Paul Ogorzow

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Paul Ogorzow
Sexual sadism
Misogyny
Conviction(s)Murder (8 counts)
Attempted murder (6 counts)
Assault (31 counts)
Criminal penaltyDeath
Details
Victims8+
Span of crimes
August 1939 – July 1941
CountryNazi Germany
Location(s)Berlin
Date apprehended
12 July 1941

Paul Ogorzow (29 September 1912 – 26 July 1941), also known as the S-Bahn Murderer,

sex crimes, mostly targeting lone female passengers travelling aboard Berlin's S-Bahn commuter rail system, and solitary housewives whose husbands had been called up for military service.[2] Following his arrest by the Kriminalpolizei, Ogorzow was convicted of killing eight women and executed at Plötzensee Prison.[1]

Background

Early life

Paul Ogorzow was born on 29 September 1912 in the village of Muntowen, East Prussia, Imperial Germany (present-day Muntowo, Poland), the illegitimate child of Marie Saga, a farm worker. Saga's father later filled out his new grandson's birth certificate, marking it with three crosses and the child's birth name: Paul Saga.[3][4]

In 1924, the now 12-year-old Paul was

adopted by Johann Ogorzow, a farmer in Havelland. He would eventually take his adoptive father's surname as his own. Paul was initially employed as a labourer on a farm in the village of Nauen, and later worked at a steel foundry in Brandenburg-an-der-Havel, before ultimately settling in Berlin.[3]

Adult life

At the age of 18, Ogorzow joined the

Nazi seizure of power in 1933, Ogorzow rose modestly in the Party ranks, and by the time of his capture he held the title of Scharführer (squad leader) in the SA.[4]

In 1934, Ogorzow was hired as a

signalman at Rummelsberg depot in the eastern suburbs of the capital, close to Karlshorst. This was the area where most of his crimes later occurred.[3]

Ogorzow married Gertrude Ziegelmann, a

apartment blocks and tenement shacks. The family later moved to another apartment in Karlshorst, near to where Ogorzow worked. He was often seen playing with his children, spending a lot of time in his garden and tending a small cherry orchard in the backyard.[3] At his trial, Ogorzow's wife gave evidence that he often became violent and abusive, obsessively making unfounded claims of her being unfaithful to him.[4]

Ogorzow travelled to his job daily, either by train, on foot or by bicycle. He was generally well-regarded by his co-workers, and was considered reliable and highly competent by his supervisors, often operating both the light signals and the

signal box at Zobtener Straße, where the VnK Railway meets the S-Bahn, Ogorzow was often dispatched to work at various locations along the S-Bahn, always wearing his uniform.[3]

Crimes

Early crimes

After his capture, Ogorzow extensively detailed his various criminal activities to police, allowing for a more precise reconstruction of his crimes.[3] In late August 1939, while he and his family were residing in Karlshorst, Ogorzow embarked on a series of violent attacks, randomly assaulting and raping dozens of women in and around the Friedrichsfelde district.[3][5] At that time, the neighbourhood was populated mostly by solitary housewives whose husbands had been called up to serve in the recently-commenced Second World War. It was these vulnerable women who initially served as Ogorzow's primary source of victims, and police documented 31 separate attacks that occurred in the allotments and tenement area, all of which were later connected to Ogorzow. During his attacks, he either choked his victims, threatened them with a knife or bludgeoned them, and in their statements, all the victims mentioned their attacker wore a railway worker's uniform.[3][4]

Escalation

Ogorzow's initial

strangulation, but also being thrown from a moving train by Ogorzow. He soon suffered another setback when he attempted to rape another woman in an S-Bahn station, only for her husband and brother-in-law, whom Ogorzow had failed to notice, rushed to her aid after she screamed for help. Ogorzow managed to escape after being severely beaten. In light of this close call, Ogorzow changed his modus operandi and his subsequent crimes were more successful.[3]

Murders

Ogorzow renewed his attacks in October 1940, focusing primarily on the 9-

telephone cable
.

Ogorzow committed his first murder on 4 October 1940, going on the pretext of a tryst to the home of 20-year-old Gertrude "Gerda" Ditter, whose husband, Arthur, was away in the military. Ditter was stabbed to death. Two months later, on the evening of 4 December, he killed two more women: S-Bahn passenger Elfriede Franke had her skull crushed with an iron bar before her corpse was thrown from the moving train, and 19-year-old Irmgard Freese was raped and bludgeoned to death while walking home.[1] On 22 December, railroad workers discovered the body of a fourth victim, Elisabeth Bungener, discarded alongside the tracks. A medical examination determined she had died as the result of a fractured skull.[4]

Six days later, on 28 December 1940, the Berlin Police recovered Gertrude Siewert the morning after she had been assaulted and thrown from the train by Ogorzow. Suffering from exposure and various life-threatening traumas, she was rushed to hospital and died from her injuries the following day. This scene repeated itself on 5 January 1941, when the unconscious body of Hedwig Ebauer, who was five months pregnant, was located near the S-Bahn. Ogorzow had unsuccessfully attempted to strangle Ebauer before throwing her from the train alive. Like Siewert, Ebauer succumbed to her injuries later that day in hospital, never regaining consciousness.[2]

On 11 February, the remains of Ogorzow's seventh victim, Johanna Voigt, a pregnant mother of three, were found. An autopsy later confirmed what most suspected, that Voigt had died as the result of repeated blows to the head and injuries sustained after being thrown from the train. Given the obvious similarities in the various crimes, all seven deaths were deemed to be the work of the same individual.[3][4]

Investigation

Two of Ogorzow's previous victims, who had survived their attacks, confirmed to police that their assailant was a railway employee in a black uniform.

Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda under Joseph Goebbels even issued a directive to German journalists regarding limits to be placed on coverage of the murders.[citation needed
]

The homicide unit of the Berlin Police, under

SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer Wilhelm Lüdtke,[6] was not able to publicly seek information about the murders or to warn the population about the danger of travelling by rail at night. Instead, Lüdtke sent out his best detectives to discreetly investigate.[3][4] The police operation was underway by December 1940, with 5,000 of Berlin's 8,000 railway workers being interviewed, and police patrols were doubled on the S-Bahn. The Nazi government dispatched functionaries to personally protect unaccompanied women who commuted through the area. Police officers, either women or disguised as women, were used as decoys aboard second-class carriages.[1] Other detectives were disguised as railway workers, and commuters were watched at each station.[3] Ogorzow volunteered for a job escorting solitary women during the night hours.[4]

Despite this effort, the

petty criminals unrelated to the case. However, the increased police attention prompted Ogorzow to become cautiously inactive for nearly five months following his murder of Voigt in February 1941. He did not re-emerge until 3 July 1941, when he claimed his eighth and final victim, 35-year-old Frieda Koziol. She was raped and bludgeoned to death in the same Friedrichsfelde area where Ogorzow had begun his crime spree two years before.[3][4]

Arrest and conviction

Ogorzow, who often made

misogynistic comments to co-workers and talked often of his fascination with killing, was eventually singled out by investigators looking for potential suspects among railway employees following the murder of Koziol. A coworker reported to police that Ogorzow often climbed over the fence of the Rummelsburg depot during work hours.[1] His explanation was that he was sneaking out to meet a mistress whose husband was in the military.[3][4]

Lüdtke personally inspected Ogorzow's uniforms, all of which had numerous blood stains. Ogorzow was arrested by the Kriminalpolizei on 12 July 1941. In an intimidating interrogation in a small room under the light of a single light bulb, Ogorzow was confronted with one of his severely injured victims and a tray of skulls from several of his killings.

sexual attraction to his victims' resistance and a pathological hatred of women. Ogorzow willingly confessed his crimes but blamed the murders on alcoholism, claiming that a Jewish doctor had treated him incompetently for gonorrhea.[3][4]

Ogorzow was formally expelled from the Nazi Party just days prior to his indictment and subsequently pled guilty to eight murders, six attempted murders and thirty-one cases of sexual assault.[1] He was promptly sentenced to death on 24 July by the Berlin Kammergericht (regional superior court), in the presence of eight witnesses.[4] Ogorzow was declared an enemy of the people by the Nazi authorities and executed by guillotine at Plötzensee Prison on 26 July 1941, two days after his sentencing.[3]

After the war, one of the Kriminalpolizei officers who was heavily involved in the Ogorzow investigation, Georg Heuser [de], was charged by a West German court for his role in perpetrating Einsatzgruppen atrocities in the Soviet Union. He was found guilty of being an accessory to over 11,000 murders and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. Heuser only served six years of his sentence before being released, and died in 1989.[7]

Impact of World War II and Nazi society

War-time conditions

Historian Roger Moorhouse has suggested that the Kriminalpolizei were hampered in their investigation of the murders by several concurrent obstacles. Firstly, the Nazi regime had instituted a rigorous program of media censorship in order to avoid demoralising civilians during wartime. This censorship meant that there were only cursory details released about each case, which impeded the progress of the investigation. Secondly, due to ongoing Allied bombing raids on the capital, blackout conditions were necessary to shield strategically important targets from airborne destruction. As a side effect, however, these conditions were conducive to criminal activity.[1] Ogorzow himself exploited the blackouts, using them to stalk and kill his victims and then to escape from possible surveillance under the cover of darkness.[8]

S-Bahn operations

The S-Bahn appears to have had a poor

forensic backlog that placed the police force
and municipal medical services at a further disadvantage.

Nazi doctrine

The official

Polish prisoners of war) working in the numerous factories adjacent to the rail network.[1] Local Jews were also targeted unjustly for investigation in connection with the murders, albeit mainly for ideological reasons. In any event, survivor testimony eventually established that the suspect was indeed German, and the perpetrator was in fact a veteran member of both the Nazi Party and the SA.[1]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Selby, Scott Andrew (2014).  A Serial Killer in Nazi Berlin: The Chilling True Story of the S-Bahn Murderer. Berkley Publishing Group.
  2. ^ a b Robinson, Matt (10 April 2021). "The S-Bahn Murderer: A Serial Killer In Nazi Berlin". Berlin Experiences. Retrieved 27 December 2023.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Mike Straschewski; Michael Dittrich. "Geschichte und Geschichten rund um die Berliner S-Bahn". Stadtschnellbahn-berlin.de. Retrieved 7 November 2016.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Der Fall - Paul Ogorzow, erichs-kriminalarchiv.npage.de; accessed 7 November 2016. (in German)
  5. ^ S-Bahn lines with locations of murders and attempted murders, signal box ("Stellwerk Vnk") and Ogorzow residence ("Wohnung")
  6. ^ "Wilhelm Ludtke: De-nazification file." CIA. Retrieved 2017-01-16.
  7. ^ @roger_moorhouse (31 January 2018). "Register" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  8. ^ Zodiac Producers Target S-Bahn Murderer Tale

Sources

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