Kurt Asche

Kurt Asche (11 October 1909 in Hamburg – May 1998) was SS-Obersturmführer and an officer in German-occupied Belgium.

Asche was appointed head of the Office of Jewish Affairs in occupied Belgium.[1] He was one of a number of these so-called "Jewish experts" sent by Adolf Eichmann to occupied countries and client states to take charge of deportation of the local Jewish populations.[2] He was involved in the Holocaust and, from 1942 to 1944, was responsible for the deportation of 26,000 Jews and Gypsies to Auschwitz.

Asche was eventually brought to trial in Kiel for his part in the 26,000 deaths. After a mammoth trial that lasted eighteen years Asche was eventually sentenced to seven years imprisonment in 1981. The perceived leniency of the sentence, as well as the fact that Asche was allowed to leave the court free following sentencing as the sentence had to be ratified, saw widespread condemnation.[3]

References
  1. Corry Guttstadt, Turkey, the Jews, and the Holocaust, Cambridge University Press, 2013, p. 315
  2. David Cesarani, Becoming Eichmann: Rethinking the Life, Crimes, and Trial of a "Desk Murderer", Random House, 2005, p. 137
  3. Bernard Wasserstein, Vanishing Diaspora: The Jews in Europe Since 1945, Harvard University Press, 1996, p. 112


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