Helmut Bischoff

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Helmut Bischoff
Born1 March 1908
Glogau, Province of Silesia
German Empire
Died1 January 1993(1993-01-01) (aged 84)
Hamburg, Germany
AllegianceNazi Germany Nazi Germany
Service/branch Allgemeine-SS
Rank SS-Obersturmbannführer
Unit
  • SS-Reich Security Main Office
     (1939–1943)
  • SS-Main Economic and Administrative Office
     (1943–1945)
Battles/wars

Helmut Hermann Wilhelm Bischoff (1 March 1908 – 1 January 1993) was a German SS-Obersturmbannführer, Gestapo officer and Nazi government official. During World War II, he was the leader of Einsatzkommando 1/IV in Poland and later headed the Gestapo offices in Poznań (Posen) and Magdeburg.

From 1943 to 1945 Bischoff served as a senior deputy to

Essen-Dora war crimes trial
.

Early life

Bischoff was born on 1 March 1908 in the

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

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

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 Köslin (1937-1939).[2] By the outbreak of World War II he had risen to the rank of Sturmbannführer (Major) in the Allgemeine-SS.

Einsatzgruppe IV

During the

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

ghettoization
.

Poznań & Magdeburg

Following the dissolution of Einsatzgruppe IV in November 1939, Bischoff was transferred to 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

Theresienstadt and Warsaw, while later rail transports were dispatched directly to Auschwitz-Birkenau.[5]

V-weapons security chief

In December 1943 Bischoff was reassigned to the

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

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

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

In February 1944 the

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

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

Mittelbau-Dora
between 1943 and 1945.

Post-war

Following the

NKVD Special Camp No. 2 (formerly the Buchenwald concentration camp) outside of Weimar
.

In January 1950 Bischoff was deported to the

Tracing Service from 1957 to 1965.[10]

Essen-Dora trial

On 17 November 1967 Bischoff and two other former

not guilty.[11]

The trial (known as the

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

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 Poznań, 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 1 January 1993.[14]

References

  1. ^ Jens-Christian Wagner:Produktion des Todes: Das KZ Mittelbau-Dora, Göttingen 2001, S. 666.
  2. ^ 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.
  3. ^ 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.
  4. ^ hospital Owinska and Fort VII in Poznan at deathcamps.org
  5. ISBN 3-86539-059-5
    .
  6. ^ 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.
  7. ^ Jens-Christian Wagner, Production of Death: The Mittelbau-Dora, Göttingen, 2001 S. 666th.
  8. ^ Sellier, Andre. A History of the Dora Camp. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee. 2003.
  9. ^ "Mittelbau: Last Phase". Ushmm.org. Retrieved 30 May 2012.
  10. ^ Jens-Christian Wagner, Production of Death: The Mittelbau-Dora, Göttingen, 2001 S. 666th.
  11. ^ André Sellier: Forced Labor in the missile tunnel - History of the Dora camp, Lüneburg, 2000, p. 518.
  12. ^ Ernst Klee: The Encyclopedia of the Third Reich persons, Fischer Taschenbuch 2005, S. 51, Quelle: 24 Js 549/61 (Z) OStA Köln. Penguin Books 2005, p. 51, source: 24 Js 549/61 (Z) OSTA Cologne.
  13. ^ Ernst Klee: The Encyclopedia of the Third Reich persons, Fischer Taschenbuch 2005, S. 51, Quelle: 24 Js 549/61 (Z) OStA Köln. Penguin Books 2005, p. 51, source: 24 Js 549/61 (Z) OSTA Cologne.
  14. ^ Sellier, Andre. A History of the Dora Camp. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee. 2003.
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