Georg Heuser
Georg Heuser
Georg Heuser (1913-1989) was head of Department IV of the KdS or BdS Weissruthenien (= name for the area of today's Belarus) and one of the main perpetrators of Maly Trascjanec. He was directly involved in eight mass executions in which a total of 11,100 people lost their lives. The majority of these crimes took place immediately after the transport actions to Maly Trascjanec. When Heuser was not shooting himself, he commanded the firing squads or was responsible for the smooth distribution of ammunition.
Trial
A trial did not take place until almost 20 years later. Heuser initially went into hiding after the end of the war, and in later interrogations he concealed his former membership in the SS as well as his affiliation with Sonderkommando 1b4 (= task force for the implementation of the National Socialist racial ideology and genocide policy in Minsk) and the offices of the KdS or BdS in Minsk. Following his successful deception, he was able to make a career for himself in the criminal police, where he was promoted to head of the State Criminal Police Office (LKA) of Rhineland-Palatinate in 1958. In the meantime, an SS officer with the surname Häuser had been searched for in vain because of the investigations into the murder of Jews in Minsk.
Accordingly, the media attention was great when an indictment was brought. Heuser was considered popular and had made a name for himself as an investigator in the meantime. In the approximately 60 days of proceedings in Koblenz between October 1962 and May 1963, Heuser was the main defendant among eleven high-ranking members of the KdS Minsk office. In total, they were accused of the planned murder of over 31,000 people. The trial thus went down in history as the largest war crimes trial in the Federal Republic of Germany to date.
"His comrades from the time in Minsk, whom he saw again for the first time after twenty years in Koblenz in the court dock, still treated him as their boss. When they waited together in the antechamber of the courtroom for the proceedings to begin, he set the tone and gave out advice. And they listened to him - as they did back in Weissruthenia."[1]
Georg Heuser was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment for "crimes of joint accessory to murder as well as for a crime of accessory to manslaughter" in a total of 11,103 cases. The court considered him to be particularly responsible for the executions and found that it had been possible for Heuser to refuse the orders precisely thanks to his leadership position. The court did not consider participation in numerous other mass murders to have been proven beyond doubt.
Videos about the trial
- Watch the video on Heuser's sentencing here:
- Watch the video on the SS trial in Koblenz here:
Source:
[1] ZEIT-Magazin, Ausgabe Nr. 23/1963; https://www.zeit.de/1963/23/die-gehorsamen-moerder