Oswald Poche (born 28 January 1908 in Brandenburg an der Havel – 22 September 1962 in Dannenberg) was chief of 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 ...

, (secret state police) of

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

, for

Frankfurt Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...

at the Lindenstrasse station. Oswald Poche was a member of the SS (member No. 267316) and a SS and Police Leader. He reached the rank of lieutenant colonel on 30 January 1939.Dienstaltersliste der Schutzstaffel der NSDAP van 01.10.1942. p.10. Retrieved on 25 January 2017.
/ref> He was an inspector of the state police at state police control center up to the spring of 1941. His successor was Otto Hellwig. In March 1941 Poche was appointed head of the State Police Lindenstrasse Station in Frankfurt. He pursued the policy of Final Solution of the Jews in Frankfurt. Poche by using the Gestapo power, between 10 October 1941 and 24 September 1942 organized ten major deportations of about 10,000 Jews to

Nazi concentration camps From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps, (officially) or (more commonly). The Nazi concentration camps are distinguished from other types of Nazi camps such as forced-labor camps, as well as concen ...

and extermination camps. Poche initiated together with the Chief of Department II, Superintendent Ernst Grosse, the emergency services for all these deportations. By fall 1942 the deportation of all Jews from Frankfurt was essentially complete. Oswald Poche as Gestapo chief of the Police Lindenstrasse Station used Grosse and

Heinrich Baab Heinrich Baab (27 July 1908 - 23 May 2001) was a secretary and Gestapo chief of Frankfurt at the Lindenstraße station. The Gestapo (Secret State Police) was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe. After the war in Eu ...

to carry out his orders. From September 1943, he served as the successor to Reinhard Breder in ''

Einsatzkommando During World War II, the Nazi German ' were a sub-group of the ' (mobile killing squads) – up to 3,000 men total – usually composed of 500–1,000 functionaries of the SS and Gestapo, whose mission was to exterminate Jews, Polish intellectu ...

'' 2, part of '' Einsatzgruppe'' A, during the war in the east against the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

. His task force had committed the 1941–42 mass murder of Jews and political commissars in the wake of Army Group North. In early 1944 a Soviet a bomb attack severely wounded Poche. He returned to Frankfurt to recover with his wife and two sons. On 1 May 1944 he entered a new position as KdS (Chief of SS and Police) in Norwegian

Tromsø Tromsø (, , ; se, Romsa ; fkv, Tromssa; sv, Tromsö) is a List of municipalities of Norway, municipality in Troms og Finnmark county, Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the Tromsø (city), city of Tromsø. Tromsø lies ...

, where he remained almost until the war ended. In April 1945 Poche was at the

Reich Security Main Office The Reich Security Main Office (german: Reichssicherheitshauptamt or RSHA) was an organization under Heinrich Himmler in his dual capacity as ''Chef der Deutschen Polizei'' (Chief of German Police) and ''Reichsführer-SS'', the head of the Nazi ...

(RSHA) office in Berlin. He escaped out of Berlin to

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

. Using false papers in the name of the brother of his wife, Koch, he was able to live with his family in Salzwedel, where he worked as a traveling salesman. He died in a hospital in Dannenberg.

References

*Monica Kingreen (eds.): "After Kristallnacht". Jewish life and anti-Jewish policy in Frankfurt from 1938 to 1945 Campus Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1999, . *Seniority List of Schutzstaffel of the NSDAP (Obersturmbannführer and Sturmbannführer), prior of 1 October 1944. SS personnel Main Office, Berlin 1944th *Beate Meyer: Leeway Regional Jewish Representatives (1941-1945). In: Birthe Kundrus, Beate *Meyer (eds.): "The deportation of Jews from Germany: Plans Practice reactions 1938-1945". Wallenstein, Göttingen 2004, , pp 68–73. *, Jutta Gemini: Legalized Robbery: the Looting of Jews in Nazi Germany by the Reich Finance Administration in Hesse. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt 2004 , pp 479–482. *: The Judenreferat the Frankfurt Gestapo. In: Monica Kingreen (eds.): "After Kristallnacht". Campus Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1999, p 245. * Ernst Klee: The Person Encyclopedia to the Third Reich. Fischer paperback publishing house, Frankfurt 2007 , p 466. (entry to Poche, Oswald.) {{DEFAULTSORT:Poche, Oswald 1908 births 1962 deaths Gestapo personnel Holocaust perpetrators in Russia Holocaust perpetrators in Germany SS and Police Leaders Einsatzgruppen personnel

References

Further reading