Karl Heinrich Klaustermeyer (22 February 1914 – 21 April 1976) was a member of the

Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...

who served in the

Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one organi ...

, NSKK, and SA. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, he was stationed in the

Warsaw Ghetto The Warsaw Ghetto (german: Warschauer Ghetto, officially , "Jewish Residential District in Warsaw"; pl, getto warszawskie) was the largest of the Nazi ghettos during World War II and the Holocaust. It was established in November 1940 by the G ...

, where he personally murdered multiple Jewish civilians and participated in the suppression of the

Warsaw Uprising The Warsaw Uprising ( pl, powstanie warszawskie; german: Warschauer Aufstand) was a major World War II operation by the Polish resistance movement in World War II, Polish underground resistance to liberate Warsaw from German occupation. It occ ...

. After the war, he settled down in

West Germany West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...

. Klaustermeyer was investigated by German prosecutors and arrested in the early 1960s. In 1965, he was found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to life in prison by the Bielefeld regional court. He was released from prison in 1976 on compassionate grounds due to terminal cancer and died less than two weeks later.

Early life

Klaustermeyer was born to a skilled painter in

Bielefeld Bielefeld () is a city in the Ostwestfalen-Lippe Region in the north-east of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. With a population of 341,755, it is also the most populous city in the administrative region (''Regierungsbezirk'') of Detmold and the ...

. After finishing an apprenticeship as a motor vehicle fitter, he became unemployed during the

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

. Klaustermeyer joined the Nazi Party and the SA in 1932. He later got a job as a messenger with the city of

Bünde Bünde (Low German ''Buine'') is a town in the Herford district, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Geography Bünde is situated between Osnabrück (west), Hannover (east) and Bielefeld (south). Waterways The town is crossed from west to east ...

. Klaustermeyer joined the

Wehrmacht The ''Wehrmacht'' (, ) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the ''Heer'' (army), the ''Kriegsmarine'' (navy) and the ''Luftwaffe'' (air force). The designation "''Wehrmacht''" replaced the previous ...

in 1935 but was discharged on health grounds in 1937. Klaustermeyer he was rehired as a caretaker in Bünde. During this time, Klaustermeyer actively boycotted Jewish stores in the city.

Gestapo career

In 1939, Klaustermeyer joined the Gestapo in Bielefeld. In November 1940, he was transferred to be security police and a member of the

Sicherheitsdienst ' (, ''Security Service''), full title ' (Security Service of the ''Reichsführer-SS''), or SD, was the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. Established in 1931, the SD was the first Nazi intelligence organization ...

in the

Warsaw District Warsaw District was one of the first four Nazi districts of the General Governorate region of German-occupied Poland during World War II, along with Lublin District, Radom District, and Kraków District. It was bordered on the north by Regierungsb ...

. In the autumn of 1941, he was assigned the task of monitoring Jews in the

. Klaustermeyer gained a reputation for his ruthlessness towards Jewish people, who he sometimes shot arbitrarily and indiscriminately. One witness would later testify that, among other things: "I stood just a few meters away and had to watch Klaustermeyer shoot my mother, wife and my three-month-old child...." On occasion, Klaustermeyer would ride a bike into the ghetto with an acquaintance,

Josef Blösche Josef Blösche (12 February 1912 – 29 July 1969) was a member of the Nazi Party who served in the SS and SD during World War II. Blösche shot and killed many Jews, and helped send many more Jews to their deaths in extermination camps. He als ...

, and shoot people at random. During the dissolution of the ghetto, Klaustermeyer accompanied as a local expert. He also participated in the suppression of the

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising; pl, powstanie w getcie warszawskim; german: link=no, Aufstand im Warschauer Ghetto was the 1943 act of Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto in German-occupied Poland during World War II to oppose Nazi Germany's ...

in 1943 with commander

Jürgen Stroop Jürgen Stroop (born Josef Stroop, 26 September 1895 – 6 March 1952) was a German SS commander during the Nazi era, who served as SS and Police Leader in occupied Poland and Greece. He led the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 194 ...

. Near the end of 1943, Klaustermeyer was tasked with excavating and burning the bodies of Jews who had been murdered earlier, as part of

Sonderaktion 1005 ' 1005 (, 'Special Action 1005'), also called ''Aktion'' 1005 or ' (, 'Exhumation Action'), was a top-secret Nazi operation conducted from June 1942 to late 1944. The goal of the project was to hide or destroy any evidence of the mass murder ...

. After participating in the suppression of the

in 1944, Klaustermeyer left Warsaw. File:Stroop Report - Warsaw Ghetto Uprising 04.jpg, alt=Photo from Nowolipie Street. In the back (from the left) are townhouses at Nowolipie 32 (fragment), 30 and 28. center is Heinrich Klaustermeyer; right Josef Blösche. Similar picture, Stroop Report original caption: "Jewish Rabbis.", File:Stroop Report - Warsaw Ghetto Uprising 03.jpg, After Germany's surrender, Klaustermeyer was detained by British occupation forces and sent to an internment camp. He was released in late 1947, only to be re-arrested for being a member of the Gestapo. During his

denazification Denazification (german: link=yes, Entnazifizierung) was an Allied initiative to rid German and Austrian society, culture, press, economy, judiciary, and politics of the Nazi ideology following the Second World War. It was carried out by remov ...

trial, Klaustermeyer was incriminated in his boycotting of Jews in the 1930s, but not for the murders he committed in Warsaw. He was quickly released. Klaustermeyer then settled down in

, getting married and getting a job as a driver. In February 1961, Klaustermeyer was exposed after his name was mentioned during the investigation of former Nazi official

Ludwig Hahn Ludwig Hermann Karl Hahn (23 January 1908 – 10 November 1986) was a German '' SS-Standartenführer'', Nazi official and convicted war criminal. He held numerous positions with the police and security services over the course of his career with ...

. He was arrested and admitted to having been a member of the Gestapo in Warsaw from 1941 to 1944. During the investigation, Klaustermeyer implicated Blösche, who was now living in East Germany, in the atrocities he had committed. Blösche was arrested in 1967, tried for war crimes, and executed in 1969. Klaustermeyer himself was charged with murdering 20 Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. Klaustermeyer's trial was supposed to start in 1963, but was delayed for Hahn's trial. While awaiting trial, he served time in a prison in

Hamburg (male), (female) en, Hamburger(s), Hamburgian(s) , timezone1 = Central (CET) , utc_offset1 = +1 , timezone1_DST = Central (CEST) , utc_offset1_DST = +2 , postal ...

, then another in

. Klaustermeyer's trial started on 23 November 1964. He was charged with murdering 20 Jews. More than 80 witnesses in Germany and abroad came to testify, and multiple newspapers reported on the trial. On 4 February 1965, Klaustermeyer was found guilty of murdering 9 Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. The judge noted that the proven victims were killed entirely of his own volition and his "sheer lust for murder." He said that Klaustermeyer, who maintained his innocence, had hated Jews his entire life and showed no signs of remorse. According to Nazi-era reports, between April and December 1941 alone, more than 7000 Ghetto inmates had died from "bullet wounds" in the street, which means they were shot for no other reason other than that an SS or another German official walked past. Klaustermeyer was sentenced to nine life terms with hard labor and ordered to permanently forfeit his civil rights. Dying from advanced cancer, he was released from prison on 8 April 1976. Klaustermeyer died in Bielefeld 13 days later.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Klaustermeyer, Heinrich 1914 births 1976 deaths Holocaust perpetrators in Poland Gestapo personnel German police officers convicted of murder German murderers of children German prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment German prisoners of war in World War II held by the United Kingdom People convicted of murder by Germany Prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment by Germany People from Bielefeld Stroop Report Warsaw Ghetto Deaths from cancer in Germany Nazis convicted of war crimes