By Ivor Markman

 

In 1995 I accompanied a group of Israeli Holocaust survivors to Munich, Germany, on a tour commemorating the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Dachau Concentration Camp.

 

While in the area we visited various sites connected to that horrible era.

 

One of the places we visited was the penal facility known as Landsberg Prison located in the town of Landsberg am Lech, 65 km west of Munich and 35 km south of Augsburg.

 

The prison was renamed Landsberg War Criminal Prison Nr 1 and was used by the Allies for the detention of Nazi war criminals after the Second World War.

 

The tour was taken through the prison cemetery and while the survivors and their families were wandering around inspecting the graves I noticed an extremely agitated group looking at a particular grave.

 

They stood there for a few minutes talking amongst themselves but I was unable to understand what they were saying.

 

Then they slowly just walked away.

 

My journalistic instinct told me they had found the grave of some notorious person but I was unable to establish who or what he did until very recently but I knew I should take a photograph.

 

This is what I now know about the man whose grave I photographed . . .

 

Dr Heinrich Schmitz (July 3, 1896 – November 26, 1948) was a German physician and doctor who worked in the Flossenburg concentration camp.

 

(Not to be confused with Dr Heinrich Schmidt, of Buchenwald notoriety.)

 

From 1932 until 1937 he was a member of the Nazi Party but was not a member of the feared SS.

 

After attempting suicide in June 1943, Schmitz was sterilized in accordance with Nazi policy.

 

The decision to do so was taken by the Erbgesundheitsobergerichtes (administrators of heredity health) who used the “Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring” law of 1933, which allowed for forced sterilizations.

 

After his attempted suicide the court justified the ruling by stating that he suffered from manic-depressive psychosis. 

 

The court ruled that there was "a time of pronounced manic restlessness and pathologically increased activity."

 

Based on these findings in September, 1943, Schmitz was found to be "completely unfit to serve in the Wehrmacht" and was discharged from military service.

 

After Schmitz contacted a former supervisor, SS physician Ernst-Robert Grawitz, who asked Reichsfuhrer SS (Empire-Leader of the SS) Heinrich Himmler if Dr. Schmitz could be used as a camp doctor to examine patients in one of the concentration camps.

 

Grawitz was head of the German Red Cross and was in charge of Nazi research to  "eradicate the perverted world of the homosexual" and attempt to "cure" homosexuality.

 

This research involved experimenting on Nazi concentration camp inmates and using them as human guinea pigs.

 

Himmler approved the posting.

 

Towards the end of the Second World War, as the Soviet Army advanced towards Berlin, Grawitz committed suicide with his family in his house in Babelsberg using hand grenades.

 

Schmitz, meanwhile, was hired as a civilian “doctor without appointment” at the Flossenburg concentration camp.

 

According to statements made by survivors after the war, when Schmitz arrived at the camp he began the “catastrophic phase of medical activity, medical failure and medical killing practice”.

 

He performed many unnecessary operations on prisoners which were not part of the conditions laid down by the SS pilot program but they were tolerated by his superiors at Flossenburg.

 

A translated prisoner statement read: "Dr.Schmitz carried out bodily operations but he also carried out amputations. 

 

"Once he even practiced a cranial operation without having the right instruments. 

 

"Sometimes he removed tissue and sent it to Erlangen for examination. 

 

"Approximately 50% of the operations carried out were unnecessary because negative results came back and thus no ulcer or something else was present".

 

A French prisoner doctor kept a secret book in which he recorded Schmitz’s operations.

 

According to this data Schmitz undertook 400 operations in six months of which 300 were amputations.

 

The record shows 250 of these patients died.

 

The prisoner physician stated Schmitz performed a further 14 operation of which 11 patients died.

 

The only reason Schmitz performed the operations was because “they were fun to do”.

 

During the autumn of 1944, Schmitz was involved in the selective killing of “incurably sick” patients in Flossenburg.

 

The head office of the SS Economy and Administration had called for these patients to be exterminated in a “medicinal way” but Schmitz indiscriminately, without any examinations, murdered prisoners by administering overdoses of phenol, Novocain or a Tuberculin preparation in a specially constructed room.

 

After the war, he admitted 70 prisoners had been killed with phenol but other witnesses stated the figure was closer to 300 dead.

 

At the end of September 1944, typhus broke out at Flossenburg.

 

Prisoner physicians diagnosed the disease but this was ignored by Schmitz and when a bacteriological examination confirmed an outbreak of typhus, Schmitz falsified the results.

 

Two hundred prisoners died of the infection but Schmitz said that this was “normal”.

 

Ironically Schmitz then contracted the disease and shortly after the end of the war he was arrested by American soldiers as he lay recuperating in Weiden hospital.

 

Schmitz was tried by a US military court, (File number 000-50-46-3) in what was known as the Dachau trials, starting on November 10, 1947.

 

He was found guilty and sentenced to death.

 

On December 12, 1947, he was executed in the Landsberg War Criminal Prison Nr 1.

 

Adolf Hitler was incarcerated in Landsberg for 264 days in 1924 after he was convicted of treason following the Munich Beer Hall Putsch in 1923.

 

While serving his sentence he dictated and wrote his book Mein Kampf (My Struggle) with the help of Rudolf Hess.

 

Nearly 300 condemned war criminals were executed at Landsberg prison of which 259 were hanged and 29 shot.

 

In May 1946, 28 former SS Guards from Dachau were hanged in a four-day period.

 

Bodies not claimed were buried in the cemetery beside the Spottingen Chapel.

 

On January 7, 1951, a group of Jewish protestors arrived at Landsberg and demanded the execution of 102 war criminals.

 

German protestors demanding amnesty for the condemned prisoners then began chanting the Nazi-era cry “Juden raus! Juden raus!” (“Jews out! Jews out!”) and proceeded to attack the Jewish protestors.

 

German historian Norbert Frei noted that most of the politicians who demanded amnesty for the condemned criminals at Landsberg later strongly supported the restoration of the death sentence.

 

It appeared as though the rally was in support of the Nazi war criminals rather than support of the abolition of the death sentence.

 

Another politician who spoke during the protest rallies outside Landsberg prison was Gebhard Seelos who said the prisoners of Landsberg were "beacons of the German Volk in their struggle for justice, peace and the reconciliation of nations".

 

He went on to compare the suffering of the condemned prisoners at Landsberg with that of the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust and argued that executing the criminals on death row at Landsberg would be an act every bit as "inhumane" as the Holocaust.

 

Seelos's disgusting speech drew loud applause from the crowd and Frei called the speech, with its claim that the war criminals facing execution at Landsberg were just as many victims as the Jews that they killed in the Holocaust, a "breathtaking" exercise in moral equivalence.

 

On January 2, 1951, the US High Commissioner for Germany, John J McCloy met the West German Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer.

 

Adenauer argued that the criminal’s status was a political question, not a legal question.

 

He further argued that should the criminals be executed the act would forever ruin any role the Federal Republic could play with regards to the Cold War.

 

Under very strong public pressure four weeks later McCloy agreed to have the sentences of the 28 condemned prisoners, from the Nuremberg and Dachau trials, reviewed.

 

Seven of the death sentences, “the worst of the worst”, were confirmed.

 

They were:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Throughout the first half of 1951, the Federal Republic continued to put pressure on McCloy to pardon the seven but they were all executed on June 7, 1951.

 

SOURCES: Wikipedia, as per links above.