Georg Schallermair, and Hans Schmidt. His defense was simple: he was just following orders. Ohlendorf's testimony horrified the court and had a depressing effect on the defendants. After a decade in the SS, he entered Reinhard Heydrichs SD in 1936 as an advisor on economic issues. She has red-rimmed eyes, is dressed in plain calico dress, carries nothing, not even a pocketbook. Ohlendorf himself spoke out for active and courageous entrepreneurship, which was intended to replace bureaucratic state planning of the economy after the war. An economist by education, he was head of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) Inland, responsible for intelligence and security within Germany. . Here I look at the case of Otto Ohlendorf (1907-1951), the leader of one of the Einsatzgruppen, the SS Special Task Forces assembled by Reinhard Heydrich for Nazi Germanys invasion of the Soviet Union. The sentences were reduced in a number of cases where there appeared a basis for clemency. 2110: Graham shows me a letter which had been intercepted and copied before delivery to its addresseeOswald Pohl. They killed on their own. Klein, Peter, ed. The executions are scheduled to start at three minutes past midnight. Holmes starts discussing the injustices of the law. Ohlendorf came from modest origins. He served there with figures like Adolf Eichmann and Ernst Kaltenbrunner, both roughly his age, who aided Himmler and Heydrich in their policies of terror, mass extermination, and genocide across the European continent. Otto Ohlendorf served in the Nazi Party in World War II. The Testimony of SS General Otto Ohlendorf, Einsatzgruppe D New York: Macmillan, 1982. This was not a small group, Geyer elaborated. He was sentenced to death on 08-04-1948 and spent three years in detention before being hanged at the Landsberg Prison in Bavaria on 07-06-1951, age 44, and he buried on the Spottinger prison cemetery. There was another who admitted responsibility for the massacre of 30,000 Jews (in Kiev). Mr. McCloy then took up the specific arguments which had been advanced by the delegation. In 1939 Ohlendorf was promoted within the newly constituted Reich Security Main Office (RSHA). When Alexander took command on February 20, 1943, one of his first tasks was to assess II Corps combat readiness after its setbacks during its early engagements around Kasserine Pass. Ohlendorf was married with Kthe Wolpers on 10-06-1934 and they had five children, two boys and three girls, Henning, born 11-02-1938, Behrend, born 18-09-1943, Irmtraut, born March 25-03-1936, Meinhard, born 30-10-1940 and Ulrike, born 11-05-1945. . Holmes, the commandant of Landsberg Military sub-Post, is seated within speaking distance of me and next to the towns civilian (German) Registrar of Vital Statistics. Jesus famously said when he was crucified: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. The Nazi criminals knew all too well what they were doing. A former Newsweek foreign correspondent and editor, Andrew Nagorski is the author of The Nazi Hunters, which will be released on May 10. There were enough willing perpetrators so that coercive force could be reserved for those deemed enemies. You cant hurry them, you know, says the Colonel philosophically. GI alert units are much in evidence, tommy guns at the ready. ), condemning a total of twenty-six men to death, fifteen under the jurisdiction of the High Commissioner and eleven under the jurisdiction of the army. Eventually, auxiliaries drawn from the peoples of the USSR, including the recently annexed Baltic States, augmented their ranks. The 24 defendants in Case #9 were all leading members of Einsatzgruppen that operated on the Eastern Front during World War II. Otto Ohlendorf on Trial Chief among the SS officials put on trial following the conviction of the surviving Nazi government ministers were the commanders and senior staff of the four Einsatzgruppen that operated on the Eastern Front in conjunction with the Wehrmacht. ; War crimes: atrocities committed against persons or property constituting violations of the customs of war; murder, ill treatment, deportation to slave labor camps, plunder of public or private property, killing of hostages, wanton destruction of towns, devastation not justified by military necessity, etc. He joined the SA in 1925 when he was only 18, then Heinrich Himmlers SS the following year. Among people born in 1907, Otto Ohlendorf ranks 36 . 2100: Graham is excited over report from Munich newspaper to the effect that there has been another stay of execution. 1930: Graham tells us there will be no executions unless specific instructions come from both the State Department and the War Department. . [4] He participated in major debates between the SS, the German Labour Front, and the Quadrenniel Organization on economic policy. how it requires 15 to 19 minutes in some cases for final consummation. This meant he received an excellent education preparing him for university. [33] From that month forward, the Einsatzgruppen had begun the process of systematically shooting not just men but women and children, a transition that historian Peter Longerich terms "a decisive step on the way towards a policy of racial annihilation". However, Ohlendorf, suspecting Roma of sabotage and aiding resistance activity, murdered them wherever he found them. . In June 1941, Reinhard Heydrich appointed Ohlendorf to be commander of Einsatzgruppe D which operated in southern Ukraine and Crimea. 2008 - 2023 INTERESTING.COM, INC. In November 1944 he was promoted again to Gruppenfhrer. According to the ordinance of October 18, 1946, these judgments were final and not subject to review. There, he was sentenced to death and died in Belgian custody. They did not need commands. On June 17, as the day of the assault on the USSR loomed, Heydrich summoned Ohlendorf and the commanders of EinsatzgruppenA, B, and C to Berlin for a crucial meeting. 2330: The time now passes swiftly. USA.gov, The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration The rope doesnt fit correctly. It is cold up here in the loft of the prison workshop which has now been temporarily outfitted for this unusual purpose. But I should like to emphasize that if you execute these men, their lives will be wasted! He was born in Hoheneggelsen on 4 February 1907, the son of a peasant farmer. Otto Friedrich Ohlendorf (1893-1976) FamilySearch As the leader of EinsatzgruppeD, Otto Ohlendorf was responsible for the murder of 90,000 Soviet Jews, Roma, and Communists. Berlin: Edition Heinrich, 1997. Lincoln and Jerusalem: University of Nebraska Press and Yad Vashem, 2004. Dehler indicated that an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court would be based on these alleged mistakes. The other Einsatzgruppen commanders charged in Case #9 were: The remaining defendants were commanders or deputy commanders of subordinate units. Explore a timeline of events that occurred before, during, and after the Holocaust. and other experts, who planned, e.g., how to introduce the new German currency Deutsch Mark. We shake hands with him and members of his staff. All 22 defendants were found guilty of at least one charge. 0005: I recoil back into my seat. He told the Israeli police investigator who questioned him after the Mossad abducted him from Argentina in 1960: I had nothing to do with killing Jews. Graham gets his retirement discharge next week. Otto Ohlendorf is born February 4, 1907 in Hoheneggelsen, Province of Hanover, Prussia, German Empire. This was done to avoid any possibility of poison or suicides. Seven towers around the prison compound are manned by Polish guards, all heavily armed. Die Einsatzgruppen in der besetzten Sowjetunion 1941/42: Die Ttigkeits-und Lageberichte des Chefs der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD. I look at his rather gentle face and wonder. We were all so trained to obey orders without even thinking that the thought of disobeying an order would simply never have occurred to anybody, and somebody else would have done just as well if I hadnt. The routine, carefully prepared in advance, is followed to the letter. Graham says his fan mail from Nazi sympathizers has slowed down. I am quite sick now, my hands are cold as ice. It is a report from Denmark, of all places, to the effect that the men have already been executed. Bickel says the criminals should have been hanged earlier. COL. Otto Ohlendorf, the head of the SD Domestic office in the RSHA, personally commanded Einsatzgruppe D. This unit deployed to southern Ukraine, Crimea, and the North Caucasus. He joined the Nazi Party in 1925 (member nr 6631) and the SS (member nr 880) in 1926. Holler, Martin. This tribunal was tasked with trying Case #9 of the. . He says: Do you know me by any other name? (code word was used for security reasons). There is a slight fluff in the air pocket. Presumably they are working on McCloy. He coordinated plans to rebuild the German economy after the war. The following diary records events of that night and of the following morning, Wednesday, June 7, on a 24-hour clock (7 P.M. is equivalent to 1900 hours, etc.). He repeats his caution against frivolity, although for the life of me I cant imagine how or why anyone would become frivolous. In 19411943, Einsatzgruppen conducted mass shootings of hundreds of thousands of Jews, Communists, and others during Nazi Germanys campaign against the Soviet Union. With the onset. TTY: 202.488.0406. tried leading members of the Einsatzgruppen. Ohlendorf, Otto. I have lost my parents, my relatives and friends in the concentration camps. Otto Ohlendorf (1907-1951) - Find a Grave Memorial Forced at gunpoint to jump down into these pits, they were shot after pleading for their own lives and those of their families and neighbors. [54] Defending his actions, Ohlendorf compared Einsatzgruppen activities to the Biblical Jewish extirpation of its enemies; he likewise claimed that his firing squads were "no worse than the 'press-button killers' who dropped the atom bomb on Japan". He says a sergeant reported finding cherry pits in one of the death cells. Otto Ohlendorf was a German SS-Gruppenfhrer and head of the interior division of the SD. Joseph Stalins calls for partisan warfare in early July 1941 gave the Nazis a pretext for further radicalization. There is a fire extinguisher resting on a stone ledge at the end of the wall. He tweets @AndrewNagorski. Commentary: Long overdue, a Nazi finally says sorry | Reuters The opinions expressed are his own. Why might it be difficult to disobey the order of a superior or authority figure? Two of the men have fathers who were high-up servants of Hitler and soaked in the blood of the Holocaust. The executioners, frequently intoxicated, became more and more numb to the end results of their deeds. This was more than 100,000 men. [53], At the trial, Ohlendorf attempted to present the operations in the Soviet area "not as a racist programme for the annihilation of all the Jews but as a general liquidation order primarily aimed at 'securing' the newly won territory". The High Commissioner listened intently, eyes fixed on his scratch pad. Most of them are biblical quotations, others enclose pressed flowers. The Military Tribunals, Mr. McCloy went on, had been set up by men of peace, good will, and great character. 2246: The sergeant has announced coffee and doughnuts. . How does Doris Bergens statement that the Nazis did not force people to be killers affect your opinion of the way Hss and Ohlendorf explain their choices? We may be seated and smoke after each drop. The queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach comes back. On February 1, a special messenger delivered an urgent dispatch from the Federal Minister of Justice, Thomas Dehler, in Bonn. Main telephone: 202.488.0400 He could count on two streams of information. My eyes are fixed on the rope.
Northampton Magistrates' Court Cases 2021,
Taylor Swift Tour 2023,
Single Family Homes For Sale Milwaukee, Wi,
Articles O