Head of the Munich Gestapo. Oswald Schäffer. Part Two.

Earlier, we saw that Lisette Schaeffer, a ninety year old woman was murdered in Sanremo in 2001, leaving around EUR10m in cash and assets in various countries. We saw that her brother, Oswald Schäfer, who was two years older than she was, studied to become a lawyer and then got a job with the Reich Security Main Office and how his career was propelled by Werner Best, who was second in command of the SD to Reinhard Heydrich. This led him to being the head of the Gestapo at Wesermunde – Bremehaven and Reichensberg in occupied Czechia before being sent to the east to mass murder Jews and others in the occupied Soviet Union as the CO of EK9. We take up this story in the Spring of 1942, when Oswald Schaeffer was posted away from EK9, to take up a new position in Munich.
From 20 December 1941 to the beginning of February 1942, Schäfer was a substitute inspector of the security police and the SD in Munich – although this job had to wait as he was in the occupied Soviet Union murdering people. However shortly after his return, Schäfer was appointed head of the Munich Gestapo Control Center by the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) in March 1942 and held this position until 1945. This move was clearly a promotion for Schäfer.
One of the duties of the Gestapo was to oversee the arrest and deportation of Jews. As far as Schäfer and the Munich Gestapo were concerned, the following was the procedure. The Gestapo forced Munich’s Jewish community to assist with organizing the transports. A card index with the names and addresses of all Munich’s Jews existed in triplicate at the Aryanization department, the office of the Jewish community and at Munich’s Gestapo headquarters. This index was used to assemble the different transports. The Gestapo determined the criteria of the transports based upon age, ability to work and other factors. About a week before the planned transport, the Gestapo instructed the Jewish community to inform the victims of their forthcoming “evacuation” to Theresienstadt. The community also had to finance the transports, provide food for the deportees and pay helpers to deal with the luggage. One or two days before the deportation, the deportees who were not yet living in the Milbertshofen assembly camp were picked up from their apartments by the Gestapo in large, closed removal vans and taken to the assembly camp. This usually took place during the night or in the early morning. In Milbertshofen they stayed for a day or two. They were searched and their last valuables were confiscated. The deportees had to endure bureaucratic procedures and undergo the final stages of expropriation. Their declarations of property were collected and they were informed that because they were “enemies of the Reich” their assets had been seized.
On the day of deportation, they were woken up and had to leave the assembly camp in Milbertshofen in the morning. Every transport was accompanied by Gestapo members and members of the uniformed police.
Closed furniture trucks or buses were used to transport the Jews approximately 10 kilometers from the assembly camp to the train stations where the transports departed for Theresienstadt. Trains left either directly from Munich central train station or the freight train station located at Munich-Laim district.
At the station, one second-class passenger car awaited them. The deportees were ordered to board the train, usually at around 9 in the morning. If it left from the goods depot, the train went to Munich central station. Here the car was connected to a regular, scheduled passenger train that left Munich every day at around 12 for Marktredwitz via Moosach, Freising, Landshut, Regensburg and Schwandorf. At Marktredwitz the car was connected to other trains going to Eger, Karlovy Vary (Karlsbad) and Usti nad Labem (Aussig) to Bohusovice (Bauschowitz), where it finally arrived a day after departure.
The deportees were taken off the train at Bohusovice station and forced by the awaiting SS personnel and Czech gendarmerie to walk the approximate 3 km to Theresienstadt, carrying their backpacks. Only people who were unable to walk were taken in trucks.
To take one example, on 2 July 1942, 50 people were sent to Theresienstadt. The transport consisted of 50 elderly Jews, the majority being female. All of them had lived in the Milbertshofen assembly camp prior to their deportation. None of them survived. The two most elderly people on this deportation were Rosalie Obernbreit and Isidor Noerdlinger, born in 1866, therefore they were 76 years old. I do not know the fate of Rosalie Obernbreit but I do know what happened to Isidor Noerdlinger. From Theresienstadt he was deported on transport Bo, train Da 83 from Theresienstadt to Treblinka on 19 September 1942. If he survived the journey, he would have been murdered on arrival.
During the summer of 1942, leaflets from a resistance group called the White Rose started to appear in Munich.

In part one we saw that Lizette schaer a 90-year-old woman was murdered in San rmo in 2001 leaving around 10 million EUR in cash and Assets in various countries we saw that her brother osal schaer who was 2 years older than she was studied to become a lawyer and then

Got a job with the right Security main office and how his career was propelled by Verner best who was second in command to Reinhardt Hyder this led Oscar schaer to becoming the head of the gesta at vzam De baven and then in rensburg in occupied Czechoslovakia before being sent to the

East to mass murder Jews and others in the occupied Soviet Union as the commanding officer of einat’s Commando 9 we take up this story in the spring of 1942 when osel schaer was posted away from einat’s Commander 9 to take up a new position in Munich from the 20th December 1941 to

The beginning of February 1942 schaer was a substitute inspector of the security police and the SD in Munich although this job had to wait as he was in the occupied Soviet Union murdering people however shortly after his return shaer was appointed head of the Munich gestar control center by the r Security

Main office in March 1942 and held this position until 1945 this move was clearly a promotion for schaer head of the Gestapo in Germany’s second most important city one of the duties of the Gestapo was to oversee the arrest and deportation of Jews as far as schaer and

The Munich Gara were concerned the following was the procedure the guest Apple forced Munich’s Jewish Community to assist with organizing the transports a card index with the names and addresses of all Munich’s Jews existed in triplicate at the aryanization department the office of the Jewish community and at Munich’s

Garo headquarters the this index was used to assemble the different transports the guest sto determined the criteria of the transports based upon age ability to work and other factors about a week before the planned transport the gestao instructed the Jewish Community to inform the victims of their forthcoming evacuation to

Terian stat the community had to finance the transports provide food for the deportees and pay helpers to deal with the luggage one or two days before the deportation of deportees who were not yet living in the milbert’s hofen assembly Camp were picked up from their apartments by the guest

Enlarged closed removal Vans and taken to the assembly camp this usually took place during the night in the early morning at milbert’s hofen they stayed for a day or two they were searched and their last valuables were confiscated the Deportes had to endure bureaucratic procedures and undergo the final stages of

Expropriation their Declarations of property were collected and they were informed that because they were enemies of the Reich their asset had been seized on the day of deportation they were woken up and they had to leave the assembly camp at milbert’s Hen in the morning every transport was accompanied

By guest sto members and members of the uniformed police closed Furniture trucks or buses were used to transport the Jews approximately 10 km from the assembly Camp to the train stations where the transports headed for Terian start trains left either directly from Munich Central Station or the freight train station located at Munich

Lamb at the station one passenger car awaited them the Deportes were ordered to board the train usually around 9: in the morning if it left from the good sto the train went to Munich Central Station here the car was connected to a regular scheduled passenger train that left

Munich every day at around 12 for Mark tradit fire musac Rising lot Regensburg and shandor at Mark travit the car was connected to other trains going to eger Carlo viari then carsbad andin then a to bosov then bovitz where it finally arrived the day after departure the Deportes were taken off

The train at BOS sovit station and forced by The Waiting SS personnel and Czech gandar to walk the approximately 3 km to tasian stat carrying their backpacks only people who unable to walk were taken in trucks to take one example on the 2nd of July 1942 50 people were

Sent to tasian startat the transport consisted of 50 elderly Jews the majority being female all of them had lived in the milber S and assembly Camp prior to their deportation none of them survived the two most elderly people on this deportation with Rosal Oben bright and Isidor nerlinger both born in

1866 therefore they were 76 years old I do not know the fate of Ros Lee Oben bright but I do know what happened to eor nerlinger from teresian stat he was deported on transport Bo train da 83 from teresian stat to trinker on the 19th of September

1942 if he survived the journey he would have been murdered in the the gas chamber on arrival at the beginning of September 1942 schaer was promoted to ssob Stan fura he was also a criminal and Senior government counselor during the summer of 1942 leaflets from a resistance group called

The White Rose started to appear in Munich after the disaster at Stalingrad a huge amount of leaflets were found and schaer ordered criminal secretary Rober more to stop whatever he was doing and concentrate on finding the culprits very soon on the 18th of February 1943 the siblings Sophie and Hans Sher together

With Kristoff PBS were arrested Mo spent 3 days interviewing Sophie scha who gave her full confession so much so that when she was put in front of the People’s Court on the 22nd of February 1943 no Witnesses were required presumably Mo was reporting directly to schaer throughout these interrogations I’ve done a separate

Video on schaer subordinate Robert Moore who interrogated Sophie SCH and there’ll be a link to that Below In March 1944 a group of Allied PWS escaped from sagon p camp in La Silesia gestao and police officers throughout Germany were warned to be on the lookout for escape prisoners eventually nearly all of them were caught on Saturday the 25th of March 1944 the Munich creepo the

Criminal police received a Telex warning that everyone had to be on the lookout for the men there was also information about the escape and the suggestion that they would be in civilian clothes with false papers at Munich the criminal police officer assigned to the task was Anton gastler his idea was to con

Concentrate the search on the railway stations and this quickly produced results Switzerland was a natural destination for the escapers and most roads to Switzerland would have gone through Munich via train the first escaped officer to be picked up was arrested near davor on an Express Train The Prisoner spoke very good German and

Made a positive impression on his captors he asked gastler what would happen to him gastler said he’d probably be sent back to the p camp but that was not a decision for him the prisoner was returned to sagon the next two to be caught were both officers from the South African Air

Force they were flight leftenant Rupert Stevens and flight leftenant Johannes Hayes I believe that Hayes is the correct pronunciation I don’t speak Africans but hay is actually spelled g u WS one was caught on a train near Cal Bon the other on a slow train near rosenheim

They were both brought to prison in Munich on or before the 28th of March 1944 the investigation of these men was taken from the criminal police to the guest staro that in itself may not be as nefarious as it sounds at the end of the day the gestao were probably doing the

Investigations into these men however later in court it did prove to be quite significant on the night of the 29th of March 1944 schaer received a tele print with the Hitler order to kill any Allied PS who were recaptured it was after duty hours and he sent his car to collect

Some of his staff the car returned with the second in command Martin Shermer as well as Edward Gite and Yan Schneider they were joined by Emil Vale who was the duty officer V was in a particularly difficult situation he was one quarter Jewish and a guaro officer had schaer

Found out his fate would have been the same as for any other Jew in Munich after a short conference with the seconded command schaer summoned the others and explained to them that on orders from the Reich Security main office the two captured British prisons held at Creo headquarters were to be

Shot he briefed them in accordance with the Hitler order it was decided that Schneider who had a Soviet Submachine gun which he brought back with him from the Eastern front and because of his experience there did not mind doing the shooting should kill the men and that

Sherman should be put in charge of the party and give the order to shoot all participants were pledged the secrecy by clasping of hands a guesture associated with men about to go into battle once the procedure had been decided upon the men got some rest for an hour or two how

They managed to do this before committing murder is beyond me the prisoners of course had to be interrogated as per orders that began at around 4: in the morning but none of the four Germans spoke any English and only one of the prisoners knew a few phrases

In German it seems as though the PS told them their route through Germany and how they attempted to get to Switzerland after about an hour they were strip searched the guesta being at pains to do this in a dignified manner in a warm room room where the prisoners would not get

Cold the prisoners were handcuffed and placed in the car in the forward facing seats at the back file and G sat in the folding seats opposite them Schneider drove and Sherman sat in the passenger seat they were driven up the motorway in the direction of englad for around 45 km

At around 6: in the morning they were told to get out and urite Schneider took his Soviet machine pistol which was into the passenger seat and inserted a magazine he told Sherman to get out of the way and then shot the prisoners one appeared to be still alive and he had to fire

Again having committed the murder the four then made it look as though the prisoners had tried to escape by collecting the spent rounds in the forest and firing them pistols at trees to simulate a Chase two policemen approached and asked what was going on the Gestapo officers flashed their

Passes and told them that everything was under control TR sometime later a doctor and a coroner appeared and accepting the story of the Gestapo officers agreed that there was nothing further to be done the bodies were left in the care of one of the policemen whilst the Gestapo officers

Returned to Munich with the now dead prisoners effects which were handed over to schaer one effect was an unopened packet of cigarettes shaer said to G that he may as well smoke them and so they shed them amongst themselves else the prisoners also had some cash on them

Part of this cash was used to pay for their bodies to be burned in the municipal crematorium had the bodies been burned at daau concentration camp in the crematorium there then there would have been no charge and thus no paperwork this snippet of information allowed later British investigators to

Trace what had happened to the pilots and eventually to catch some of those involved in the murders 3 years later in court Schneider’s defense was that he had thought that the two prisoners were looters and Desperados G’s defense was that he did not hear the orders given by schaer at

The conference V whilst admitting that he heard schaer’s orders at the conference thought that the prisoners had already been tried by a tribunal and convicted the Gestapo operated a prison and schaer as head of the Munich guest sto was responsible for it and what happened there surprisingly not all

Descriptions of the Munich gestapo prison are bad the Gestapo was based in the former home of the kings of bararia the vitt backa Palace this Palace a red brick building was constructed between 1843 and 1845 and first used by Barbarian King Ludi I after his retirement it was then

The home of his successor Barbarian kings ludrick III was the last to use it he fled After the revolution in November 1918 and the Munich Soviet briefly took over the building the gesto moved in in October 1933 shortly afterwards hyri ordered that a prison be built this prison had

Three floors was Modern for its time and was connected via a passage to the main building the prison even housed a number of British people such as Channel Islander John finlin who was kept in a third floor cell in solitary confinement from the 8th of October 1943 until his

Transfer to booken on the 29th of October 1943 the following year fellow Channel Islander Kingston Bailey described the prison thus all around were high walls and on one side of the yard the prison building badly damaged from recent bombing in fact one side of the building was completely

Burnt out after much yelling shouting and Counting we were at last marched into the prison which was the usual cold bear and granite built prison of Germany the cells were much more comfortable than I had expected they were warm and each had its own flush lavatory the floor was covered with brown

Lenium they were built to hold two men there were two bed which L down from the wall and there was also a small table with a seat on each side we were four so two had to sleep on the floor I was one who slept on the floor and was supplied

With a mattress and two blankets the food was much better at Munich again this was very surprising considering the state of the city the quantity was small but good breakfast consisted of the usual bread and ID’s coffee dinner stew but without meat and on one day a pudding substitute like

Custard the tea was usually bread margarine and jam or cheese sometimes a small piece of sausage or potato salad with substitute te there was no work to do and we remained always in the cell except during an air alarm when we proceeded to the basement sellers there were two very

Heavy bombardments when I was in Munich the first lasted for several hours the cellers were damp and cold and very overcrowded there were prisoners of every nationality of Europe it was very rare for prisoners to be given access to air raid shelters during bombing so this does suggest a degree of understanding

Not normally shown by the Gestapo as it happened the Gestapo was right to evacuate their prisoners as the building was eventually destroyed in a bombing raid it would appear that schaer was doing such a good job of arresting people that the facilities he had for imprisoning people were insufficient by

The summer of 1943 in August 1943 the commandant at SS straf Daka was ordered to make 53 of his cells available to schaer as head of the gesto in Munich in order to accommodate 90 of his prisoners this would have led to overcrowding of the remaining cells and

The matter went as far as Ern Kelton brother who then headed the rsh celton brother’s answer was that the cells were needed by the Munich gapo and the prisoners who are already at SS straf lger daow then had to be squeezed into the remaining cells if they complain or offer resistance then they

Could be Shackled The war did not go the way that Nazis would have wanted it to go this film shows the liberation of Munich on the 30th of April 1945 however there were German units that had attempted to liberate Munich before the Americans got there on the 27th of April

1945 Captain rup Gros chief of The Interpreter company of Verry 7 in the tar barracks in Munich attempted a rebellion on the evening of the 27th of April gerros ordered his troops to line up at the S Barracks he released the soldiers from the oath of allegiance to the fura the

Following day gerros and his comrades and arms occupied two transmitters in Munich from which they called for a cessation of all hostilities and proclaimed the goals of the freedom action Barbarian area attention attention you are listening to the radio station of the freedom action bararia get rid of the functionaries of the

National Socialist Party the freedom action bararia has taken power tonight unfortunately it was not to be Nazi authorities were still in command and the SS and gestao cracked down on the freedom action bararia G gr and his men had to flee the SS managed to capture some who were murdered other

Revolts occurred in alborg dako and pensburgh in the former two the revolts were successful nonetheless the Americans kept on advancing if anything these revolts might have hastened their Advance by diverting SS and ver from the front line Munich was where Adolf Hitler had a private apartment it was here that

Hitler had immigrated in 1913 from Austria here where he joined the Barbarian Army in World War I where he had joined the German Workers Party here where he had taken control of the Nazi party here where he had led a PCH against the German government and it was

Here that he probably considered his hometown Munich was very much the Cradle of Nazism and that was why it was so urgent for the regime to destroy the white rose Berlin might have once been raed but Munich was always Brown as far as the Nazis were concerned Hitler expected

Every man to die fighting for Munich he didn’t get his wish on the 29th of April 1945 US troops approached Munich encountering light resistance they entered the city the following day without encountering any significant resistance as can be seen in this news Feld the locals welcomed their liberators around 1 hour after after

Hitler committed suicide in Berlin Munich Town Hall was surrendered at 16500 hours the highest ranking Munich National socialists such as the gigh PO Giza and the mayor Carl faer had shown their support for the fighting to the last breath for their furer by running away there had been heavy street

Fighting in nurenberg but not in Munich the liberators were welcomed with flowers by the locals in order to celebrate some Americans popped into Hitler’s private apartment on Prince Reagan’s plots and helped themselves to whatever they could other Nazi targets and warehouses were also looted not only

By the soldiers but also by the locals now freed of their Nazi overlords some Munich residents now demonstratively presented themselves as baravarian Patriots the white and blue flag of bararia hung from many windows and discarded Nazi party devotional items lay on the streets this marked the end of the Nazi

Era in Munich the supreme commander of the western allies General Eisenhower then noted in his order for the day the entire Allied Force congratulates the seventh Army on the capture of Munich the Cradle of the Nazi Beast by the end of the war 90% of the his old town and

50% of the city as a whole had been destroyed in 73 Air Raids over 6,000 people died in Air Raids and around 15,000 were injured the number of Munich residents who died in the second world war is estimated at at least 33,000 as a result of evacuation and flight the population fell from

824 th000 in 1939 to 479,000 immediately after the war Munich was part of the American occupation Zone on the 4th of May 1945 Carl shagle was reinstated as mayor of the city by the American occupation forces on the 15th of May 1945 a staff of 32 American officers arrived in

Munich in the following months their number Rose to around 200 under the leadership of Charles Keegan they formed the expanded US military government in bararia called the regional military government the goals were to rebuild an administrative structure take measures to reorganize everyday life provide supplies to the civilian population and oversee deification

Measures as the American tanks came into Munich osell schaer did what any diard Nazi would do he fled Yos ACTA a former gestao officer was held after the war in an American interment Camp whilst British and American investigators were trying to track down the criminals responsible for

The Great Escape murders actor was asked about schaer he didn’t know where he was but he said that he’ heard from schaer’s Deputy that the former Munich Garo boss was last seen heading south on a bicycle on the 29th of April 1945 he was believed to be hiding somewhere in the

Actor said that he thought that schaer’s family was then living in a village near pin pin is on K not so far from beras garden this was not a very wise place to hide given that search activities for former Nazi criminals were likely to be quite intensive in this

Area where exactly he was I don’t know now aged only 36 he faced a very uncertain future as a lawyer he would have realized that he had committed criminal acts and that he could or more at the point would face the death penalty in part three I shall look at

What happened to him after the war and discuss more on the fate of his Sister H Oh