Frankenstein of the Warsaw Ghetto : the life of SS-Rottenführer Josef Blösche
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Taken in April 1943, in
Taken in April 1943, in the Warsaw Ghetto, this is one of the most famous photographs of WW2. The little Jewish boy with his hands in the air as the SS forces people out of a building and to assemble outside. I do not know, nor think that there is any reliable identification as to the identity of the boy and furthermore very much doubt that he survived. However some people in those photograph have been named and one person who did survive was the SS guard seen to the right of the picture. This is Rottenführer Josef Blösche and indeed we see him in several photographs from the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, probably because of how well he knew Jurgen Stroop.
This video will give a short overview of his life, explaining where he came from, his war time career and what happened to him after the war.
Josef Blösche came from Friedland in Böhmen which is today Frýdlant v Čechách. He was born on 5 February 1912. Friedland was a small town with around 3.500 inhabitants, so I presume that he would have known as a boy Rudolf Beer, future SS officer at Auschwitz and Ravensbrück as there was only one year that separated them.
After the occupation of the Sudentenland by Nazi Germany, Blösche joined the Nazi party and the SS Security Service (SD). From December 1939 he attended the border police school of the SS and the Gestapo in Pretzsch, at least part of the training here was for those whose duty it was to follow behind the Wehrmacht in territory recently occupied.
In March 1940, Blösche was transferred to Warsaw, where he was initially employed to transport furniture to a branch of the SD main office. In the summer of 1940, he was transferred to Platerów, 120 kilometers east of Warsaw near the then Soviet border in occupied Poland.
From August 1941, Blösche was assigned to an Einsatzgruppe that carried out murders behind the lines as the Wehrmacht advanced into the Soviet Union. In October 1941 he returned to Warsaw, where he was placed under the command of Ludwig Hahn who was the head of the Security Police and Security Service for the Warsaw District and he thus became a member of Department IV of the local Gestapo. Blösche's task was to arrest suspects in Warsaw and to facilitate their transportation from prison to interrogation by the Gestapo.
In the summer of 1942, Blösche was transferred to the SD branch in the Warsaw Ghetto, probably because of the foreseen requirement to have staff for the large deportations to Treblinka. Terror was used during deportations as it became clear that people were not coming back, and thus Blösche and other SD men also carried out shootings indiscriminately. His job also included searching buildings that had already been cleared for hidden or abandoned people and murdering them on the spot.
Blösche has been given the name "Frankenstein" and "Fleischer" (that is to say butcher) by the ghetto inhabitants. There is at least one other ‘Frankenstein’ that I know of who was a guard and I don’t think that the two were the same person although I could be mistaken. He was noted for riding through the ghetto, entering at ul. Zamenhofa or Gęsia and leaving near the Umschlagplatz on his bicycle with his friend Heinrich Klaustermayer and would habitually kill someone with his pistol, the holster of which was always open. A witness said the first time he came across him, was when Blösche asked a man waiting in a queue at a ghetto hospital why he was there, the reply was that he needed some medicine. Blösche said that he would give him all the medicine he needed, took the victim to the nearby cemetery and shot him. Any excuse was good enough for murder – shoes not laced correctly, not answering the door quickly enough, not being sufficiently far when Blösche rode his bicycle. Blösche was only a Rottenfuehrer, a senior corporal, but he could come and go as he pleased within the ghetto because he was in the SD. When he came into the ghetto, inmates would run like rabbits, so much was he feared.
When the Nazis attempted to liquidate the Warsaw Ghetto from 19 April 1943, they were met with armed resistance. Blösche participated, he claimed to have shot 75 of the approximately 600 victims of the massacre on the first day of the uprising.
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Production of independent researched history is time consuming and expensive. Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Patreon: alanheath
Further information :
http://www.heribert-schwan.de/werke/d...
Heribert Schwan: Der SS-Mann. Josef Blösche – Leben und Sterben eines Mörders (out of print)
Joachim Jahns: Der Warschauer Ghettokönig.
Andreas Mix : Das Ghetto vor Gericht. Zwei Strafprozesse gegen Exzeßtäter aus dem Warschauer Ghetto vor bundesdeutschen und DDR-Gerichten im Vergleich. (available on internet)
Dick W. de Mildt and Christiaan F. Rüter : DDR-Justiz und NS-Verbrechen (available from publisher)
.
This video will give a short overview of his life, explaining where he came from, his war time career and what happened to him after the war.
Josef Blösche came from Friedland in Böhmen which is today Frýdlant v Čechách. He was born on 5 February 1912. Friedland was a small town with around 3.500 inhabitants, so I presume that he would have known as a boy Rudolf Beer, future SS officer at Auschwitz and Ravensbrück as there was only one year that separated them.
After the occupation of the Sudentenland by Nazi Germany, Blösche joined the Nazi party and the SS Security Service (SD). From December 1939 he attended the border police school of the SS and the Gestapo in Pretzsch, at least part of the training here was for those whose duty it was to follow behind the Wehrmacht in territory recently occupied.
In March 1940, Blösche was transferred to Warsaw, where he was initially employed to transport furniture to a branch of the SD main office. In the summer of 1940, he was transferred to Platerów, 120 kilometers east of Warsaw near the then Soviet border in occupied Poland.
From August 1941, Blösche was assigned to an Einsatzgruppe that carried out murders behind the lines as the Wehrmacht advanced into the Soviet Union. In October 1941 he returned to Warsaw, where he was placed under the command of Ludwig Hahn who was the head of the Security Police and Security Service for the Warsaw District and he thus became a member of Department IV of the local Gestapo. Blösche's task was to arrest suspects in Warsaw and to facilitate their transportation from prison to interrogation by the Gestapo.
In the summer of 1942, Blösche was transferred to the SD branch in the Warsaw Ghetto, probably because of the foreseen requirement to have staff for the large deportations to Treblinka. Terror was used during deportations as it became clear that people were not coming back, and thus Blösche and other SD men also carried out shootings indiscriminately. His job also included searching buildings that had already been cleared for hidden or abandoned people and murdering them on the spot.
Blösche has been given the name "Frankenstein" and "Fleischer" (that is to say butcher) by the ghetto inhabitants. There is at least one other ‘Frankenstein’ that I know of who was a guard and I don’t think that the two were the same person although I could be mistaken. He was noted for riding through the ghetto, entering at ul. Zamenhofa or Gęsia and leaving near the Umschlagplatz on his bicycle with his friend Heinrich Klaustermayer and would habitually kill someone with his pistol, the holster of which was always open. A witness said the first time he came across him, was when Blösche asked a man waiting in a queue at a ghetto hospital why he was there, the reply was that he needed some medicine. Blösche said that he would give him all the medicine he needed, took the victim to the nearby cemetery and shot him. Any excuse was good enough for murder – shoes not laced correctly, not answering the door quickly enough, not being sufficiently far when Blösche rode his bicycle. Blösche was only a Rottenfuehrer, a senior corporal, but he could come and go as he pleased within the ghetto because he was in the SD. When he came into the ghetto, inmates would run like rabbits, so much was he feared.
When the Nazis attempted to liquidate the Warsaw Ghetto from 19 April 1943, they were met with armed resistance. Blösche participated, he claimed to have shot 75 of the approximately 600 victims of the massacre on the first day of the uprising.
Facebook: historysite
Production of independent researched history is time consuming and expensive. Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Patreon: alanheath
Further information :
http://www.heribert-schwan.de/werke/d...
Heribert Schwan: Der SS-Mann. Josef Blösche – Leben und Sterben eines Mörders (out of print)
Joachim Jahns: Der Warschauer Ghettokönig.
Andreas Mix : Das Ghetto vor Gericht. Zwei Strafprozesse gegen Exzeßtäter aus dem Warschauer Ghetto vor bundesdeutschen und DDR-Gerichten im Vergleich. (available on internet)
Dick W. de Mildt and Christiaan F. Rüter : DDR-Justiz und NS-Verbrechen (available from publisher)
.
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در تاریخ 1399/01/23 منتشر شده
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