 | Anearlier translated version of this article may have introducederrors of fact which may no longer be evident after subsequent copyediting. It needs attention from someone fluent in German and English to check it for accuracy. Please seethis article's entry atWP:PNT for discussion.(May 2018) |
Carltheo Zeitschel | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1893-03-13)13 March 1893 |
| Died | 21 April 1945 (aged 52) |
| Cause of death | Air raid |
| Relatives | Carlo von Zeitschel (grandson) |
| Conviction | War crimes |
| Criminal penalty | Life imprisonment with hard labor (1954) (in absentia) |
| SS service | |
| Allegiance | Nazi Germany |
| Branch | Schutzstaffel |
| Rank | Sturmbannfuhrer |
| Commands | Jewish Affairs German Embassy, Paris |
Carltheo Zeitschel alsoCarl Theo,[a] (13 March 1893 – 21 April 1945), was a German physician, diplomat,Nazi functionary andSS-Sturmbannfuhrer (major).
Instrumental in theHolocaust in France, Zeitschel served asadviser on Jewish affairs (Judenreferent) to the German Embassy in Paris and as such was one of the organisers of the deportations[b] of Jews from occupied France duringWorld War II. Condemnedin absentia to forced labour in perpetuity by a French court in 1954, he was actually killed during thebombing of Berlin in 1945.
Born on 13 March 1893[2] Carltheo Zeitschel was the son of pharmacy owner, Franz Zeitschel, and his wife, Ella van Hees. From 1911, he studied medicine at theUniversity of Freiburg[3] and from 1914 to 1917, duringWorld War I, served as an assistant doctor in the rear area military hospital ofFreiburg. He graduated in 1918.
At the end of World War I, Zeitshcel was discharged from military service. From 1919 to 1920, he was a member of theFreikorps Reinhard in Berlin, working at the same time as medical assistant at Klinikum im Friedrichshain, the oldest hospital in Berlin. Later, as a full-fledged doctor, he served at various sanatoria in theBlack Forest.[citation needed]
A staunch anti-Semite,[4] Zeitschel joined theNazi Party in 1923.[5]For a decade (1925–35) he served as a naval surgeon.[5]In 1935 he received a positions in Section II – Propaganda[6] and Section VII – British India and theFar East in thePropaganda Ministry.[7] He also served in the colonial policy department at the Nazi Party headquarters.[5]
Towards the end of 1937 he moved to theForeign Ministry (Auswärtiges Amt or AA),[7] even before Hitler's reshuffle of the Government with the appointment ofJoachim von Ribbentrop as foreign minister on 4 February 1938. There he served as legation councilor in the political department.[8]For a brief period in June 1939, he was the German consul in the British colony ofNigeria.[6]
He was a member of theSchutzstaffel (SS) holding the rank ofSturmbannführer (major) while in Paris (1940).[5] According to Roland Ray, Zeitschel served in the military'sSecret Field Police.[7]
When the Germansinvaded Poland on 1 September 1939, Zeitschel was ordered to Warsaw, where he participated in the looting of politically valuable documents and art treasures from diplomatic missions, as well neutral states. He was a member of theSonderkommando Künsberg [de], the special unit controlled by the Foreign Office and in particular by the Foreign Minister Ribbentrop, which systematically pillaged cultural and art treasures and other items of political interest from the territories occupied by Germany.[9]In 1940 Zeitschel followed the ‘’Sonderkommando Künsberg’’ in its move to the Western Front.[7] In June, with Ribbentrop's authorization, Zeitschel was brought to the German Embassy in Paris by the ambassadorOtto Abetz.[7]
Initially, he staffed the Foreign Office liaison desk to the military commander of France.[10] Zeitschel was then tasked by ambassador Abetz to loot and then close the foreign missions in Paris, to plunder Jewish art collections and galleries, and to transfer the booty "to the custody of the German embassy".[11][7][12]
From September 1940, he was promoted as commissioner for Jewish affairs and Masonic affairs liaison with the commander of the state police and theSicherheitsdienst (SD, Security Service) and was parallel to his career in the diplomatic service. On 5 September 1941, he and Dannecker led the opening in Paris of the exhibitionLe Juif et la France (The Jew and France).[13][page needed][14]
AsJudenreferent, he was one of the forces behind of theFinal Solution in France, the deportation and murder of Jews.[15][16][17]
The participation of the German Ambassador in the Jewish measures was necessary, both inunoccupied France with theVichy government as well as inoccupied France. In a document submitted in theEichmann trial, the close cooperation between the SS intelligence service (SD) in France, with the German embassy comes up with the BdSHelmut Knochen, andTheodor Dannecker as its representative in Paris on the one hand, and on the other hand expressed (Ernst Achenbach, laterFDP foreign policy and almost German-EEC Commissioner, takes part here):
In August 1941, Zeitschel put pressure on Abetz, so this is "personally" the commitment caught byHeinrich Himmler, "that the Jews present in the concentration camp can be deported to the East, once this permit transport"[18][full citation needed][19][20] and then put the pressure on Dannecker.
Zeitschel was informed in top secret processes and knew about theWannsee Conference of 20 January 1942. He applied the minutes of the proceedings from juniorstate secretaryErnst Woermann for the deportation of French Jews.[21][c]
In theNuremberg trials a letter by Zeitschel was read:
The Independent Commission of Historians – Foreign Office presented in the book Das Amt 2010,[23] in response to the book clear that the role of the Embassy in Paris and the Foreign Office has been underestimated in driving the Holocaust in France so far. Zeitschel gave Abetz to late summer of 1941 in which he proposed a memorandum on the way to Berlin.
Zeitschel andRudolf Rahn arrived almost simultaneously at theTunis bridgehead on 13 November 1942. Rahn was a representative of the Federal Foreign Office of theAfrika Korps from 15 November 1942 to 10 May 1943. He[who?] left the bridgehead afterRommel's defeat and theAxis surrender in the Tunisian Campaign in May 1943. In Tunisia theEinsatzkommando ofWalter Rauff began on 24 November 1942. On 6 December 1942, Rauff agreed in a meeting with the GeneralWalther Nehring and Rahn, on the use of Jewishforced laborers and instituted a system of labor camps, organized byTheo Saevecke.[26] Vichy France, Italy and the leadership of the Afrika Korps, between which the "zbV envoy"[27] had to convey to Rahn, that the demands of the SS men were rejected in his own words, because otherwise it would have affected Tunisia and Italian Jews.[28]
Until July 1944 Zeitschel was back at the German Embassy in Paris. He also worked out a project for the reorganization of theParis police in the service of the occupier. After the dissolution of the Embassy in Paris, he was on 1 August 1944, at the headquarters of theSS Oberabschnitts Spree, whose director wasObergruppenführerAugust Heissmeyer.[citation needed]
Zeitschel was killed in 1945 in a bomb attack in Berlin.[6][29][30] The French judiciary sentenced him in 1954 in absentia for his crimes to lifelong forced labor.
During the trial of Abetz, and in the much later judicial proceedings concerning the Jews deported from France, Zeitschel's name was mentioned repeatedly by the defendants and their witnesses to hold him responsible, as a main culprit.[30][31]
(in German)
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