Georg Heuser, SS-Obersturmführer

As head of Department V of the Office of the Commander of the Security Police (KdS) in Minsk, Georg Heuser (*27 February 1913 in Berlin, † 30 January 1989 in Koblenz) was a member of the "Sonderkommando 1005". He was thus significantly involved in the exhumation of mass graves in the Minsk area. He was not arrested for these crimes until 1958.

Portrait of Georg Heuser

Georg Albert Wilhelm Heuser was born on 27 February 1913 in Berlin. After elementary school, he attended high school and graduated in March 1932. From the summer semester of 1932, Heuser began studying law at the universities of Berlin, Königsberg and Prague and passed the first state examination in law in July 1936. Heuser left the preparatory service that had been taken up in the meantime and entered the service of the Berlin Criminal Police Department in December as a candidate for a detective inspector.¹

In the course of his police training, Georg Heuser went through all the specialist areas of the criminal police and also worked for the Security Service of the Reichsführer SS (SD). In May 1940 he completed the course to become a detective inspector in Berlin and graduated at the top of the course. In July 1941 he became a probationary detective inspector and in October 1941 he was appointed detective inspector.² In September 1941 Georg Heuser, who held the rank of SS officer (Obersturmführer), was ordered to the Einsatzgruppe A in Riga.

After a period of employment with the Sonderkommando 1b in Tosno (in present-day Russia), Heuser was sent to Minsk in November or December 1941 to the office of the Commander of the security police and the SD (KdS) Weissruthenien, later the office of the Commander of the security police and the SD Russland-Mitte and Weissruthenien (BdS), to which he belonged until the end of June 1944. In May 1942 Georg Heuser took over the leadership of Department IV of the KdS and in autumn 1943 Department N, which specialized in counter-espionage. From the summer of 1943 he belonged to "Sonderkommando 1005" and took part in the exhumation of mass graves in the Minsk area.³

From August 1944, Georg Heuser, who had meanwhile been appointed SS Hauptsturmführer, took over the leadership of Einsatzkommando 14 in Brünn and was active in fighting partisans. In March 1945, Heuser was assigned to the Krems/Danube area as the leader of a combat group.⁴ After Germany's capitulation, Heuser was initially able to avoid capture and prosecution. After stopovers in Goslar and Mutterstadt, where he held various positions as a lawyer and businessman, Georg Heuser moved to Ludwigshafen in 1949. In 1954, Georg Heuser was reinstated in the police service as an executive. In January 1955, he became head of the Criminal Investigation Department in Kaiserslautern.⁵

Service card of Georg Heuser

In July 1956, Heuser was transferred to the State Criminal Police Office (LKA) in Koblenz and became its deputy head. After his promotion to Criminal Councillor, a clear career step from the higher to the senior police civil service, he was appointed head of the agency in January 1958. In the meantime, the judiciary started an investigation against an officer named "Häuser". Through the statement of Erich Ehrlinger, Heuser's former superior in Minsk, the error was corrected and a search was now being made for Georg Heuser. On 14 July 1958, an arrest warrant was issued and Heuser was arrested. In the course of the interrogations by the judiciary and the police, Heuser denied the charges against him, but was heavily incriminated by witness statements.⁶