Edward Roschmann
Encyclopedia
Eduard Roschmann alias "F(r)ederico Wagner" (or "Wegener") (b. 25 Nov. 1908, Graz
, Austria
; d. 8 Aug. 1977, Asunción
, Paraguay
) was a member of the Nazi SS organization
. He was commandant of the Riga ghetto
from January 1943 until the ghetto was closed in the fall of that year. He was responsible for numerous murders and other atrocities. As a result of a fictionalized portrayal of Roschmann in a novel by Frederick Forsyth
, and a subsequent movie in which he was played by Maximilian Schell
, Roschmann came be known as the "Butcher of Riga".
, in Austria
.
Roschmann was once a lawyer in Graz
, Austria
. He was the son of a brewery manager. He was reputed to have come from the Styria region of Austria, from a good family. From 1927 to 1934 Roschmann was a member of the Fatherland's Front, which in turn was part of the Austrian home guard ("Heimatschutz
"). From 1927 to 1934 Roschmann was associated with an organization called the "Steyr Homeland Protection Force." Roschmann spent six semesters at a university. In 1931 he was a brewery employee. In 1935 he joined the civil service. In 1938 he joined the Nazi party. In 1939 he joined the SS
. In January 1941 he was assigned to the Security Police
.
Starting from January 1941 Roschmann worked in at the Central Reich Security Office
, or RSHA (Reichssicherheitshauptamt). Within RSHA, Roschmann worked in the Security Service
, or SD (Sicherheitsdienst). Later, he worked in SD department IV, Gestapo
with the commander of the security police and SD (Kommander der Sicherheitsdienst und SD, or KdS) in Latvia
.
Within the SS Roschmann was assigned to the Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst
), often referred to by its German initials SD. Following the German occupation of Latvia in World War II, the SD established a presence in Latvia with the objective of killing all the Jews in the country. To this end, the SD established the Riga ghetto
.
murdered about 3,740 German, Austrian, and Czech Jews who had been deported to Latvia. The victims were mostly the elderly, the sick and infirm, and children. These people were tricked into believing they would be transported to a new and better camp facility at an area near Riga called Dünamünde. In fact no such facility existed, and the intent was to transport the victims to mass graves in the woods north of Riga and shoot them.
According to a survivor, Edith Wolff, Roschmann was one of a group of SS men who selected the persons for "transport" to Dünamünde. (Others in the selection group included Rudolf Lange
, Kurt Krause, Max Gymnich, Kurt R. Migge, Richard Nickel and Rudolf Seck
.) Wolff stated that only the "prominent people" made selections, and she was not sure whether Migge, Seck, or Nickel had picked anyone.
. (Differing ranks are supplied for Roschmann. According to Ezergailis and Kaufmann, Roschmann held the rank of SS-Unterscharführer
. According to Schneider, Roschmann was an SS-Obersturmführer
, a higher rank. Schneider mentions no promotion for Roschmann.)
Angrick and Klein name Roschmann among others as responsible for these individual murders. Historian Schneider, a survivor of the German ghetto, has stated that it is certain that Roschmann was a murderer, otherwise he never would have risen as high as he did in the SS. One documented murder committed by Roschmann, with his subordinates assisted by Scharführer
Max Gymnich and Kurt Migge, was that of Arthur Kaufmann, the 17 year old son of Max Kaufmann, who later came to write one of the first histories of the Holocaust in Latvia. Roschmann personally issued the order for this particular murder. Kaufmann himself described the murder, which occurred when both of them were housed outside the ghetto at the Sloka work camp, where among other things they were tasked with peat cutting:
Food for ghetto occupants was strictly rationed and generally inadequate. It was common for Jews assigned to work details to obtain and attempt to smuggle extra food into the ghetto. For this and other reasons, all returning work details were subject to search, although this was actually carried out only on a sporadic basis. When searches did occur, those smuggling food were forced to abandon it before it could be found on their person, which was a serious offense. Roschmann and his aide, Max Gymnich, accompanied by a trained attack dog, involved themselves in the details of the searches for contraband food, which included inspections of kitchens in the ghetto, again forcing people to discard food they had smuggled in, even when they were about to eat it. Survivor Nina Ungar related a similar incident at the Olaine peat bog work camp where Roschmann found 3 eggs on one of the Latvian Jews and had him shot immediately. Kaufmann describes an incident, possibly the same one referred to by Ungar, where Roschmann, during a visit to the Olaine work camp with Gymnich in 1943, found a singer named Karp with 5 eggs and had him shot immediately.
Roschmann, together with Krause, who, although no longer ghetto commandant, was close at hand as the commandant of the Salaspils concentration camp
, investigated a resistance plot among the Jews to store weapons at an old power magazine in Riga known as the Pulverturm. As a result, several hundred inmates were executed, whom Kaufmann described as "our best young people."
While ghetto commandant, Roschmann became involved with the work detail known as the Army Motor Park (Heereskraftpark). This was considered a favorable work assignment for Jews, as it involved skilled labor (vehicle mechanics) necessary for the German army, thus providing some protection from liquidation, and it also gave a number of opportunities to "organize" (that is, to buy, barter for, or steal) contraband food and other items. The Jews on the work detail benefited from the fact that the German in charge, Private First Class (Obergefreiter) Walter Eggers, was corrupt and wanted to use the Jews under his command to become rich. Consequently, better treatment could be had, at least for a time, by paying Eggers bribes. Roschmann heard rumors about the "good life", and attempted to prevent it by putting some of the workers into one of the prisons or transferring them to Kaiserwald concentration camp.
Roschmann himself was not above accepting bribes, or at least pretending to accept bribes. In one instance, a shoemaker whose two children had been incarcerated in the Riga prisons as a result of Roschmann's investigation of the weapon's incident, attempted to secure their release by paying Roschmann a large number of gold coins. Roschmann took the coins, but did not release the children.
Roschmann participated in the efforts of Sonderkommando 1005
to conceal the evidence of the Nazi crimes in Latvia by exhuming and burning the bodies of the victims of the numerous mass shootings in the Riga area. In the fall of 1943, Roschmann was made the chief of Kommando Stützpunkt, a work detail of prisoners which was given the task of digging up and burning the bodies of the tens of thousands of people whom the Nazis had shot and buried in the forests of Latvia. About every two weeks the men on the work detail were shot and replaced with a new set of inmates. Men for this commando were selected both from Kaiserwald concentration camp and from the few remaining people in the Riga ghetto
.
Historian Ezergailis states that one Hasselbach, an SS officer, was the commander of the Suetzpunkt commando, and does not mention Roschmann. As his source, Ezergailis cites a witness, Franz Leopold Schlesinger, who testified in the trial in West Germany of Viktors Arajs
in the late 1970s, almost 35 years later. Schlesinger in turn appears to have only "thought" Hasselbach was the commander.
Roschmann is sometimes described as the commandant of the Kaiserwald concentration camp, which was located on the north side of Riga. Kaufmann however gives the Kaiserwald commandant as an SS man named Sauer who held the rank of Obersturmbannführer
.
veteran, for the "crime" of having hidden money in his glove. A year later, when Roschmann was commandant, his widow and daughter requested of him that he allow them the Jewish custom of visiting the grave. Roschmann allowed the request. Historian Schneider, in describing this incident, characterized Roschmann as "that most peculiar SS man."
According to Schneider (a Riga ghetto survivor) on occasion, Roschmann would order food abandoned during searches for contraband to be sent to the ghetto hospital. Schneider particularly objected to Roschmann's modern image as the so-called "butcher of Riga". In this connection, it should be noted that up to the time of the publication of the Forsyth book in 1972, Herberts Cukurs
, a famous Latvian pilot, had been the person known as "the Butcher of Riga" as a result of his actions during the occupation of Latvia from 1941 to 1944. :
Other accounts assign a more malignant role to Roschmann. Historian Bernard Press, a Latvian Jew who was able to hide outside of Riga and avoid confinement in the ghetto, describes Krause, Gymnich and Roschmann as having engaged in random shootings of human beings. Press describes an incident where a woman was condemned to death for "illegal correspondence" with a friend in Germany. Roschmann had her confined in the Central Prison, where she was not in fact executed but released based on the recommendation of Krause, who had previously wanted the woman to become his mistress.
Max Michelson described Roschman, Rudolf Lange
and Kurt Krause as all being "notorious sadists." Michelson, a Riga ghetto survivor, described Roschmann:
Max Kaufmann, a survivor of Latvian ghetto, compared Roschmann to Krause, coming to a similar conclusion as Max Michelson:
to Danzig, taking with them several thousand concentration camp inmates, many of whom did not survive the voyage.
In 1945, Roschmann was arrested in Graz but later released. Roschmann concealed himself as an ordinary prisoner of war, and in so doing obtained a release from custody in 1947. After that however he became imprudent and visited his wife in Graz. He was recognized with the assistance of former concentration camp inmates and arrested by the British military police. Roschmann was sent to Dachau concentration camp which had been converted to an imprisonment camp for accused war criminals. Roschmann succeeded in escaping from this custody.
In 1948 Roschmann was able to flee Germany. He travelled first to Genoa
in Italy
, and from there to Argentina
by ship, on a pass supplied by the International Red Cross. Roschmann was assisted in this effort by Alois Hudal
, a strongly pro-Nazi bishop
of the Catholic church. Roschmann arrived in Argentina either on 10 February 1948 or 2 October 1948 (2/10/1948 or 10/2/1948, depending on date notation
used). He founded a wood import-export firm in Buenos Aires
. In 1955 Argentina Roschmann married, although he was not divorced from his first wife. His second wife left him in 1958; the marriage was later declared null and void. In 1968, under the name "Frederico Wagner" (sometimes seen as "Federico") he became a citizen of Argentina.
, and the murder of at least 800 children under the age of 10. However, the post-war Austrian legal system was ineffective in securing the return for trial of Austrians who had fled Europe, and no action was ever taken against Roschman based on this charge. In 1963, the district court in Hamburg
, West Germany
issued a warrant for the arrest of Roschmann. This would eventually prove a more serious threat to Roschmann.
of Roschmann to Germany to face charges of multiple murders of Jews during World War II. This was based on the request of the West German prosecutor's office in Hamburg. The request was repeated in May 1977. On July 5, 1977, the office of the President of Argentina issued a communiqué, which was published in the Argentine press, that the government of Argentina would consider the request even though there was no extradition treaty with West Germany. The communiqué was reported to be a surprise to both the Argentine Foreign Ministry and the West German embassy. The Argentine Foreign Embassy had not received a request that Roschmann be arrested. Roschmann was in fact still not under arrest at the time the communiqué was issued.
At that time, a number of Germans had been arrested by the Argentine government, then under military control, and were facing charges before military tribunals. The Argentine government had also failed to account for the death of a West German citizen in unusual circumstances, apparently related to the conduct of the so-called Dirty War
then being conducted by the Argentine government against alleged terrorists within the country. This was regarded by the West German government as a breach of international treaty obligations. In addition, the prominent Argentine journalist, Jacobo Timmerman, a Jew, had been arrested at that time and held incommunicado under circumstances which raised concern that he had been "subjected to ill-treatment" while in custody.
Roschmann then fled to Paraguay
.
The U.S. Embassy in Argentina sent a cable to the State Department which reported the situation and contained the following comment:
, Paraguay on August 8, 1977. His body was unclaimed at first and there was some question raised as to whether it was truly that of Roschmann. The West German embassy attempted to make a positive identification of the body, which according to a story in the Paraguayan newspaper ABC Color, bore papers in the name of "Federico Wegener", a known alias
of Roschmann's. The newspapers also reported that the body was missing two toes on one foot and three on the other, consistent with war injuries apparently sustained by Roschmann, and that his body had been identified by a man named Emilio Wolf, who had been a prisoner under Roschmann and who later came to be running a delicatessen
in Asuncion. Simon Wiesenthal
, then the head of the Jewish Documentation Center
, had been trying to have Roschmann brought to justice for a long time. Wiesenthal was skeptical that the body was truly that of Roschmann, saying "I wonder who died for him?"
's novel The Odessa File
. A film version
of the novel was released in 1974, where Roschmann was played by actor Maximilian Schell
. In the book and the movie, Roschmann is portrayed as a ruthlessly efficient killer. Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal
was portrayed in the film by actor Shmuel Rodensky. Wiesenthal himself also functioned as a "documentary advisor". Historian Schneider sharply disputes this fictionalized image of Roschmann. She describes this fiction novel as "lurid" and containing "many inaccuracies" Among the inaccuracies of Forsyth's fictional version of Roschmann are:
Researcher Matteo San Filippo, who studied the issue of the discrepancies between the fictional and the real Roschmann, gives the following analysis:
Wiesenthal himself, in his 1990 book Justice Not Vengeance, admitted that he had suggested, in response to Forsyth's inquiry, that Forsyth's book, and the later film, include fictional statements about Roschmann, and that he, Wiesenthal, had done so for the purpose of casting the light on Roschmann and forcing his arrest.
Graz
The more recent population figures do not give the whole picture as only people with principal residence status are counted and people with secondary residence status are not. Most of the people with secondary residence status in Graz are students...
, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
; d. 8 Aug. 1977, Asunción
Asunción
Asunción is the capital and largest city of Paraguay.The "Ciudad de Asunción" is an autonomous capital district not part of any department. The metropolitan area, called Gran Asunción, includes the cities of San Lorenzo, Fernando de la Mora, Lambaré, Luque, Mariano Roque Alonso, Ñemby, San...
, Paraguay
Paraguay
Paraguay , officially the Republic of Paraguay , is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to the east and northeast, and Bolivia to the northwest. Paraguay lies on both banks of the Paraguay River, which runs through the center of the...
) was a member of the Nazi SS organization
Schutzstaffel
The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...
. He was commandant of the Riga ghetto
Riga Ghetto
The Riga Ghetto was a small area in Maskavas Forštate, neighborhood of Riga, Latvia, designated by the Nazis where Jews from Latvia, and later from Germany, were forced to live during World War II. On October 25, 1941, the Nazis relocated all Jews from Riga and the vicinity to the ghetto while the...
from January 1943 until the ghetto was closed in the fall of that year. He was responsible for numerous murders and other atrocities. As a result of a fictionalized portrayal of Roschmann in a novel by Frederick Forsyth
Frederick Forsyth
Frederick Forsyth, CBE is an English author and occasional political commentator. He is best known for thrillers such as The Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File, The Fourth Protocol, The Dogs of War, The Devil's Alternative, The Fist of God, Icon, The Veteran, Avenger, The Afghan and The Cobra.-...
, and a subsequent movie in which he was played by Maximilian Schell
Maximilian Schell
Maximilian Schell is an Austrian-born Swiss actor who won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Judgment at Nuremberg in 1961...
, Roschmann came be known as the "Butcher of Riga".
Early life and career
Roschmann was born on November 25, 1908, in Graz-EggenbergGraz
The more recent population figures do not give the whole picture as only people with principal residence status are counted and people with secondary residence status are not. Most of the people with secondary residence status in Graz are students...
, in Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
.
Roschmann was once a lawyer in Graz
Graz
The more recent population figures do not give the whole picture as only people with principal residence status are counted and people with secondary residence status are not. Most of the people with secondary residence status in Graz are students...
, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
. He was the son of a brewery manager. He was reputed to have come from the Styria region of Austria, from a good family. From 1927 to 1934 Roschmann was a member of the Fatherland's Front, which in turn was part of the Austrian home guard ("Heimatschutz
Heimatschutz
Heimatschutz is a German word which literally translated means, "homeland protection."In 1916, Austrian Max Dvorak's Katechismus der DenkmalpfIege appeared...
"). From 1927 to 1934 Roschmann was associated with an organization called the "Steyr Homeland Protection Force." Roschmann spent six semesters at a university. In 1931 he was a brewery employee. In 1935 he joined the civil service. In 1938 he joined the Nazi party. In 1939 he joined the SS
Schutzstaffel
The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...
. In January 1941 he was assigned to the Security Police
Sicherheitspolizei
The Sicherheitspolizei , often abbreviated as SiPo, was a term used in Nazi Germany to describe the state political and criminal investigation security agencies. It was made up by the combined forces of the Gestapo and the Kripo between 1936 and 1939...
.
War crimes in Latvia
RSHA
The RSHA, or Reichssicherheitshauptamt was an organization subordinate to Heinrich Himmler in his dual capacities as Chef der Deutschen Polizei and Reichsführer-SS...
, or RSHA (Reichssicherheitshauptamt). Within RSHA, Roschmann worked in the Security Service
Sicherheitsdienst
Sicherheitsdienst , full title Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS, or SD, was the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. The organization was the first Nazi Party intelligence organization to be established and was often considered a "sister organization" with the...
, or SD (Sicherheitsdienst). Later, he worked in SD department IV, Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
with the commander of the security police and SD (Kommander der Sicherheitsdienst und SD, or KdS) in Latvia
Latvia
Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...
.
Within the SS Roschmann was assigned to the Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst
Sicherheitsdienst
Sicherheitsdienst , full title Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS, or SD, was the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. The organization was the first Nazi Party intelligence organization to be established and was often considered a "sister organization" with the...
), often referred to by its German initials SD. Following the German occupation of Latvia in World War II, the SD established a presence in Latvia with the objective of killing all the Jews in the country. To this end, the SD established the Riga ghetto
Riga Ghetto
The Riga Ghetto was a small area in Maskavas Forštate, neighborhood of Riga, Latvia, designated by the Nazis where Jews from Latvia, and later from Germany, were forced to live during World War II. On October 25, 1941, the Nazis relocated all Jews from Riga and the vicinity to the ghetto while the...
.
Structure of the Riga ghetto
The Riga ghetto did not exist prior to the occupation of Latvia by the German armed forces. Jews in general lived throughout Riga before then. The ghetto itself was a creation of the SD. Surrounded by barbed wire fences, with armed guards, it was in effect a large and overcrowded prison. Furthermore, while it is common to see the Riga ghetto referred to as single location, in fact it was only a unified prison for a very short time in the fall of 1941. After that it was split into three separate ghettos.- The first ghetto was the Latvian ghetto, sometimes called the "Big Ghetto". This ghetto was only in existence for 35 days, from late October to November 30, 1941. Men, women, and children were forced into the Latvian ghetto, where at least for a short time they lived as families. On November 30 and on December 8, 1941, a total 24,000 Jews were force-marched out of the ghetto, and shot at the nearby forest of RumbulaRumbula massacreThe Rumbula massacre was the two-day killing of about 25,000 Jews in and on the way to Rumbula forest near Riga, Latvia, during the Holocaust. Save only the Babi Yar massacre in Ukraine, this was the biggest two-day Holocaust atrocity until the operation of the death camps...
. Save for Babi YarBabi YarBabi Yar is a ravine in the Ukrainian capital Kiev and a site of a series of massacres carried out by the Nazis during their campaign against the Soviet Union. The most notorious and the best documented of these massacres took place on September 29–30, 1941, wherein 33,771 Jews were killed in a...
, this was the biggest two-day massacre in the Holocaust until the construction of the death camps in 1942. - A few thousand Latvian Jews, mostly men, who were not murdered at Rumbula, were confined to a much smaller area of the former Latvia ghetto. This became known as the men's ghetto;
- About 500 Latvian Jewish women, who were also not selected for murder, were similarly confined to an adjacent but separated smaller ghetto, known as the women's ghetto;
- A few days after the December 8 massacre, trainloads of Jews from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia began to arrive in Riga, where, with some important exceptions, they were housed in a portion of the former Latvian ghetto, which then became known as the German ghetto.
Participation in Dünamünde Action
In March 1942, the German authorities in charge of the Riga ghetto and the nearby Jungfernhof concentration campJungfernhof concentration camp
The Jungfernhof concentration camp was an improvised concentration camp in Latvia, at the Mazjumprava Manor, near the Šķirotava Railway Station about three or four kilometers from Riga...
murdered about 3,740 German, Austrian, and Czech Jews who had been deported to Latvia. The victims were mostly the elderly, the sick and infirm, and children. These people were tricked into believing they would be transported to a new and better camp facility at an area near Riga called Dünamünde. In fact no such facility existed, and the intent was to transport the victims to mass graves in the woods north of Riga and shoot them.
According to a survivor, Edith Wolff, Roschmann was one of a group of SS men who selected the persons for "transport" to Dünamünde. (Others in the selection group included Rudolf Lange
Rudolf Lange
Dr. Martin Franz Erwin Rudolf Lange was a prominent Nazi police official. He served as commander of the SD and SIPO in Riga, Latvia...
, Kurt Krause, Max Gymnich, Kurt R. Migge, Richard Nickel and Rudolf Seck
Rudolf Joachim Seck
Rudolf Joachim Seck was an SS Oberscharführer during World War II during the course of which he committed a large numbers of crimes against humanity, for which he was later sentenced to serve life in prison by a West German court.- Activities during World War II :Seck held the SS ranks of...
.) Wolff stated that only the "prominent people" made selections, and she was not sure whether Migge, Seck, or Nickel had picked anyone.
Appointment as ghetto commandant
Starting in January 1943, Roschmann become commandant of the Riga ghetto. His immediate predecessor was Kurt Krause. Survivors described Krause as "sadistic", "bloody" "monster" and "psychopath". Roschmann's methods differed from those of Krause. Unlike Krause, Roschmann did not execute offenders on the spot, but in most cases sent them to Riga's Central Prison. Whether this was a matter of having qualms about murder is not certain. Being sent to the prison was likely to be at best only a brief reprieve, as conditions there were brutal.Rank
At that time Roschmann held the relatively low rank of UnterscharführerUnterscharführer
Unterscharführer was a paramilitary rank of the Nazi Party used by the Schutzstaffel between 1934 and 1945. The SS rank was created after the Night of the Long Knives...
. (Differing ranks are supplied for Roschmann. According to Ezergailis and Kaufmann, Roschmann held the rank of SS-Unterscharführer
Unterscharführer
Unterscharführer was a paramilitary rank of the Nazi Party used by the Schutzstaffel between 1934 and 1945. The SS rank was created after the Night of the Long Knives...
. According to Schneider, Roschmann was an SS-Obersturmführer
Obersturmführer
Obersturmführer was a paramilitary rank of the Nazi party that was used by the SS and also as a rank of the SA. Translated as “Senior Assault Leader”, the rank of Obersturmführer was first created in 1932 as the result of an expansion of the Sturmabteilung and the need for an additional rank in...
, a higher rank. Schneider mentions no promotion for Roschmann.)
Murders and other crimes
Historians Angrick and Klein state that in addition to the mass killings the Holocaust in Latvia also consisted of a great number of individual murders.Angrick and Klein name Roschmann among others as responsible for these individual murders. Historian Schneider, a survivor of the German ghetto, has stated that it is certain that Roschmann was a murderer, otherwise he never would have risen as high as he did in the SS. One documented murder committed by Roschmann, with his subordinates assisted by Scharführer
Scharführer
Scharführer was a Nazi Party title that was used by several paramilitary organizations from 1925 to 1945. Translated as “Squad Leader”, the title of Scharführer can trace its origins to the First World War, where a Scharführer was often a Sergeant or Corporal who commanded special action or shock...
Max Gymnich and Kurt Migge, was that of Arthur Kaufmann, the 17 year old son of Max Kaufmann, who later came to write one of the first histories of the Holocaust in Latvia. Roschmann personally issued the order for this particular murder. Kaufmann himself described the murder, which occurred when both of them were housed outside the ghetto at the Sloka work camp, where among other things they were tasked with peat cutting:
Food for ghetto occupants was strictly rationed and generally inadequate. It was common for Jews assigned to work details to obtain and attempt to smuggle extra food into the ghetto. For this and other reasons, all returning work details were subject to search, although this was actually carried out only on a sporadic basis. When searches did occur, those smuggling food were forced to abandon it before it could be found on their person, which was a serious offense. Roschmann and his aide, Max Gymnich, accompanied by a trained attack dog, involved themselves in the details of the searches for contraband food, which included inspections of kitchens in the ghetto, again forcing people to discard food they had smuggled in, even when they were about to eat it. Survivor Nina Ungar related a similar incident at the Olaine peat bog work camp where Roschmann found 3 eggs on one of the Latvian Jews and had him shot immediately. Kaufmann describes an incident, possibly the same one referred to by Ungar, where Roschmann, during a visit to the Olaine work camp with Gymnich in 1943, found a singer named Karp with 5 eggs and had him shot immediately.
Roschmann, together with Krause, who, although no longer ghetto commandant, was close at hand as the commandant of the Salaspils concentration camp
Salaspils concentration camp
Salaspils concentration camp was established at the end of 1941 at a point 18 km southeast of Riga . The Nazi bureaucracy drew distinctions between different types of camps. Officially, Salaspils was a Police Prison and Work Education Camp...
, investigated a resistance plot among the Jews to store weapons at an old power magazine in Riga known as the Pulverturm. As a result, several hundred inmates were executed, whom Kaufmann described as "our best young people."
While ghetto commandant, Roschmann became involved with the work detail known as the Army Motor Park (Heereskraftpark). This was considered a favorable work assignment for Jews, as it involved skilled labor (vehicle mechanics) necessary for the German army, thus providing some protection from liquidation, and it also gave a number of opportunities to "organize" (that is, to buy, barter for, or steal) contraband food and other items. The Jews on the work detail benefited from the fact that the German in charge, Private First Class (Obergefreiter) Walter Eggers, was corrupt and wanted to use the Jews under his command to become rich. Consequently, better treatment could be had, at least for a time, by paying Eggers bribes. Roschmann heard rumors about the "good life", and attempted to prevent it by putting some of the workers into one of the prisons or transferring them to Kaiserwald concentration camp.
Roschmann himself was not above accepting bribes, or at least pretending to accept bribes. In one instance, a shoemaker whose two children had been incarcerated in the Riga prisons as a result of Roschmann's investigation of the weapon's incident, attempted to secure their release by paying Roschmann a large number of gold coins. Roschmann took the coins, but did not release the children.
Actions outside of the ghetto
Roschmann was later transferred to the Lenta work camp, a forced-labor facility in the Riga area where Jews were housed at the workplace. Originally the Lenta facility had been located on Liela Maskavas street in Riga and had been known as the "Gestapo" work detail. Lenta was considered a favored work assignment. The original German commandant, one Scherwitz, had determined to make a lot of money involving the work of highly skilled Jews in the tailoring trade. Scherwitz made efforts to protect Jews in the Lenta work detail. This changed when Roschmann became the Lenta commandant. According to Kaufmann:Roschmann participated in the efforts of Sonderkommando 1005
Sonderaktion 1005
The Sonderaktion 1005, also called Aktion 1005, or Enterdungsaktion was conducted during World War II to hide any evidence that millions of people had been murdered by Nazi Germany in Aktion Reinhard in occupied Poland....
to conceal the evidence of the Nazi crimes in Latvia by exhuming and burning the bodies of the victims of the numerous mass shootings in the Riga area. In the fall of 1943, Roschmann was made the chief of Kommando Stützpunkt, a work detail of prisoners which was given the task of digging up and burning the bodies of the tens of thousands of people whom the Nazis had shot and buried in the forests of Latvia. About every two weeks the men on the work detail were shot and replaced with a new set of inmates. Men for this commando were selected both from Kaiserwald concentration camp and from the few remaining people in the Riga ghetto
Riga Ghetto
The Riga Ghetto was a small area in Maskavas Forštate, neighborhood of Riga, Latvia, designated by the Nazis where Jews from Latvia, and later from Germany, were forced to live during World War II. On October 25, 1941, the Nazis relocated all Jews from Riga and the vicinity to the ghetto while the...
.
Historian Ezergailis states that one Hasselbach, an SS officer, was the commander of the Suetzpunkt commando, and does not mention Roschmann. As his source, Ezergailis cites a witness, Franz Leopold Schlesinger, who testified in the trial in West Germany of Viktors Arajs
Viktors Arājs
Viktors Arājs was a Latvian collaborator and Nazi SS officer, who took part in the Holocaust during the German occupation of Latvia and Belarus as the leader of the Arājs Kommando...
in the late 1970s, almost 35 years later. Schlesinger in turn appears to have only "thought" Hasselbach was the commander.
Roschmann is sometimes described as the commandant of the Kaiserwald concentration camp, which was located on the north side of Riga. Kaufmann however gives the Kaiserwald commandant as an SS man named Sauer who held the rank of Obersturmbannführer
Obersturmbannführer
Obersturmbannführer was a paramilitary Nazi Party rank used by both the SA and the SS. It was created in May 1933 to fill the need for an additional field grade officer rank above Sturmbannführer as the SA expanded. It became an SS rank at the same time...
.
Character
According to Gertrude Schneider, Roschmann was clearly a murderer, but was not uniformly cruel. She records an instance where Krause, Roschmann's predecessor as commandant, had executed Johann Weiss, a lawyer from Vienna, and a World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
veteran, for the "crime" of having hidden money in his glove. A year later, when Roschmann was commandant, his widow and daughter requested of him that he allow them the Jewish custom of visiting the grave. Roschmann allowed the request. Historian Schneider, in describing this incident, characterized Roschmann as "that most peculiar SS man."
According to Schneider (a Riga ghetto survivor) on occasion, Roschmann would order food abandoned during searches for contraband to be sent to the ghetto hospital. Schneider particularly objected to Roschmann's modern image as the so-called "butcher of Riga". In this connection, it should be noted that up to the time of the publication of the Forsyth book in 1972, Herberts Cukurs
Herberts Cukurs
Herberts Cukurs was a Latvian aviator. He was a member of the notorious Arajs Kommando and was involved in murders of Latvian Jews as part of the Holocaust but he never stood trial. There are eyewitness accounts linking Cukurs to war crimes...
, a famous Latvian pilot, had been the person known as "the Butcher of Riga" as a result of his actions during the occupation of Latvia from 1941 to 1944. :
Other accounts assign a more malignant role to Roschmann. Historian Bernard Press, a Latvian Jew who was able to hide outside of Riga and avoid confinement in the ghetto, describes Krause, Gymnich and Roschmann as having engaged in random shootings of human beings. Press describes an incident where a woman was condemned to death for "illegal correspondence" with a friend in Germany. Roschmann had her confined in the Central Prison, where she was not in fact executed but released based on the recommendation of Krause, who had previously wanted the woman to become his mistress.
Max Michelson described Roschman, Rudolf Lange
Rudolf Lange
Dr. Martin Franz Erwin Rudolf Lange was a prominent Nazi police official. He served as commander of the SD and SIPO in Riga, Latvia...
and Kurt Krause as all being "notorious sadists." Michelson, a Riga ghetto survivor, described Roschmann:
Max Kaufmann, a survivor of Latvian ghetto, compared Roschmann to Krause, coming to a similar conclusion as Max Michelson:
Flight from Latvia
In October 1944, out of fear of the approaching Soviet armies, the SS personnel of the concentration camp system in Latvia fled the country by sea from Riga or LiepājaLiepaja
Liepāja ; ), is a republican city in western Latvia, located on the Baltic Sea directly at 21°E. It is the largest city in the Kurzeme Region of Latvia, the third largest city in Latvia after Riga and Daugavpils and an important ice-free port...
to Danzig, taking with them several thousand concentration camp inmates, many of whom did not survive the voyage.
Escape to Argentina
In 1948 Roschmann was able to flee Germany. He travelled first to Genoa
Genoa
Genoa |Ligurian]] Zena ; Latin and, archaically, English Genua) is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria....
in Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, and from there to Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
by ship, on a pass supplied by the International Red Cross. Roschmann was assisted in this effort by Alois Hudal
Alois Hudal
Alois Hudal was a Rome-based bishop of Austrian descent. He was for thirty years head of the small Austrian-German congregation of Santa Maria dell'Anima in Rome and until 1937, an influential representative of the Austrian Church...
, a strongly pro-Nazi bishop
Bishop
A bishop is an ordained or consecrated member of the Christian clergy who is generally entrusted with a position of authority and oversight. Within the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox Churches, in the Assyrian Church of the East, in the Independent Catholic Churches, and in the...
of the Catholic church. Roschmann arrived in Argentina either on 10 February 1948 or 2 October 1948 (2/10/1948 or 10/2/1948, depending on date notation
Date and time notation by country
Different conventions exist around the world for date and time representation, both written and spoken.- Differences :Differences can exist in:*The calendar that is used.*The order in which the year, month and day are represented....
used). He founded a wood import-export firm in Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
. In 1955 Argentina Roschmann married, although he was not divorced from his first wife. His second wife left him in 1958; the marriage was later declared null and void. In 1968, under the name "Frederico Wagner" (sometimes seen as "Federico") he became a citizen of Argentina.
Criminal charges
In 1959 a warrant was issued in Germany for him on a charge of bigamy. In 1960, the criminal court in Graz issued a warrant for the arrest of Roschmann on charges of murder and severe violations of human rights in connection with the killing of at least 3,000 Jews between 1938 and 1945, overseeing forced laborers at AuschwitzAuschwitz concentration camp
Concentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...
, and the murder of at least 800 children under the age of 10. However, the post-war Austrian legal system was ineffective in securing the return for trial of Austrians who had fled Europe, and no action was ever taken against Roschman based on this charge. In 1963, the district court in Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
, West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
issued a warrant for the arrest of Roschmann. This would eventually prove a more serious threat to Roschmann.
Extradition negotiations
In October 1976, the embassy of West Germany in Argentina initiated a request for the extraditionExtradition
Extradition is the official process whereby one nation or state surrenders a suspected or convicted criminal to another nation or state. Between nation states, extradition is regulated by treaties...
of Roschmann to Germany to face charges of multiple murders of Jews during World War II. This was based on the request of the West German prosecutor's office in Hamburg. The request was repeated in May 1977. On July 5, 1977, the office of the President of Argentina issued a communiqué, which was published in the Argentine press, that the government of Argentina would consider the request even though there was no extradition treaty with West Germany. The communiqué was reported to be a surprise to both the Argentine Foreign Ministry and the West German embassy. The Argentine Foreign Embassy had not received a request that Roschmann be arrested. Roschmann was in fact still not under arrest at the time the communiqué was issued.
At that time, a number of Germans had been arrested by the Argentine government, then under military control, and were facing charges before military tribunals. The Argentine government had also failed to account for the death of a West German citizen in unusual circumstances, apparently related to the conduct of the so-called Dirty War
Dirty War
The Dirty War was a period of state-sponsored violence in Argentina from 1976 until 1983. Victims of the violence included several thousand left-wing activists, including trade unionists, students, journalists, Marxists, Peronist guerrillas and alleged sympathizers, either proved or suspected...
then being conducted by the Argentine government against alleged terrorists within the country. This was regarded by the West German government as a breach of international treaty obligations. In addition, the prominent Argentine journalist, Jacobo Timmerman, a Jew, had been arrested at that time and held incommunicado under circumstances which raised concern that he had been "subjected to ill-treatment" while in custody.
Roschmann then fled to Paraguay
Paraguay
Paraguay , officially the Republic of Paraguay , is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to the east and northeast, and Bolivia to the northwest. Paraguay lies on both banks of the Paraguay River, which runs through the center of the...
.
The U.S. Embassy in Argentina sent a cable to the State Department which reported the situation and contained the following comment:
Death
Roschmann died in AsuncionAsunción
Asunción is the capital and largest city of Paraguay.The "Ciudad de Asunción" is an autonomous capital district not part of any department. The metropolitan area, called Gran Asunción, includes the cities of San Lorenzo, Fernando de la Mora, Lambaré, Luque, Mariano Roque Alonso, Ñemby, San...
, Paraguay on August 8, 1977. His body was unclaimed at first and there was some question raised as to whether it was truly that of Roschmann. The West German embassy attempted to make a positive identification of the body, which according to a story in the Paraguayan newspaper ABC Color, bore papers in the name of "Federico Wegener", a known alias
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
of Roschmann's. The newspapers also reported that the body was missing two toes on one foot and three on the other, consistent with war injuries apparently sustained by Roschmann, and that his body had been identified by a man named Emilio Wolf, who had been a prisoner under Roschmann and who later came to be running a delicatessen
Delicatessen
Delicatessen is a term meaning "delicacies" or "fine foods". The word entered English via German,with the old German spelling , plural of Delikatesse "delicacy", ultimately from Latin delicatus....
in Asuncion. Simon Wiesenthal
Simon Wiesenthal
Simon Wiesenthal KBE was an Austrian Holocaust survivor who became famous after World War II for his work as a Nazi hunter....
, then the head of the Jewish Documentation Center
Jewish Documentation Center
The Jewish Documentation Centre was an office headed by Simon Wiesenthal in Vienna, it still operates today. The Centre collected and promulgated information with regards to war crimes, specific mainly to crimes against the Jewish people as perpetrated by the Nazi Regime in Europe during the...
, had been trying to have Roschmann brought to justice for a long time. Wiesenthal was skeptical that the body was truly that of Roschmann, saying "I wonder who died for him?"
Fictional portrayal
A fictionalized version of Roschmann was given in Frederick ForsythFrederick Forsyth
Frederick Forsyth, CBE is an English author and occasional political commentator. He is best known for thrillers such as The Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File, The Fourth Protocol, The Dogs of War, The Devil's Alternative, The Fist of God, Icon, The Veteran, Avenger, The Afghan and The Cobra.-...
's novel The Odessa File
The Odessa File
The Odessa File is a thriller by Frederick Forsyth, first published in 1972, about the adventures of a young German reporter attempting to discover the location of a former SS concentration-camp commander....
. A film version
The ODESSA File (film)
The Odessa File is a 1974 film adaptation of the thriller novel by Frederick Forsyth, about a struggle between a young German reporter and the ODESSA, an organization for ex-Nazis. The film stars Jon Voight and was directed by Ronald Neame, with a score by Andrew Lloyd Webber.- Plot :The plot opens...
of the novel was released in 1974, where Roschmann was played by actor Maximilian Schell
Maximilian Schell
Maximilian Schell is an Austrian-born Swiss actor who won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Judgment at Nuremberg in 1961...
. In the book and the movie, Roschmann is portrayed as a ruthlessly efficient killer. Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal
Simon Wiesenthal
Simon Wiesenthal KBE was an Austrian Holocaust survivor who became famous after World War II for his work as a Nazi hunter....
was portrayed in the film by actor Shmuel Rodensky. Wiesenthal himself also functioned as a "documentary advisor". Historian Schneider sharply disputes this fictionalized image of Roschmann. She describes this fiction novel as "lurid" and containing "many inaccuracies" Among the inaccuracies of Forsyth's fictional version of Roschmann are:
- Roschmann never murdered a WehrmachtWehrmachtThe Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...
captain at the Latvian port of Liepāja to force his way onto an evacuation ship; - No mention is made of Rudolf LangeRudolf LangeDr. Martin Franz Erwin Rudolf Lange was a prominent Nazi police official. He served as commander of the SD and SIPO in Riga, Latvia...
, whom Schneider describes as the real Butcher of Riga; - Krause is portrayed as Roschmann's deputy, rather than as his predecessor.
- Alois Hudal is incorrectly identified as the "German apostolic nuncio" and a cardinal.
- Roschmann is described as having been sheltered in a "big" Franciscan convent in Genoa which apparently never existed;
- In the book, ODESSA is portrayed as having purchased 7,000 Argentinian passports for people like Roschmann. No explanation is given for why, if this were so, Roschmann would need a travel document from the International Red Cross.
Researcher Matteo San Filippo, who studied the issue of the discrepancies between the fictional and the real Roschmann, gives the following analysis:
Wiesenthal himself, in his 1990 book Justice Not Vengeance, admitted that he had suggested, in response to Forsyth's inquiry, that Forsyth's book, and the later film, include fictional statements about Roschmann, and that he, Wiesenthal, had done so for the purpose of casting the light on Roschmann and forcing his arrest.
Further reading
- Katz, Josef, One Who Came Back, University of Wisconsin Press, (2nd Ed. 2006) ISBN 978-1928755074
- Wiesenthal, Justice, Not Vengeance, Mandarin Publishing (1990) ISBN 0749302658
External links
- Dribins, Leo, Gūtmanis, Armands, and Vestermanis, Marģers, "Latvia's Jewish Community: History, Trajedy, Revival", Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Latvia Scheffler, Wolfgang, "Zur Geschichte der Deportation jüdischer Bürger nach Riga 1941/1942", Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e.V. – 23.05.2000