Ohlendorf himself spoke out for active and courageous entrepreneurship, which was intended to replace bureaucratic state planning of the economy after the war. He is obsessed with fear of a suicide attempt. The suppers were served by GIs. Another exception, the judges said, would be if a person obeyed an illegal order to avoid physical harm, torture, or death. Otto Ohlendorf was a German SS-Gruppenfhrer and head of the interior division of the SD. . He adds one thought, that none of us likes this business but weve got to go through with it. Using the ruse of resettlement, calls were given for Jews to assemble at a given time and place. Instead, the victims arrived at places where pits, ditches, trenches, or ravines awaited them. Ohlendorf went on to study law at two fine institutions, the Universities of Leipzig and Gttingen, as well as the University of Pavia in northern Italy. These trials are known as the Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings. Case #9 of these twelve trials is known today as the Einsatzgruppen Case. Extermination of all Roma did not happen with the other Special Task Forces until the spring of 1942. Create a FREE Account. Graham calls out: Attention! All in the room stand. The treaty that Hitler hated even more than the Treaty of Versailles and one of the most important treaties you have probably never heard of. He died on 3 March 1989, in Riedlingen, Biberach, Baden-Wrttemberg, Germany, at the age of 96. Strauss argued that it was the tradition in West Germany to carry out a death sentence within four weeks after such sentence was imposed. 2356: Seven minutes more. He studied at the University of Pavia, where he gained his doctor's degree in jurisprudence; and by 1933 he obtained the position of a research directorship in the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. Among people born in 1907, Otto Ohlendorf ranks 36 . Graham mutters something to the effect that theyve got to get started on the final arrangements NOW if they are to meet their schedule. I visit the latrine. He tells me that he always had a hard time finding matches during the invasion of Nazi-controlled France. [22][c], Ohlendorf disliked the use of the oft-employed Genickschu (shot to the back of the neck) and preferred to line up victims and fire at them from a greater distance so as to alleviate personal responsibility for individual murders. That was my biggest disappointment; nobody, including my mass murderers, ever said Im sorry. Even one of the most notorious architects of the Final Solution, Adolf Eichmann, organizer of the mass deportation of Jews to Auschwitz and other concentration camps, portrayed himself as a mere. It is cold up here in the loft of the prison workshop which has now been temporarily outfitted for this unusual purpose. [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. . The 24 defendants in Case #9 were all leading members of, that operated on the Eastern Front during World War II. 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. Have you ever done this before? Ohlendorf's comment that Mueller was ordered to remain adds weight to the probability that Mueller died in Berlin. Please enter your email address. They are brought in on huge trays by a young prisoner whose face could be that of a friendly, smiling Kansas farmer. Since Jews were automatically assumed to be ultra-Bolsheviks and to be the ruling class of the Soviet Union, they were singled out. Montgomery had accepted the surrender of German forces in the Northwest on the 4th. Ferencz called no witnesses and based the case on wartime SS reports that detailed mass shootings conducted by the Einsatzgruppen. Browning, Christopher (with contributions by Jrgen Matthas). The Tribunal rendered its judgment on April 89, 1948. Blobel, Braune, Naumann, and Ohlendorf had all been leaders of the Extermination Squads (Einsatzgruppen), which were the chief instruments devised by the Nazis for wiping out the Jews of Europe. The High Commissioner listened intently, eyes fixed on his scratch pad. The extreme anti-Semitism of the Nazi regime was given full license with these criminal orders. An economist by education, he was head of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) Inland, responsible for intelligence and security within Germany. Explore resources that meet the California HistorySocial Science Framework standards. ON AUGUST 8,1945, in London, the governments of the USA, France, Britain, and the USSR resolved to punish "those German. . 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. 1905: We are admitted to the admissions office. 1, The judges at Nuremberg rejected the following orders defense. Later this expanded to include the Caucasus. The sentences were announced on April 10, 1948: Matthias Graf was released with time served. His face is yellow in the lamplight. Students are introduced to the many factors that influenced Americans will and ability to respond to the Jewish refugee crisis, including isolationism, racism, xenophobia, and antisemitism. His defense was simple: he was just following orders. Graham says his fan mail from Nazi sympathizers has slowed down. If so, login to add it. The crimes they committed were crimes against you. He then concluded: If I can find one honest man in Sodom, Ill save the city!. . It consisted of fried chicken, potatoes, green peas, and carrots. Students analyze images and film that convey the richness of Jewish life across Europe at the time of the Nazis ascension to power. Facing History & Ourselves, "Obeying Orders," last updated August 11, 2017. Hoheneggelsen, Province of Hanover, Prussia, German Empire, Otto Ohlendorf at the Einsatzgruppen Trial, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Ohlendorf. Then the members of the Special Task Force marched them off, ostensibly to a place of transportation. Ive never killed a Jew. As chief of the Public Relations Division for the High Commissioners Office, I was sent to Landsberg to handle the two hundred or so newspaper men covering the story of the hanging. Lincoln and Jerusalem: University of Nebraska Press and Yad Vashem, 2004. The army set up a parallel line of communication with the Pentagon, via General Handys Heidelberg head-quarters. He graduated in July 1933 with a doctors degree in jurisprudence. 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 The German people did not wish to see any more blood spilled in Germany, especially in the name of a false idea of justice. The executions are scheduled to start at three minutes past midnight. The tradition dated back to the 19th century. I have photographs of the seven men in my hands. 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. Otto Ohlendorf served in the Nazi Party in World War II. The JAG lieutenant colonel seated next to me whispers, there but for the grace of God go I. Gaps, recalled Schubert, existed in what was transmitted. 1935: JAG1 lieutenant colonels from Heidelberg, two of them, have arrived to serve as army witnesses. I returned to Grahams office. This Board, consisting of New York State Supreme Court Justice David Peck, Commissioner Frederick A. Moran (the chairman of the New York Board of Parole), and Brigadier General Conrad E. Snow, was not empowered to review the decisions of the Military Tribunals on questions of law or fact, but to consider disparities among the sentences for comparable crimes and other matters which tended to show that the sentences imposed were excessive. The Board was directed to consider anything that might warrant mitigation of sentences.. After a decade in the SS, he entered Reinhard Heydrichs SD in 1936 as an advisor on economic issues. Accounts of Himmler's final days do not mention the letter, so one can only surmise what it said. I think: Hadnt I better stay in Grahams office rather than witness this thing? An officer reports that hes taking a bath. Himmler, Ohlendorf said, was anxious about the answer. How did Heydrich ascertain the blood-drenched progress of the Special Task Forces? One remarks that it seems late in the day politically to be hanging Germans even if they are war criminals. That is in large part the product of the efforts of Nazi hunters like Ferencz, Bauer and others who pushed for such trials, not allowing the past to be buried along with its victims. [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. I ask. For the Nazi hunters -- the government investigators and prosecutors along with the freelance operatives who have tracked and exposed the perpetrators -- this magnifies the role of these remaining court cases. 2105: A prison officer comes into Grahams office to announce that the war criminals appeal to an American judge in Frankfort Military Courts has been rejected. Himmler communicated approval directly to the heads of some of the Special Task Forces. [24] To ensure the group killing mentality, Ohlendorf forbade any commando from taking individual actions and explicitly instructed his men not to take any of the victim's valuables. [11] Routine public opinion surveyswhich were under the purview of Ohlendorf and SS-Major Reinhard Hhnconstituted some of these reports. Mr. McCloy emphasized that the cause for delay was a humane one: There are probably no prisoners anywhere in the world whose cases have received the same painstaking attention given to the Landsberg cases. Born in February 1907 into a peasant family in Hoheneggelsen, a small town in Lower Saxony in northwest Germany, he was not yet a teenager when Germany suffered a crushing defeat in World War I. They seem collected and self-controlled, and I make an effort to get a grip on myself. [28] The number of persons killed under the leadership of Einsatzgruppen commanders such as Ohlendorf are "staggering" despite the use of varying murder techniques. Ohlendorf joined the SD in 1936 and became an economic consultant of the organisation. Forced at gunpoint to jump down into these pits, they were shot after pleading for their own lives and those of their families and neighbors. Instead of engaging in the individual Genickschuss, a shot to the nape of the neck, Ohlendorf decided to have his men fire on those rounded up from a distance. Otto Ohlendorf. I tell him Blobel has been pronounced dead at 0014, June 7. This unit perpetrated mass murder primarily in Belarus and in Russian territory west of Moscow. On the other side, Heinrich Himmler, who detested the state interventionstregime of Albert Speer as totally bolshevik and was himself hoping for a career in a militarily defeated Germany, protected the working group around Ohlendorf, Ludwig Erhard. Graham shows me a great heap of letters and telegrams from German sympathizers offering comfort to the criminals. Graham gets his retirement discharge next week. . I will be vindicated by God and history. Apart from all this, illustrated weeklies went in for special feature stories denouncing the cruelty of the American authorities in keeping the condemned men waiting so long for a final verdict. The Germans knew what had happened to thembut they did not know, they did not want to know what had happened to other people. Graham remarks acidly that the postage on this petition alone must have cost about 120 Deutsche Mark, or $30. This was not a small group, Geyer elaborated. This leaves me the only witness for the State Department. With Alexander Bickel of the Office of the General Counsel, I motored to Landsberg-on-the-Lech, in Bavaria, on Tuesday the 6th, in an army staff car with a GI driver, arriving at 7 P.M. An attorney from McCloys office was detailed to remain in the Frankfort headquarters of the High Commissioner, where he was in radio-telephone communication with the General Counsels office in the State Department in Washington. Jason Dawsey, PhD, is a Research Historian at the Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy. His pipe throws off a delicious fragrance. On February 1, a special messenger delivered an urgent dispatch from the Federal Minister of Justice, Thomas Dehler, in Bonn. "[26][d], Many of the killing operations were personally overseen by Ohlendorf, who wanted to ensure they were "military in character and humane under the circumstances". 4 February 1907-7 June 1951 . Yet they were not the only targets. [40] Another historian, Mark Mazower, described Ohlendorf as a "gloomy, driven, self-righteous Prussian". Ohlendorf. Such actions continued right through December 1941. The apple trees are in full blossom. Students explore the intertwined personal stories of Jewish refugees who attempted to flee to the United States and the American rescuers who intervened on their behalf. With Ohlendorf, he apparently was briefed by Heydrich on the new phase in mid-August during a visit to Berlin. . The defendants were arraigned between September 15 and 22, 1947. Has been making a lot of trouble for us.. We are to proceed with executions unless instructions are received to the contrary. These, in turn, were handed over to Himmler and Hitler. 1910: We enter office of prison commandant, Colonel Walter Graham. This tribunal was tasked with trying Case #9 of the Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings: United States v. Otto Ohlendorf, et al.. Case #9 is usually referred to as the Einsatzgruppen Case. You cant hurry them, you know, says the Colonel philosophically. 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. 2249: Graham answers the telephone. Modern mechanized armies need a robust logistics chain to provide fuel, ammunition, and other sinews of war to sustain combat operations. The appearance of the Einsatzgruppenwas a death sentence for entire Jewish communities. Two cameramen, both GI noncoms, are fooling with their apparatus. Even one of the most notorious architects of the Final Solution, Adolf Eichmann, organizer of the mass deportation of Jews to Auschwitz and other concentration camps, portrayed himself as a mere functionary who had no animosity towards his victims. [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. In some cases they had to dig their own graves. I am a Jew, said Altmeier in English. 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. Otto Ohlendorf was the Head of Amt lll of the Reich Main Security Office during the Second World War and organiser of mass murders in the Southern Ukraine in 1941 and 1942.
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