Kotalla, Joseph Johann “Jupp”.

Kotalla, Joseph Johann “Jupp” was born 14-07-1908 in Bismarckhütte, Upper Silesia, then German territory that was assigned to Poland after World War I. Jupp was the oldest of five children. His father was the manager of a large local ironworks factory. After the war, the factory came into Polish hands. Kotalla’s mother was an alcoholic, as were both his grandmothers. At the age of nine, Kotalla suffered a severe concussion, which kept him in hospital for a year and a half. Partly because of this, he was a bad student at school. When he was fourteen, he was temporarily committed to a mental institution. Kotalla’s profession was representative.

After the German invasion of Poland on September 1st 1939, Kotalla was called up for German military service, was assigned to the SS, and was wounded in fighting on the Eastern Front. After recovering, he left for the Netherlands in 1941. Kotalla began working in the Cell Barracks of Scheveningen Prison. During this time, he met his first wife—a native of Kleve, Germany—whom he married in 1941; she was seventeen years old at the time of their marriage. In September 1942, he was appointed to Camp Amersfoort by Schutzhaftlagerführer II Karl Peter Berg. Karl Berg at his execution by a firing squad on 22-11-1949, aged 42, in Weesperkarspel, was the first to unexpectedly shout the command “fire” at the firing squad in Fort Bijlmer.

Schutzhaftlagerführer, or head of the “preventive detention camp” – Schutzhaft [de], lit. protective custody, being a Nazi euphemism for preventive detention – was a paramilitary title of the SS, specific to the concentration and extermination camps Totenkopfverbande (“Death’s-Head units”).

Kotalla joined the camp as an SS officer and became head of the Schreibstube, the administration. He began his work in Abteilung III (Department 3). Even after his appointment in Amersfoort, Kotalla received psychiatric treatment. From December 1942 until approximately April 1943, he was treated in the psychiatric ward of a German military hospital. In Camp Amersfoort, after returning from the hospital, he was appointed UnterSchutzhaftlagerführer, a position he filled in for Berg as commander in his absence. As an SS-Oberscharführer, he was seconded to the camp’s Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service). According to his own account, Kotalla remained in Camp Amersfoort until 20-04-1945. Although still married, he had a mistress more than once in the camp. During 1944, Kotalla began a relationship with Louisa Johanna (Loes) van den Bogert, a then 21-year-old from Amersfoort, a typist working in Abteilung III of the camp. Kotalla was considered the most notorious executioner in Camp Amersfoort and was nicknamed the Executioner of Amersfoort. Kotalla had a short-tempered nature, took pervitin, drank liters of gin, and primarily targeted Jews and priests. Kotalla was known, among other things, for his cruelty during daily roll call, during which he kicked and beat prisoners with a club. In one case, as a punishment, he made prisoners lie on their backs and then stomped over them with his boots. He took pleasure in giving prisoners only five minutes to eat their hot meal. In at least one case, he unleashed his German Shepherd on a prisoner. He also kicked prisoners between their legs; in the camp, this was called the “Kotalla kick.” Kotalla was part of a firing squad several times.

Jupp Kotalla shortly after his arrest, photographed on Bergstraat in Amersfoort. He tried to conceal his SS identity by wearing a Luftwaffe uniform. (1945)

On 14-12-1948, “Jupp” Kotalla was sentenced to death by the Amsterdam Special Court of Appeal. The Special Court of Cassation ordered a psychiatric examination of Kotalla by a neurologist. This neurologist concluded on 04-10-1949, that he was “not diminishedly responsible” during the commission of his crimes and that “his nervous disposition cannot serve as an excuse for the many abuses he committed, as they are too clearly systematic in nature.” Partly based on this conclusion, the death sentence was upheld on 05-12-1949.

At the request of his lawyer, a second psychiatric examination was conducted, which concluded in a report dated 18-03-1950, that he was indeed diminishedly responsible. Finally, at the request of his lawyer, Kotalla was examined by psychiatrists Pieter Aard Hendrik Baan and Henricus Cornelius Rümke at the Psychiatric Observation Clinic in Utrecht. On 05-06-1951, they also indicated that Kotalla had diminished responsibility. According to them, Kotalla had an obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, partly due to “organic damage” to the central nervous system, as well as an “infantile sense of reality.”

Based on the final psychiatric report, the death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by royal decree on 05-12-1951.

On 07-11-1952, “Jupp” Kotalla was transferred from the Norgerhaven prison in Veenhuizen to the Breda Pancake Prison, along with German war criminals Ferdinand Hugo (Ferdy) aus der Fünten and Franz Fischer. German war criminal SS-Sturmbannführer (major) Willy Paul Franz “Willy” Lages  followed on 24–02-1955. Franz Fischer”s fanatical hunt for Jews soon earned him the nickname “Jewish Fisherman”1955. After the release of all other war criminals in Breda and elsewhere in the Netherlands in the early 1960s, this quartet continued as the Breda Four. After Lages’ release in 1966, the remaining trio was called the Breda Three.

Fischer, along with Ferdy aus der Fünten, was released on 27-01-1989 at the instigation of Minister of Justice Frits Korthals Altes. He went to live with his wife, to whom he was still married and to whom he was 88 years old at the time of his release. Fischer died of pneumonia that same year on 19 September at the Sankt Josef Hospital in Bigge, a sub-municipality of Olsberg, and was buried there on 25 September. Upon his death, Fischer left behind hundreds of thousands of Deutsche Marks, money he had received from sympathisers.

Aus der Fünten had already died earlier, on 19-04-1989. He died at the age of 79 of a cerebral hemorrhage, shortly after having retired to a nursing home in West Germany after several weeks.

The Dutch doctors suspected that Willy Lages of having colon cancer, but had not dared to operate on him. In West Germany, he was operated on. During the operation, it turned out that he did not have colon cancer, but a bowel obstruction (which, had Lages not undergone surgery, would also have been fatal). In November 1966, Lages left the hospital. Because he could not be extradited under the West German constitution, he was effectively a free man as long as he refrained from traveling outside West Germany. He settled in the spa town of Braunlage, where he stayed at the villa of Rudolf Ehrhardt, a well-known Nazi during the war. He lived for almost five more years. On 02-04-1971, Lages died in Braunlage from a brain tumor at the age of 69.

Kotalla divorced his wife in 1960. His wife had filed for divorce. They had no children. A childhood sweetheart had begun writing Kotalla a monthly letter from 1957 onward. He married her on 28-12-1966, in the Pancake Prison. Aus der Fünten, Fischer, and two of Kotalla’s aunts attended the wedding ceremony. His second wife visited him annually on his birthday and at Christmas.

In Breda’s domed prison, Kotalla spent his days in the textile work barracks. However, mending and making garments was not his favorite activity. In the early 1970s, he was declared unfit for work due to heart problems. As a hobby, Kotalla bred moonfish in his cell for years. He owned hundreds of them. A guard traded offspring for fish food at a local pet shop. This allowed him to pursue his hobby inexpensively. When he turned 65, he applied unsuccessfully for an AOW (state pension) benefit. Kotalla had even hired a lawyer at his own expense. The request was denied, so Kotalla filed a lawsuit, which he also lost.

On the night of 30-31-1973, Kotalla suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and was transferred to a hospital in Scheveningen. The right side of his body was paralyzed, and he ended up in a wheelchair. He had to relearn how to talk and walk. He never managed to walk further than shuffle. Kotalla insisted on being returned to the dome prison in Breda. He gave the reason that he was in isolation in Scheveningen and missed his familiar surroundings in Breda. His request was denied, so he went on hunger strike on  26-11-1974. He was finally returned to the dome prison in Breda on 06-12-1974. On 18-05-1975, he was given the sacrament of dying, but he survived. On 22-07-1976, he requested temporary release in summary proceedings. His lawyers argued that his health made further detention impossible. They also stated that Kotalla was being discriminated against because several other war criminals had already been released. The court dismissed his claims. This happened again on appeal, just as it did at the Supreme Court on 11-02-1977. Kotalla did not leave it at that and went to the European Court of Human Rights, but in 1978 he was also unsuccessful there.

Death and burial ground of Kotalla, Joseph Johann “Jupp”.

   Joseph Johann Kotalla (left), who served as acting camp commandant, and Oberle, now himself imprisoned in “The Rose Garden” in Camp Amersfoort. In the Rose Garden, prisoners were forced to stand upright for hours or even days, within a narrow barbed wire fence, without food or water, in all weather conditions. Prisoners who fell were beaten back up with sticks. Kotalla was one of the most notorious executioners in Amersfoort, nicknamed “the Executioner of Amersfoort.”

Kotalla died 31-07-1979, age 71, in the Koepelgevangenis/prison in Breda, Netherlands, as one of the Four of Breda. One of the nuns who cared for him in his final weeks was the only one present at his death. His body was taken to the mortuary of Huize Elisabeth in Zundert, where his spiritual counselor had been appointed rector. Kotalla received a Roman Catholic funeral service, but it was not publicized. On August 2nd, two days after his death, he was cremated in Breda at the state’s expense. At Kotalla’s request, his ashes were sent to the cemetery in Fulda, Germany, where his second wife lived. The sending process presented problems because the name Joseph Johann Kotälla was used, and in West Germany, that name was unknown because his official surname is spelled without an umlaut. He also appeared to have been registered without an umlaut at the Civil Registry in Breda for all those years. The West German embassy in The Hague also appeared to only know him without an umlaut. Ultimately, the ashes were sent to West Germany in early September 1979, under his surname without the umlaut. The urn was placed in the grave of his parents-in-law. Upon his death, his widow inherited 7,211.28 guilders from Kotalla’s prison account in Breda. She also inherited all the money from his two Sparkasse Bremen bank accounts. She was also entitled to his German pension. She died in 2008 and was also buried with him. His infamous wooden club was preserved and donated to the National Monument Camp Amersfoort Foundation and can still be viewed at the memorial center in Amersfoort.

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