Carl Zenner

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Carl Zenner
Born11 June 1899 (1899-06-11)
SS and Police Leader,
"Weißruthenien"
Battles/warsWorld War I; World War II
AwardsIron Cross, 2nd class
War Merit Cross, 1st and 2nd class with Swords

Carl Peter Zenner (11 June 1899 – 16 June 1969) was an SS-

Holocaust, he was convicted and jailed for crimes against humanity
.

Early life

Zenner was born in the village of

First World War with the 9th Foot Artillery Regiment, earning the Iron Cross, 2nd class. After the war, he became a member of the Freikorps between January and the end of September 1919, serving in the Baltic, and in Hamburg to suppress disorders associated with the Spartacist uprising. He then studied economics and business administration at a commercial college in Cologne beginning in October 1920 and graduating in December 1921 with a degree in business administration. He then worked in business in Brohl until the end of 1931.[1]

Peacetime Nazi career

Zenner joined the

propagandist as a Gau and Reich speaker until 1933. He became an early member of the SS (membership number 176) on 1 August 1926.[2] During the occupation of the Ruhr, he was briefly jailed but subsequently acquitted in April 1927 by a French court-martial in Koblenz for breaching the peace. Later in June, he was sentenced to a fine for Nazi activities in Mainz.[3]

Zenner unsuccessfully sought seats in both the

Nazi seizure of power, Zenner was again elected to the Reichstag in March 1933 and served continuously until the end of the Nazi regime.[4]

Commissioned an SS-

looted and the synagogue was burned down.[6]

Second World War

On 21 June 1941 Zenner was promoted to SS-

SS and Police Leader (SSPF) "Weißruthenien," headquartered in Minsk. On 26 September 1941 he was given the additional position of Generalmajor of Police.[7] His time in Minsk was marked by the height of the Holocaust in Belarus
and his direct involvement is noted in the following:

Zenner voluntarily offered his troops and his authority in order to help the

Order Police units that rounded up the Jews, the forces that guarded the execution site, and, of course, the shooters … Zenner was the mastermind of the operation.[8]

Zenner was also involved in developing the

Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler, Zenner breached protocol and embarrassed his direct superiors, SS-Obergruppenführers Friedrich Jeckeln and Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski.[9] By July, Bach-Zelewski, the leader of the anti-partisan campaign, dismissed Zenner from his post, allegedly for insufficient pursuit of the anti-partisan campaign. He was reassigned to Berlin to become head of the requisitioning office (Amt B-II) in the SS Main Office. Charged with dereliction of duty in September 1942, the Supreme SS and Police Court dropped the proceedings against him in December 1943. He remained in his Berlin post until the end of the war.[10]

Postwar life and prosecutions

After the end of the war, Zenner was taken prisoner by the French on 29 May 1945 and interned. Eventually he was handed over to a British military tribunal and, on 12 June 1947, was sentenced to five years in prison and a 5,000 Reichsmark fine for his role in the Kristallnacht pogrom. After his release from prison on 13 June 1950, he worked in business as a managing director in Brohl.[3]

Rearrested in 1961, Zenner was put on trial in the Koblenz Regional Court for the murder of the 6,624 Jewish men, women and children from the Minsk Ghetto. Despite his unconvincing denial of any involvement or even knowledge of the massacre, on 12 June 1961 he was convicted and sentenced to 15 years in prison. He was released from prison on health grounds in 1967, and died in 1969.[11][12]

References

  1. ^ Klee 2007, p. 692.
  2. ^ a b Schiffer Publishing Ltd. 2000, p. 16.
  3. ^ a b Yerger 1997, p. 112.
  4. ^ Carl Zenner entry in the Reichstag Databank
  5. ^ Yerger 1997, pp. 109, 112, 123, 172.
  6. ^ "Destroyed German Synagogues and Communities - Aachen". Retrieved 12 June 2022.
  7. ^ Yerger 1997, pp. 60, 112.
  8. ^ Langerbein 2004, pp. 164–165.
  9. ^ Blood 2011, pp. 72–74.
  10. ^ Yerger 1997, pp. 112, 172.
  11. ^ Two Sentenced in Germany for Complicity in Killing 6,624 Minsk Jews in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Retrieved 11 June 2022.
  12. ^ "010 Carl Zenner (1899 – 1969)". www.mahnmal-koblenz.de. Retrieved 2023-05-21.

Sources

External links
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