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Artur Wilke

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Nazi war criminal and SS Major
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Artur Fritz Wilke (1 February 1910 in Hohensalza – 11 May 1989 in Peine) was a Nazi war criminal and SS Major (sturmbannführer), which was convicted with murder of 6,600 Jews. After the war, Wilke assumed his deceased brother's identity and worked as a village school teacher in Stederdorf, today a district of the city of Peine in Lower Saxony, Germany for many years.

History

Wilke was born in Hohensalza/ Posen in 1910. After studying Protestant theology in Erlangen and Greifswald with Adolf Schlatter. According to historian Saul Friedländer in his Nazi Germany and the Jews 1939-1945, Schlatter belonged to a "hard core of Jew haters".

Wilke joined the Nazi party in 1931 and in 1932 he joined the SA, the Nazi party's paramilitary wing. During late 1938, he joined the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the intelligence agency of the SS. He was deployed with the Einsatzkommando's Sonderkommando 1005 (mobile killing squad) to Minsk, Belarus. In Minsk, he was appointed the Head of the Minsk anti-partisan center. As the German policy of the time was "All Jews are partisans and all partisans are Jews", he was chiefly responsible for the extermination of the Jews in Minsk and the region.

After the war in 1945, Wilke has gone into hiding and abandoned his first wife and three children. He assumed the identity of his deceased brother, Walter Wilke, and moved to Stederdorf. As Walter Wilke, he became the village's school teacher and remarried to the village doctor, Dr. Ursula Wilke. He was found and arrested in 1961.

Judgement

On 21 May 1963, he was sentenced by the Regional court in Koblenz for 10 years imprisonment for his "principal function" in six mass killing of at least 6,600 Jews. The conviction with the murder of 6,600 Jews out of many thousands came due to lack of information regarding those responsible specifically for the crimes in the region, even though the units participating were known. Eventually, he was convicted for his participation in the Slutsk affair and the liquidation of the Minsk Ghetto and the Pripyat Swamps operation. Wilke's diary, captured by the Red Army, and served as evidence in the trials, aided in his conviction. The diary included listing such as:

"Monday, February 8th 1943. 05:00, we start in the Ghetto for a very good stary, 1,300 Jews were extracted...later on, the region commander Karl decides to burn (300-400 more Jews come out of the bunkers" "Tuesday, March 9th 1943. The sun is shining, in the night I had that irritating scratch again"

In their judgement, the court judges wrote:

"Wilke is incapable of clear and straight thinking, he has a tendency to engage in escapes and excuses.". " fanatical and enthusiastic nationalist whose wrong-headed idealism was used and abused by the previous regime."

Wilke was released from prison in 1968, and died in 1989.

Further reading

  • The Mark of Cain: Guilt and Denial in the Post-War Lives of Nazi Perpetrators, Katharina von Kellenbach
  • Jürgen Gückel: Klassenfoto mit Massenmörder. Das Doppelleben des Artur Wilke – eine Geschichte über Kriegsverbrechen, Verdrängung und die Suche nach der historischen Wahrheit. Mit einem Nachwort von Peter Klein. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2019, ISBN 978-3-525-31114-1

References

  1. ^ Dr. DW de Mildt, Prof. Dr. CF Rüter. Justice and Nazi Crimes Volume XIX Proceedings 547 - 568 (1963 - 1964). Foundation for Research on National-Socialist Crimes, Amsterdam.
  2. ^ "פושע נאצי חוזר לכפר, ובמשך שנים כולם שותקים. ויום אחד, הכל משתנה". www.haaretz.co.il (in Hebrew). Retrieved 2020-04-21.
  3. ^ "Stederdorf: Gestapo-Massenmörder tarnte sich als Lehrer". PAZ-online.de (in German). Retrieved 2020-04-21.
  4. Friedländer, Saul, 1932- (2009). Nazi Germany and the Jews. Harper Perennial. pp. 165–166. ISBN 978-0-06-135027-6. OCLC 1102253175.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  5. Ingrao, Christian. (2013). The SS Dirlewanger Brigade : the history of the Black Hunters. Skyhorse Pub. ISBN 978-1-62087-631-2. OCLC 850856706.
  6. Blood, Philip W., 1957- (2008). Hitler's bandit hunters : the SS and the Nazi occupation of Europe. Potomac. ISBN 978-1-59797-157-7. OCLC 456331034.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  7. GELLATELY, ROBERT (2018), "Police Justice, Popular Justice, and Social Outsiders in Nazi Germany", Social Outsiders in Nazi Germany, Princeton University Press, pp. 256–272, doi:10.2307/j.ctv301hb7.14, ISBN 978-0-691-18835-5
  8. ^ "Stederdorf: Gestapo-Massenmörder tarnte sich als Lehrer". PAZ-online.de (in German). Retrieved 2020-04-20.
  9. ^ von Kellenbach, Katharina (2013-01-01). ""The Truth about the Mistake": Perpetrator Witness and the Intergenerational Transmission of Guilt". Historical Reflections / Réflexions Historiques. 39 (2). doi:10.3167/hrrh.2013.390203. ISSN 0315-7997.
  10. von Kellenbach, Katharina (2013-06-24). The Mark of Cain. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199937455.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-993745-5.
  11. "Justiz und NS-Verbrechen: Band 19 | Amsterdam University Press". www.aup.nl. Retrieved 2020-04-20.
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