Another popular leaflet was a catalogue of the good deeds of Otto Ohlendorf who, by his own uncontroverted testimony, was responsible for slaughtering 60,000 Jews and Gypsies. how it requires 15 to 19 minutes in some cases for final consummation. 08-06-1951, age 44, hangedat theLandsberg PrisoninBavaria. My eyes are fixed on the rope. Ive never killed a Jew. He explained: Dont you see, we SS men were not supposed to think about these things; it never even occurred to us. It consisted of fried chicken, potatoes, green peas, and carrots. He studied at the University of Pavia, where he gained his doctors degree in jurisprudence; and by 1933 he obtained the position of a research directorship in the Kiel Institute for the World Economy(at that timeInstitut fr Weltwirtschaft und Seeverkehr Institute for World Economy and Maritime Transport). Einsatzgruppen trial - Wikipedia Seven Nazis Were Hanged: The Diary of a Witness To that end, he orchestrated the Frankfurt trial of 22 former Auschwitz personnel in the 1960s -- not the big bosses, but the people who had tortured and killed prisoners on a daily basis. [38] As far as Ohlendorf was concerned, the gas vans were impracticable for the scale of killing demanded by Himmler; namely, since they could only kill between fifteen and twenty-five persons at a time. There is a telephone call. I wonder how he can sleep with himself. This was the tragic fulfillment of a program of intolerance and arrogance.Each of the defendants in the dock held a position of responsibility or command in an extermination unit. Later this expanded to include the Caucasus. Tens of thousands of Roma and members of the Communist Party of the USSR were also slain. A total of 265 have been hanged since the end of the war. They felt strongly that the so-called war crimes allegedly committed by the Landsberg prisoners could be atoned for by life sentences in cases where warranted, and did not call for draconic measures. Bickel says the criminals should have been hanged earlier. Lost your password? Joseph Stalins calls for partisan warfare in early July 1941 gave the Nazis a pretext for further radicalization. 2 (a subunit of Einsatzgruppe A), who received a death sentence, was extradited to Belgium. The Sicherheitsdienst (SD) | Holocaust Encyclopedia Mr. McCloys mail was marked by an increasingly large number of appeals for clemency, both signed and anonymous, and soon these appeals assumed the proportions of an avalanche. . Marking the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, The National WWII Museum connects two instances of remorse for Nazi criminality by leading German politicians. Thats enough. Explore a timeline of events that occurred before, during, and after the Holocaust. Because of Ohlendorfs work in this field, petitions for leniency were filed after he was sentenced to death by hanging. Those who refused to participate were given other assignments or transferred. The cameramans flash goes off in a sudden stab of light. 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. The Nazi system, however, did not work that way. . Right from the beginning, most Nazi war criminals never apologized for anything. I have committed no crime. Shes a nuisance, he says. These men, who were sober enough in all other respects, still believed that we had a sporting chance against the East.". He was born in Hoheneggelsen on 4 February 1907, the son of a peasant farmer. [52] He expressed no remorse for his actions, telling prosecutor Ben Ferencz that the Jews of America would suffer for what the prosecutor had done, and seemed to have been more concerned about the moral strain on those carrying out the murders than those being murdered. A former Newsweek foreign correspondent and editor, Andrew Nagorski is the author of The Nazi Hunters, which will be released on May 10. See here for a complete list of exchanges and delays. Also new is mention of Himmler's belief on May 6 that Field Marshall Ferdinand Schoerner, the new Commander-in-Chief of the Army, might protect him, and his consideration of joining Schoerner's army so that he could be killed in battle. The Germans knew what had happened to thembut they did not know, they did not want to know what had happened to other people. [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 could count on two streams of information. In June 1941, Reinhard Heydrich appointed Ohlendorf to be commander of Einsatzgruppe D which operated in southern Ukraine and Crimea. Students will explore some of the causes and consequences of denying the Armenian Genocide and reflect on the role of public art to commemorate difficult histories. He is obsessed with fear of a suicide attempt. ". The medical officer has arrived, Lieutenant Colonel Huff. On January 2, 1942, Ohlendorf reported that his unit had killed 17,645 Jews between November 16 and December 15, 1941, in western Crimea. But were any of the defendants coerced into killing Jews under the threat of being killed themselves if they failed in their homicidal mission? Gaps, recalled Schubert, existed in what was transmitted. 10, Trials of War Criminals before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals, vol. To the end, he exhibited hardly any remorse about what he had done. Hitler envisioned Barbarossa as a modern crusade against Jewish Bolshevism and the Einsatzgruppenwould be at the forefront of this war of subjugation and extermination against the Soviet Union. We tell one another the prisoners could easily have spared themselves this inhuman waiting, simply by refraining from submitting petitions. It is only now that at least one of them is admitting as much. Emil Hausmann committed suicide. Seventy years after the Nuremberg trials, something truly extraordinary happened in a German courtroom last week. [37] After the victims' deaths, Jewish Sonderkommando were forced to unload the bodies, clean the excrement and feces from inside the van's gas chamber, and once the clean up was complete, were themselves immediately shot. Hans Theodor Schmidt was trailed and hanged in Landsberg prison, on 07-06-1951, age 51.. Ohlendorf's comment that Mueller was ordered to remain adds weight to the probability that Mueller died in Berlin. Two of the men have fathers who were high-up servants of Hitler and soaked in the blood of the Holocaust. He refuses to comment. They murdered on their own.. When Otto Friedrich Ohlendorf was born on 31 January 1893, in Millstadt, St. Clair, Illinois, United States, his father, Friedrich Ohlendorf, was 24 and his mother, Maria Schwab, was 21. Explore resources that meet the California HistorySocial Science Framework standards. Ohlendorf, Otto. I wonder what other arrangements are necessary at this point. The Einsatzgruppen Trial | CODOH All the while, Himmler encouraged the butchery, sanctioning it as indispensable for the final victory over Bolshevism. 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. In the end, only 22 of those charged were tried. All of the remaining convicted defendants in this case were released from prison in 1958. Unlike some in the SS, Ohlendorf refused to distinguish between itinerant and sedentary Gypsies. The latter, seen as more civilized, were often left alone. Seven times I have listened as they swore, in their dying words, that they had merely carried out orders; that they had been fighting for their country; that the Americans were their enemies. Such planning for the post-war time was strictly forbidden, on one side. He thinks the reason is that people no longer believe the USA will carry out the executions. Warrant Officer Britt then places the prisoner on the trap door. Graham shows me a letter from one of the former prison chaplains, a German who refuses to accept an invitation to administer last rites to prisoners. This meant he received an excellent education preparing him for university. [41] He did, however, express misgivings about the barbarity and sadism being meted out by the Romanian units that accompanied the Einsatzgruppen in their murderous tasks, since they were not only leaving a trail of corpses in their wake, they were also pillaging and raping in the process. The following year he returned to economic research, becoming Ministerial Director and deputy to the State Secretary in the Ministry of Economics. He graduated in July 1933 with a doctors degree in jurisprudence. CONTENT MAY BE COPYRIGHTED BY WIKITREE COMMUNITY MEMBERS. In his opening statement, Ferencz underscored that: It is with sorrow and with hope that we here disclose the deliberate slaughter of more than a million innocent and defenseless men, women, and children. 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.). Another voice in my head says, No, you must see it through. ", Historian Martin Gilbert reported that in front of the Nuremberg Tribunal, Ohlendorf described the use of gas vans for killing operations as "unpleasant" and that the, "Story 34Mass Murderers Seek to Justify Genocide (19461949)", Otto Ohlendorf, Einsatzgruppe D, and the Holocaust by Bullets, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Otto_Ohlendorf&oldid=1149039801, This page was last edited on 9 April 2023, at 20:51. How silent it has become. 2120: Graham receives message from Heidelberg. [10] It was Ohlendorf's responsibility as head of the SD-Inland to collect data and scientifically examine social, cultural, and economic issues, assembling reports to his superiors in the Nazi government. Soon, the five foot five airman would make US military aviation history. Among people born in 1907, Otto Ohlendorf ranks 36 . It would be far better to keep them in prison as an example to future generations. However, Dehlers letter contributed to delaying the executions four more months, until the 7th of June, 1951. . The mass murder of Jews by Ohlendorfs men continued into 1942. He was sentenced to death in April 1948 and spent three years in detention before being hanged at the Landsberg Prison in Bavaria on 7 June 1951. 100-year-old tried for war crimes: Germany's continued confrontation First Blobel, then the jurist Braune; Naumann, the SS General; Ohlendorf, the economist and lawyer who murdered 90,000; Pohl and Schallermair and Schmidteach in his turn. He was among the last Nazis put to death on the authority of the United States for crimes committed during the Second World War. The sentences were announced on April 10, 1948: Matthias Graf was released with time served. Showing real aptitude as a student, Ohlendorf attended Gymnasium in nearby Hildesheim. Seven times I secretly murmured kaddish, the prayer for the dead, not for the executed man but in memory of their victims. 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. 2300: Bickel calls Frankfort. Copyright 2023 Facing History & Ourselves. While Ohlendorf never showed much empathy for the slain, he grew concerned about the toll taken on those under his commands. Will there be another reprieve? There is a slight crackle. As Waitman Wade Beorn has argued, the, Holocaust by Bullets does not dominate our consciousness the same way as Auschwitz. Otto had 7 siblings: Paul Max Ohlendorf, Richard Max Ohlendorf, Anna Margaret Lux, Marie Louise Wilson, Martha Ohlendorf, Fred Otto Ohlendorf and Katherine Louise Ohlendorf. Create a FREE Account. [29] On 1 August 1941, Einsatzgruppen commanders including Ohlendorf, received instructions from Gestapo chief Heinrich Mller to keep headquarters (Hitler especially) informed of their progress in the East; Mller also encouraged the speedy delivery of photographs showing the results of these operations. . For example, Otto Ohlendorf commanded Einsatzgruppe D while it committed mass murder in territories that are part of Romania and Moldova, as well as in Ukraine and around the Crimean Sea. OHLENDORF: From June 1941 to the death of Heydrich in June 1942, I led Einsatzgruppe D, and was the representative of the chief of the Sipo and the SD with the 11th Army. Blobel speaks in a detached, remote voice. Otto Ohlendorf is born February 4, 1907 in Hoheneggelsen, Province of Hanover, Prussia, German Empire. Why might it be difficult to disobey the order of a superior or authority figure? There is some new detail concerning Himmler's state of mind on May 6, 1945 after Hitler's Last Testament appointed Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz as the successor while expelling Himmler from the Nazi Party. There was one case in which the criminal admitted to having killed 60,000. I am a Jew, said Altmeier in English. Washington, D.C.: US Government Printing Office, 1950. Their names were Paul Blobel, Werner Braune, Erich Naumann, Otto Ohlendorf, Oswald Pohl, Georg Schallermair, and Hans Schmidt. Over 90,000 executions are attributed to Ohlendorf's command, who testified to this effect during his trial at Nuremberg. It is three times as difficult for me as it is for my colleagues, he continued, to plead with you for commutation of the death sentences. Fourteen of the thirty-two men who served as judges in these tribunals had sat in the highest courts of their home states, eleven had sat in state appellate or trial courts, and the others included a law school dean and several eminent bar association members. What insights do the Milgram experiments (see reading. Ultimately, only four of the 14 death sentences were carried out. . 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. [23] All forms of contact between the firing squads and victims were limitedper Ohlendorf's insistenceuntil the last moments before the killing started, and up to three rifleman were allocated to each person about to be shot. Eventually, auxiliaries drawn from the peoples of the USSR, including the recently annexed Baltic States, augmented their ranks. Browning, Christopher (with contributions by Jrgen Matthas). [31], Due to the Wehrmacht's insistence that Ukraine's agricultural production was needed to sustain its military campaign, Ohlendorf was asked during October 1941 to refrain from killing some of the Jewish farmersa request he honoredbut one which earned him Himmler's contempt. He had to wait, though, for his appointment with the hangman. He says, were all set; well call you right after the first one is pronounced dead, and after the last. We wait. Their names were Paul Blobel, Werner Braune, Erich Naumann, Otto Ohlendorf, Oswald Pohl, Georg Schallermair, and Hans Schmidt. . in accordance with the laws of the liberated countries and of the free governments that will be created therein. After consultation, there was established an International Military Tribunal for the trial of war criminals whose crimes had no particular geographical location. Otto Rasch was deemed too ill to stand trial. Students consider the ways in which World War I intensified peoples loyalty to their country and resentment toward others perceived as a threat. There were pleas from churchmen and politicians, university men and students, former soldiers, disinherited royalty. Hitlers Hangman: The Life of Heydrich. Students analyze images and film that convey the richness of Jewish life across Europe at the time of the Nazis ascension to power. The GI interpreter asks: Have you any last words? The prisoner replies: Jawohl!. . BillionGraves FREE Dr. Phil Otto Ohlendorf, 1879 - 1913 was born in 1879. Each assumed the right to decide the fate of men, and death was the intended result of his power and contempt. Have you ever done this before? The Registrar sits very still, his legs crossed, staring at the gallows. Another newspaper calls to inquire whether it is true that the executions will go forward. That was my biggest disappointment; nobody, including my mass murderers, ever said Im sorry. Roughly 600 men (the smallest of the four), drawn from the SS and the various police agencies in the Reich, would serve under him. He and several other subordinates were arrested by the British near Lneburg on 23 May 1945. He says a sergeant reported finding cherry pits in one of the death cells. He wears black shirt, black trousers, leather belt and sandals. Heydrich appreciated young men like Ohlendorf, who were educated and yet completely committed to the ultra-reactionary ideas of National Socialism. Claudia Bautista,Santa Monica, Calif. You must have JavaScript enabled to use this form. As Ferencz told me during an interview for my book The Nazi Hunters, he still vividly recalls the protestations of Otto Ohlendorf, one of those condemned to death, that he was only doing his duty. Then the members of the Special Task Force marched them off, ostensibly to a place of transportation. One task which Ohlendorf disdained was providing guards for the harvest at the behest of Army commanders, who wanted to prevent the Romanians from consuming any of the goods. [4] He participated in major debates between the SS, the German Labour Front, and the Quadrenniel Organization on economic policy. Now not only Jewish men, whether in the Communist Party or deemed of fighting age, were targeted. Ohlendorf, Otto. - WW2 Gravestone There is a batch from German nationals offering to die in place of the condemned. London: Bloomsbury, 2018. Of three hundred people brought to Muehldorf in the fall of 1944, only 72 survived. Otto Ohlendorf in MyHeritage family trees (Family site (Family Tree Legends)) view all Immediate Family Conrad Christoph Carl Ohlendorf father Ernestine Wilhelmine called Minn. mother Emilie Emmie von Roeder sister Carl Ohlendorf brother Julius Ohlendorf brother Albert Ohlendorf brother Herman Ohlendorf brother Ida Emilie Caroline Thoene sister Otto Ohlendorf ( German pronunciation: [to olndf]; 4 February 1907 - 7 June 1951) was a German SS functionary and Holocaust perpetrator during the Nazi era. Mueller vanished after the war, and for years it was surmised that Mueller offered himself to the U.S. or USSR for intelligence purposes. Montgomery had accepted the surrender of German forces in the Northwest on the 4th. I seat myself next to Lieutenant Colonel Borom. . All 22 defendants were found guilty of at least one charge. In a webinar in December 2020 with The National WWII Museum, historian Michael Geyer stressed the significance of those ideological fighters who implemented the Third Reichs vicious programs of mass murder. I keep my eyes away from that rope. In the spring of 1941, he assigned a new mission to Ohlendorf. Fourteen defendants were sentenced to death. 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. . His only criterion was that justice must be done. They came from every state in West Germany, and even from the United States. [51] During the trial, Ohlendorf insisted that he, as a loyal Nazi, had acted properly and had done nothing wrong. Ohlendorf's testimony horrified the court and had a depressing effect on the defendants. American officials finally executed Otto Ohlendorf in June 1951. What other motivations might have contributed to their participation in mass murder? JAG officer observes that they cant do a thing until Graham has a piece of paper from the Department of the Army in the Pentagon. 2242: Big clock is ticking. Pamphlets and leaflets attacking American injustice were circulated by unknown and unidentified organizations. After he had started his blood bath, he was asked whether he would say something for the survivors. While some perpetrators in the Holocaust claimed, and may have believed, that they would be physically harmed if they did not follow orders to participate in mass murder, historian Doris Bergen notes that the Nazis did not harm those who refused: Germans were not forced to be killers. He coordinated plans to rebuild the German economy after the war. But I should like to emphasize that if you execute these men, their lives will be wasted! Army officers and GIs, with enormous keys on their belts, are moving in and out of the office. Ehlers declared that while they held no brief for many individual war criminals, yet at a time when West Germany was being called upon to make a military contribution to Western defense, they felt bound to call for modification of the death sentence on the ground of political and psychological factors. Graham calls out: Attention! All in the room stand. The sentences were reduced in a number of cases where there appeared a basis for clemency. In Germany he was serving his country not only as supreme representative of the United States government, but as the exponent of certain international agreements to which the U. S. government was a signatory. He married Lena Hausmann on 23 April 1921, in Belleville, St. Clair, Illinois, United States. Ohlendorf, Otto, born 04-02-1907 in Hoheneggelsen, the son of farm owners. In some of these cases, I found that the defendants could establish their resistance to superior orders, which resulted in no instance of the individuals being punished by their Nazi masters. Here the testimony of Heinz Hermann Schubert, Ohlendorfs longtime subordinate, is extremely valuable. There is a report from Bonn that the Ministry of Justice is working frantically for a last minute reprieve. I have lost my parents, my relatives and friends in the concentration camps. Each one was charged with committing all three counts between June 1941 and July 1943. This unit perpetrated mass murder in the northernmost sector of the Eastern Front, primarily the Baltic countries and the area around Leningrad (today: St. Petersburg). 9)), is still frequently overlooked. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011. However, fewer accounts exist of Operation Flashpoint, Ninth US Armys assault crossing of the Rhine, which began on March 24. Over 90,000 murders are attributed to Ohlendorfs command, who testified to this effect during his trial at Nuremberg. 'A treasure of humanity': 102-year-old Nazi prosecutor is still pushing The Einsatzgruppen were special task forces of the SS and Police. The Military Tribunals, Mr. McCloy went on, had been set up by men of peace, good will, and great character. And, he went on, American-German relations would improve greatly if the Landsberg death sentences were commuted. The SS and police now pursued, rounded up, and executed women, children, and the elderly. They acted on their own. Holmes, of the Military Post, asks me whether I know anything about the controversial hunting law which allows GIs to hunt in German reserves against the will of the owners. Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings, Case #9, The Einsatzgruppen Case This was the tragic fulfillment of a program of intolerance and arrogance.Each of the defendants in the dock held a position of responsibility or command in an extermination unit. Himmler, Ohlendorf said, was anxious about the answer. . He had had no previous experience as a governor in such problems, although he was, as a lawyer, trained in legal procedures. This was not a small group, Geyer elaborated. I look at his rather gentle face and wonder. At years end, Ohlendorf could report that his men had eliminated 55,000 Jews. 2200: CIC2 agents come in from the town of Landsberg-on-the-Lech. I tell him Blobel has been pronounced dead at 0014, June 7. [49] For several weeks after his arrest, Ohlendorf was carefully interrogated, during which he revealed the criminal nature of the German campaign in the East. He says, whatever I have done, I did as a soldier who obeyed orders. Reinhold Hanning, a 94-year-old former Auschwitz guard who will go down in history as one of the last of Hitlers perpetrators to be charged for his role in the Third Reich, offered an apology. He said that reviewing the sentences of the Landsberg prisoners was the most difficult task he had been charged with since coming to Germany. This leaves me the only witness for the State Department. . He. GI alert units are much in evidence, tommy guns at the ready. Otto Ohlendorf - Wikipedia Dehler indicated that an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court would be based on these alleged mistakes. [13], In June 1941, Reinhard Heydrich appointed Ohlendorf to be commander of Einsatzgruppe D,[14] which operated in southern Ukraine and Crimea. Arrested by British officials in May 1945 along with members of the short-lived Dnitz government, Ohlendorf supplied much information about the SS and Nazi annihilation policy in Eastern Europe to interrogators. 2229: A German Evangelical chaplain named Ermann, employed for two years by the prison, was intercepted smuggling mail out for the prisoners, and was sacked. 2045: Hulse calls Bickel. 1935: JAG1 lieutenant colonels from Heidelberg, two of them, have arrived to serve as army witnesses. His job was to wait for a possible last-minute reprieve by the Supreme Court. 0003: The chaplain reads a prayer. 0003: Britt steps back, glances at Graham. We left the death chamber after Schmidt, of Buchenwald infamy, had been pronounced dead and after I had signed the affidavits as the governments official witness.
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