Kurt Asche (11 October 1909 in Hamburg – 16 April 1997 in Hamburg) was SS- Obersturmführer and an officer in German-occupied Belgium.
Asche was appointed head of the Office of Jewish Affairs in occupied Belgium. He was one of a number of these so-called "Jewish experts" sent by
Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
and, from 1942 to 1944, was responsible for the deportation of 26,000 Jews and Gypsies to
Auschwitz
Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...
.
Asche was eventually brought to trial in
Kiel
Kiel () is the capital and most populous city in the northern Germany, German state of Schleswig-Holstein, with a population of 246,243 (2021).
Kiel lies approximately north of Hamburg. Due to its geographic location in the southeast of the J ...
for his part in the 26,000 deaths. After a mammoth trial that lasted eighteen years Asche was eventually sentenced to seven years imprisonment in 1981. The perceived leniency of the sentence, as well as Asche being allowed to leave the court free following sentencing as the sentence had to be ratified, led to widespread condemnation.Bernard Wasserstein, ''Vanishing Diaspora: The Jews in Europe Since 1945'', Harvard University Press, 1996, p. 112