Helmut Hermann Wilhelm Bischoff
(1 March 1908 ? 5 January 1993) was a
German
SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer
,
Gestapo
officer and
Nazi official
. During
World War II
, he was the leader of
Einsatzkommando 1/IV
in
Poland
and later headed the
Gestapo
offices in
Pozna?
(Posen) and
Magdeburg
.
From 1943 to 1945 Bischoff served as a senior deputy to
SS-Obergruppenfuhrer
Hans Kammler
and was the chief of security for Germany's
V-weapons program
. He later commanded the
Sicherheitsdienst
(SD) at the
Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp
. Following the war, Bischoff would spend nearly a decade in
Soviet captivity
. He was repatriated to
West Germany
in 1955. Between 1967 and 1970 Bischoff was a defendant in the
Essen-Dora war crimes trial
.
Early life
[
edit
]
Bischoff was born on 1 March 1908 in the
town
of
Glogau
in the
Province of Silesia
, then a part of the
German Empire
(now:
Głogow, Poland
). He was the son of a prosperous
metzgermeister
(master butcher) and attended the
Glogau
Gymnasium
. From 1923?1925 Bischoff was a member of
Jungwiking
, the
youth-wing
of the
Viking League
, an
ultra-nationalist
and
antisemitic
paramilitary group
associated with the
far-right
Organisation Consul
movement. After graduating from gymnasium, Bischoff went on to
study law
at
Leipzig University
(where he was a member of the
Leipziger Burschenschaft Dresdendia
) and the
University of Geneva
.
It was during his time as a law student that Bischoff first became active in the
Nazi movement
. He joined the
Nazi Party
in March 1930 (Member # 203 122) and the
Sturmabteilung
(SA) in 1933. After receiving his
doctorate of jurisprudence
(
Dr. jur.
), Bischoff returned to his native
Lower Silesia
and worked as an
assessor
at the
district court
offices in
Schweidnitz
and
Strehlen
.
[1]
By 1934, Bischoff had also begun serving as a
confidential informant
(
Vertrauensmann
) for the
Sicherheitsdienst
(SD), the Nazi Party's internal
intelligence service
.
Gestapo
[
edit
]
After completing his
legal clerkship
, Bischoff joined the
Schutzstaffel
(SS) in November 1935 (SS # 272 403). He entered the
Gestapo
shortly afterward and served as chief of the organization's district bureau in
Liegnitz
until October 1936. Bischoff went on to lead the Gestapo departments in
Harburg-Wilhelmsburg
(1936-1937) and
Koslin
(1937-1939).
[2]
By the outbreak of
World War II
he had risen to the rank of
Sturmbannfuhrer
(Major) in the
Allgemeine-SS
.
Einsatzgruppe IV
[
edit
]
During the
invasion of Poland
in September 1939, Bischoff served as the commander of
Einsatzkommando 1/IV
(a sub-unit of
Lothar Beutel's
Einsatzgruppe IV
) which was deployed in the northern Polish territories of
Pomerania
,
Warsaw
,
Białystok
and
Polesie
. Bischoff's unit was involved in the bloody
pacification of Bydgoszcz
(Bromberg) along with the
mass-killing of ethnic Poles
carried out as part of
Operation Tannenberg
, the Nazi
ethnic cleansing
campaign targeting Poland's
intelligentsia
and other members of the nation's elite.
On 27 September 1939 Bischoff and his
Einsatzkommando
staged a raid on the town of
Pułtusk
. The action ended with the mass-expulsion of the town's large
Jewish population
from their homes, followed by their
deportation
across the
Narew River
into the
Soviet-occupied
east.
[3]
In October 1939
Einsatzgruppe IV
was placed under the command of
SS-Standartenfuhrer
Josef Albert Meisinger
and stationed in
Warsaw
, where it took part in the initial round-up of the city's Jewish residents, setting in motion their eventual
ghettoization
.
Pozna? & Magdeburg
[
edit
]
Following the dissolution of
Einsatzgruppe IV
in November 1939, Bischoff was transferred to the
newly annexed Polish territory
of
Reichsgau Wartheland
and served as chief of the
Gestapo
for the city of
Pozna?
(Posen). In this capacity Bischoff was also the acting
commandant
of the
Fort VII concentration camp
, which was initially called "KZ Posen" and in 1939 became "
Ubergangslager
(transit camp) Fort VII". While primarily a detention center, Fort VII also served as a regular execution site for many local Poles, Jews and the
physically or mentally disabled
. Prisoners usually remained in the camp for about six months, before being sentenced to death, a long prison term or transfer to a larger concentration camp.
[4]
Bischoff was promoted to the rank of
SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer
(Lieutenant Colonel) in September 1941 and returned to
Germany
, where he had been appointed chief of the State Police Headquarters (
Staatspolizeileitstelle
) in
Magdeburg
. Bischoff played a central role in orchestrating the
deportation of the Jews
from Magdeburg and the nearby towns of
Stendal
,
Dessau
,
Bernburg
and
Aschersleben
. Hundreds of German Jews were deported by the
SS and security services
between November 1942 and March 1943. The initial wave of deportees were routed mainly to the
ghettoes
of
Theresienstadt
and
Warsaw
, while later rail transports were dispatched directly to
Auschwitz-Birkenau
.
[5]
V-weapons security chief
[
edit
]
In December 1943 Bischoff was reassigned to the
SS-Main Economic and Administrative Office
(SS-WVHA) and attached to the
general staff
of
SS-Obergruppenfuhrer
Hans Kammler
, ostensibly as a representative of the
Organisation Todt
. Kammler was the director of
Amtsgruppe C
(Buildings and Works), the organization tasked with managing the extensive
civil
and
military engineering
projects of the SS-WVHA. This included the construction of factories, storehouses and other manufacturing facilities for Germany's various
secret weapons programs
.
Most of Germany's
V-1 flying bombs
and
V-2 ballistic missiles
were produced at
Mittelwerk
, a major armaments factory housed in an elaborate tunnel system in the
Harz Mountains
that had been built, and was partially administered, by
Amtsgruppe C
. The complex and dangerous work performed to assemble the V-weapons themselves was done under brutal conditions in the tunnels by thousands of
slave-laborers
(mainly
Russians
,
Poles
and
French
, among other nationalities) drawn from the inmate population of the adjunct
Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp
.
Bischoff was appointed by Kammler to serve as "Defense Officer" (
Abwehrbeauftragter
) for
Germany's
V-weapons
program. As chief of security, Bischoff managed
counter-intelligence
operations by the German security services meant to conceal the Nazi missile production program's existence from
Allied intelligence
. Bischoff was also responsible for preventing organized attempts by Mittelwerk's
prisoner-laborers
to sabotage the
V-weapons
during the assembly process.
[6]
Mittelbau-Dora
[
edit
]
In February 1944 the
SS police and security services
in the
Nordhausen district
(which surrounded
Mittelwerk
and the adjunct camp of
Mittelbau-Dora
) were placed under the authority of Bischoff's organization, now headquartered in
Ilfeld
. Counter-sabotage operations began soon after, mainly targeting the numerous
resistance organizations
operating among the prisoners working in the tunnels at
Mittelwerk
and those imprisoned in the camp at Dora.
[7]
At Bischoff's direction, Mittelbau-Dora's
Politische Abteilung
(Political Department) had the leaders of the camp's
Russian
,
French
and
Communist
inmates rounded up in November 1944 and interned in
solitary confinement
. Many of those taken into custody were interrogated under
torture
with some later being executed.
[8]
In February 1945 the
SS administration
of Mittelbau-Dora was reorganized under former
Auschwitz
commandant
Richard Baer
. Under this new arrangement, Bischoff took over as chief of the camp's
Sicherheitsdienst
(SD) bureau.
As chief of the camp's SD, Bischoff supervised a wave of
executions
at Mittelbau-Dora in March 1945 that saw hundreds of prisoners, mostly
Soviet POWs
, killed in a series of
mass-hangings
. He also ordered the surviving leadership of the camp's
resistance organizations
to be shot by
firing squad
prior to the liberation of Mittelbau-Dora by the
US Army
in April 1945.
[9]
In all, roughly 20,000 people died at either
Mittelwerk
or
Mittelbau-Dora
between 1943 and 1945.
Post-war
[
edit
]
Following the
German defeat
, Bischoff went into hiding in
Bavaria
and
Hamburg
before returning to
Magdeburg
, where he was identified and arrested by the
Soviet security services
in January 1946. Bischoff was interned at
NKVD Special Camp No. 1
near
Muhlberg
until September 1948 when he was transferred to
NKVD Special Camp No. 2
(formerly the
Buchenwald concentration camp
) outside of
Weimar
.
In January 1950 Bischoff was deported to the
Soviet Union
. He was sentenced to twenty five years
hard labor
by a
military tribunal
in
Moscow
and sent to a
German POW camp
located in
Siberia
. Bischoff would remain imprisoned in the USSR for the next five years. In October 1955 Bischoff would be among the last German prisoners of war and war criminals to be released from captivity by the
Soviet Union
. After resettling in
West Germany
, Bischoff was employed by the
German Red Cross
-
Tracing Service
from 1957 to 1965.
[10]
Essen-Dora trial
[
edit
]
On 17 November 1967 Bischoff and two other former
SS officers
who had served with him at
Mittelbau-Dora
, were
indicted
for
war crimes
by the district court in
Essen
. The charges against Bischoff stemmed from his involvement in the series of
mass executions
that occurred at Mittelbau-Dora between February?April 1945. He was also charged with the use of
torture
on prisoners under
interrogation
. Bischoff entered a plea of
not guilty
.
[11]
The trial (known as the
Essen-Dora Process
) began in November 1967 and would continue for two and a half years. The proceedings included the testimony of over 300 witnesses, among them former
Nazi Armaments Minister
Albert Speer
and the famed inventor of the
V-2 rocket
,
Wernher von Braun
, now a premier
rocket scientist
in the
United States
. The eminent
East German
jurist Friedrich Karl Kaul served as counsel for the plaintiffs.
On 5 May 1970 the case against Bischoff was
postponed
by the court due to
reasons of his poor health
.
[12]
He was thus able to avoid being formally convicted of war crimes. The case against Bischoff was dropped on the grounds that:
If the main hearings were to be continued, there were serious grounds for assuming that the defendant ... would be accused of being guilty of murder in a manner which, according to experts, would lead to an excessive rise of blood pressure.
[13]
Other attempts to prosecute Bischoff for his wartime activities also met with little success. An investigation by the district court of
West Berlin
into his involvement with the
Einsatzgruppen
killings in Bydgoszcz
was discontinued in 1971, citing a
lack of evidence
. A further effort to prosecute Bischoff, this time for atrocities committed during his tenure as the Gestapo chief of Pozna?, was likewise abandoned in 1976, once again owing to Bischoff's precarious health. Bischoff continued to reside in
West Germany
for the remainder of his life. He died in
Hamburg
on 5 January 1993.
[14]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Jens-Christian Wagner:
Produktion des Todes: Das KZ Mittelbau-Dora
, Gottingen 2001, S. 666.
- ^
Ernst Klee:
The Encyclopedia of persons to the Third Reich
. Wer war was vor und nach 1945. Who was that before and after 1945. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Zweite aktualisierte Auflage, Frankfurt am Main 2005, S. 51. Penguin Books, second edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 51.
- ^
Ernst Klee:
The Encyclopedia of persons to the Third Reich
. Wer war was vor und nach 1945. Who was that before and after 1945. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Zweite aktualisierte Auflage, Frankfurt am Main 2005, S. 51. Penguin Books, second edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 51.
- ^
hospital Owinska and Fort VII in Poznan
at deathcamps.org
- ^
Alfred Gottwaldt, Diana Schulle:
The Deportation of Jews from the German Reich 1941-1945 - An Annotated Chronology
, Wiesbaden, 2005,
ISBN
3-86539-059-5
.
- ^
Ernst Klee:
The Encyclopedia of persons to the Third Reich
. Wer war was vor und nach 1945. Who was that before and after 1945. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Zweite aktualisierte Auflage, Frankfurt am Main 2005, S. 51. Penguin Books, second edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 51.
- ^
Jens-Christian Wagner,
Production of Death: The Mittelbau-Dora
, Gottingen, 2001 S. 666th.
- ^
Sellier, Andre.
A History of the Dora Camp
. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee. 2003.
- ^
"Mittelbau: Last Phase"
. Ushmm.org
. Retrieved
30 May
2012
.
- ^
Jens-Christian Wagner,
Production of Death: The Mittelbau-Dora
, Gottingen, 2001 S. 666th.
- ^
Andre Sellier:
Forced Labor in the missile tunnel - History of the Dora camp
, Luneburg, 2000, p. 518.
- ^
Ernst Klee:
The Encyclopedia of the Third Reich persons
, Fischer Taschenbuch 2005, S. 51, Quelle: 24 Js 549/61 (Z) OStA Koln. Penguin Books 2005, p. 51, source: 24 Js 549/61 (Z) OSTA Cologne.
- ^
Ernst Klee:
The Encyclopedia of the Third Reich persons
, Fischer Taschenbuch 2005, S. 51, Quelle: 24 Js 549/61 (Z) OStA Koln. Penguin Books 2005, p. 51, source: 24 Js 549/61 (Z) OSTA Cologne.
- ^
Sellier, Andre.
A History of the Dora Camp
. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee. 2003.
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