Hermann Schaper

Hermann Schaper (born 12 August 1911 – date of death unknown), was a German SS functionary during the Nazi era. He was a Holocaust perpetrator responsible for atrocities committed by the Einsatzgruppen in German-occupied Poland and the Soviet Union and was convicted after the war of numerous war crimes.[1]

Hermann Schaper
Hermann Schaper in service
Born12 August 1911
DiedUnknown (deceased)
Unknown
Allegiance Nazi Germany
Service/branch Schutzstaffel
Years of serviceuntil 1945
RankHauptsturmführer
UnitTotenkopfverbände
Commands heldSS Zichenau-Schroettersburg

SS career
See also: The Holocaust in Poland

Schaper joined the SS and was promoted to the rank of SS-Untersturmführer on 20 April 1935. He achieved the rank of SS-Obersturmführer on 20 April 1937. Before the 1939 invasion of Poland, Schaper worked at the SD principal offices of Nazi Germany. During the German occupation of Poland Schaper served as commander of Kommando SS Zichenau-Schröttersburg – a Nazi Einsatzgruppe, one of five such formations created in eastern Poland and composed of 500–1000 functionaries of the SS and Gestapo. Schaper operated in the Płock (renamed Schröttersburg) district administered by Count von der Groeben. His superior was Sturmbannführer Hartmut Pulmer, a Gestapo chief based in Ciechanów (renamed Zichenau).[1][2][3]

Schaper's death squad was deployed in the newly formed Bezirk Bialystok district soon after the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Himmler himself visited Białystok on 30 June 1941 and pronounced that more forces were needed in the area, because the massive chase after the fleeing Red Army left behind a security vacuum. On 3 July additional formation of Schutzpolizei arrived in the city from the General Government, led by SS-Hauptsturmführer Wolfgang Birkner, veteran of Einsatzgruppe IV from the Polish Campaign. The relief unit, called kommando Bialystok,[4] was sent in by SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer Eberhard Schöngarth on orders from the Reich Main Security Office, due to reports of Soviet guerrilla activity in the area with Jews being of course immediately suspected of helping them out. On 10 July 1941 Schaper's Einsatzgruppe was subdivided into dozens of smaller commandos (Einsatzkommandos) numbering from several to several scores of people whose mission was to kill Jews, alleged communists and the Soviet NKVD collaborators in the captured territories often far behind the advancing German front. The entire Einsatzgruppe employed the same, systematic method of mass killing across many Polish villages and towns in the vicinity of Białystok. Schaper's murderous rampage south-east of East Prussia included Wizna (end of June), Wąsosz (5 July), Radziłów (7 July), Jedwabne (10 July), Łomża (early August), Tykocin (22–25 August), Rutki (4 September), Piątnica, Zambrów as well as other locations.[1]

Postwar trials

At the beginning of the 1960s, the war crimes committed by Schaper were investigated by the German Judicial Centre for Prosecuting Nazi Crimes in Ludwigsburg. The prosecutors had called a key witness, the German Kreiskommissar in Łomża, who named the Gestapo paramilitary Einsatzgruppe B under SS-Obersturmführer Hermann Schaper in the course of Birkner's investigation. Schaper was charged in 1964 with personally directing the Einsatzkommando responsible for the mass killing of Jews in the city. Two witnesses from Israel – Chaja Finkelstein from Radziłów and Izchak Feler from Tykocin – recognized Hermann Schaper from photographs as the one responsible also for the pogrom in Radziłów on 7 July 1941, as well as the mass murders in Tykocin of 25 August 1941. The methods used by Schaper's death squad in these massacres were identical to those employed in Jedwabne (a few kilometers distance) only three days later. Schaper denied the charges, and the Germans found the evidence insufficient to prosecute him at that time. He lied to interrogators that in 1941 he had been a truck driver and used false names. Legal proceedings against him were terminated on 2 September 1965 despite his positive identification by the courts.[5][6]

He was retried in Germany in 1976 for other crimes against Poles and Jews and was sentenced to six years in prison, however following an appeal this was overturned and his health was declared too fragile for a new trial.[7]. Schaper was convicted along with Franz Hartmann, Hans Doermage, Kurt Baresel also from the Gestapo station at Ciechanów for their complicity in holocaust-related crimes.[8] Another defendant, Ernst Schardt was acquitted. Charges against Otto Roehr were dropped.

Schaper died of old age in his nineties. According to statement received by the Polish IPN from German prosecution, the documentation of his trial is no longer available and was most likely destroyed after the case was terminated.[9]

Notes and references
  1. Thomas Urban, "Poszukiwany Hermann Schaper" (A Wanted Man), Rzeczpospolita, 01.09.01 Nr 204. (in Polish)
  2. Interrogation of Hermann Schaper, http://www.polish-jewish-heritage.org/eng/IPN_Interregation_of_Schaper.htm
  3. de:Hartmut Pulmer
  4. Tomasz Szarota (December 2–3, 2000). "Do we now know everything for certain? (translation)". Gazeta Wyborcza. Archived from the original on July 16, 2011. Retrieved May 13, 2011.
  5. Thomas Urban, reporter of the Süddeutsche Zeitung; Polish text in Rzeczpospolita, 1–2 September 2001
  6. Alexander B. Rossino, historian at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. (2003). "Polish "Neighbors" and German Invaders: Contextualizing Anti-Jewish Violence in the Białystok District during the Opening Weeks of Operation Barbarossa". Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, Volume 16. Archived from the original (Internet Archive) on February 22, 2014. Retrieved May 12, 2011. Cited by Bogdan Musiał in: "Konterrevolutionäre Elemente sind zu erschiessen": Die Brutalisierung des deutsch-sowjetischen Krieges im Sommer 1941, (Berlin: Propyläen, 2000), pp. 32, 62. Also, cited in German archives of Birkner's postwar investigation at: Auswertung der Ereignismeldungen zu den Judenerschiessungen in Białystok im Juli 1941 in ZStL, 5 AR-Z 56/1960, pp. 4ff.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  7. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, Geoffrey P. Megargee, Martin C. Dean, and Mel Hecker, Volume II, part A, pages 943-944.
  8. https://www.jta.org/1976/11/23/archive/5-ex-nazis-sentenced-to-prison
  9. "Śledztwa zawieszone (Suspended investigations)". Instytut Pamięci Narodowej (Institute of National Remembrance), Warsaw. 9 November 2010. Retrieved May 17, 2011.
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