Oswald Poche
Oswald Poche (28 January 1908 – 22 September 1962) was chief of the Gestapo, (secret state police) of Nazi Germany in Frankfurt where he organized mass deportations of Jews to Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps. During the Second World War, he commanded Einsatzkommando 2 in the Soviet Union.
Life
[edit]Poche was born in Brandenburg an der Havel and joined the Nazi Party on 1 December 1930 (membership number 378,342).[1] He later joined the SS (member number 267,316) and reached the rank of SS-Obersturmbannführer on 30 January 1939.[2] He served in the Gestapo at the state police control center in Stettin (today, Szczecin) until March 1941.[3]
In March 1941, Poche was appointed chief of the Gestapo at the State Police Lindenstrasse Station in Frankfurt. He pursued the policy of Final Solution of the Jews in Frankfurt. Poche, by using the Gestapo power between 10 October 1941 and 24 September 1942, organized ten major deportations of about 10,000 Jews to Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps. Poche initiated together with the Chief of Department II, Superintendent Ernst Grosse, the emergency services for all these deportations. By fall 1942, the deportation of all Jews from Frankfurt was essentially complete. Oswald Poche as Gestapo chief of the Police Lindenstrasse Station used Grosse and Heinrich Baab to carry out his orders.[4]
From September 1943, he served as the successor to Reinhard Breder as the commander of Einsatzkommando 2, part of Einsatzgruppe A, during the war in the east against the Soviet Union. This task force had committed the 1941–42 mass murder of Jews and political commissars in the wake of Army Group North. In early 1944, a bomb attack by Soviet partisans severely wounded Poche. He returned to Frankfurt to recover with his wife and two sons. On 1 May 1944, he was appointed the Kommandeur der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD (KdS) in Tromsø, in the Reichskommissariat Norwegen where he remained almost until the war's end. In April 1945, Poche was at the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) office in Berlin. He escaped to Hamburg, and using false papers in the name of the brother of his wife, Koch, he was able to live with his family in Salzwedel, where he worked as a traveling salesman. He died in a hospital in Dannenberg.[5]
References
[edit]- ^ Bundesarchiv R 9361-VIII KARTEI/15960931
- ^ Dienstaltersliste der Schutzstaffel der NSDAP van 01.10.1942. p.10. Retrieved on 25 January 2017.
- ^ "metzgerfamily.org, House of Tears". Archived from the original on 2016-06-30. Retrieved 2016-06-09.
- ^ "German Court Sentences Ex-gestapo Officer to Life for Murder, Maltreatment of Jews". www.jta.org. April 6, 1950.
- ^ "Yad Vashem - Request Rejected". db.yadvashem.org.
Further reading
[edit]- Monica Kingreen (eds.): "After Kristallnacht". Jewish life and anti-Jewish policy in Frankfurt from 1938 to 1945 Campus Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1999, ISBN 3-593-36310-0.
- Ernst Klee: The Person Encyclopedia to the Third Reich. Fischer paperback publishing house, Frankfurt 2007 ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8, p 466. (entry to Poche, Oswald.)
- Susanne Meinl, Jutta Gemini: Legalized Robbery: the Looting of Jews in Nazi Germany by the Reich Finance Administration in Hesse. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt 2004 ISBN 3593376121, pp 479–482.
- Beate Meyer: Leeway Regional Jewish Representatives (1941-1945). In: Birthe Kundrus, Beate *Meyer (eds.): "The deportation of Jews from Germany: Plans Practice reactions 1938-1945". Wallenstein, Göttingen 2004, ISBN 3892447926, pp 68–73.
- Seniority List of Schutzstaffel of the NSDAP (Obersturmbannführer and Sturmbannführer), prior of 1 October 1944. SS personnel Main Office, Berlin 1944th
- Volker Eichler: The Judenreferat the Frankfurt Gestapo. In: Monica Kingreen (eds.): "After Kristallnacht". Campus Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1999, p 245.