Schöngarth, Karl Georg Eberhard.

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Schöngarth, Karl Georg Eberhard
germanySS BrigadeführerGestapo

Schöngarth, Karl Georg Eberhard, born 22-04-1903 in Leipzig, Saxony. His father was the manager of a brewery in Erfurt..His mother came from the rural area around Leipzig. Schöngarth had two brothers, one of whom died young. The other later worked in trade, Karl Georg became a professional soldier and died in Vitebsk in June 1944. Eberhard began high school at the age of 11, but soon dropped out to work at a garden center to support the war effort  On 07-03-1918 Eberhard was awarded a “Young Mens Iron Medal”. After the war, he went back to high school to complete his education, but instead joined a Freikorps paramilitary group in Thuringia  He studied law achieved a doctorate and first joined the Nazi Party  Nr  2.848.857 in 1922 but left the same year. After serving in the army during 1924 he worked as a university professor in Leibnitz. In 1933 he became a member of the SD Intelligence Service  of the SS SS-Nr. 67.174. During the German attack on Poland he was promoted to SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer by Heinrich Himmler  and served as Senior Inspector of SiPo Security Police in Dresden. On 16-03-1935, shortly before his 32nd birthday, Dr. Schöngarth the two years older teacher Dorothea Groß. The older of his two sons was born on 15-10-1936. The second son was born on 19-02-1940. In January 1941 he was sent to Kraków, Poland, as the Senior Commander of SiPo and the SS intelligence. During the time Schöngarth was stationed in Kraków, he formed several Einsatzgruppen (Special Action Groups) in Warsaw, Radom, and Lublin, with the intention of perpetrating massacres. Dr Schöngarth was characterized by an outstanding fast intellectual grasp, strong willpower and an impressive appearance. Schöngarth was a bulky figure, which commanded respect and obedience. He was energetic, very lively, a regular drinker and not without a sense of humor. He enjoyed “beating up “his men and to use drastic expressions. These outbursts were not seriously meant often accompanied by a “wink of the eye.”

He was responsible for the murder of up to 10.000 Jewish citizens between July and September 1941 and the massacre of Lviv    professors behind the front line of Operation Barbarossa. Dr Schöngarth was a fanatic enemy of the Jews, he believed their extermination necessary and wanted to harden his Sipo-SD Fuhrers with the necessary “steel hardness.” Schöngarth’s uncompromising stance is demonstrated in regard to the execution of the Jews in Lvov by officers under his command – that any SS officer would be shot for failing to carry out an order of execution, and that he would back any officer who shot his comrade for this failure. SS Brigadeführer and Generalmajor der Polizei Karl Schöngarth attended the Wannsee Conference

   on 20-01-1942, along with , Adolf Eichmann  , Reinhard Heydrich jurist Roland Freisler  Erich Neumann  , SS Gruppenführer Heinrich Müller   and Dr. Rudolf Lange  (Einsatzgruppen A) who had also participated in the Holocaust. Lange died in Posen, age 34 on 23-02-1945.

From early July 1944 until the end of the war he was the Senior Commander of the Sipo and SD in Den Haag, Holland. After the highest SS and Police Leader in the occupied Netherlands Hans-Albin Rauter

 was wounded in an ambush by Dutch resistance. As a reprisal the Germans ordered by Schòngarth executed 117 political prisoners at the location of the attack as well as 50 prisoners in Kamp Amersfoort and 40 prisoners each in The Hague and Rotterdam.

images (6)  One German soldier a medical man, the 30 years old Ernst Gräwe, a medic of the 1st Fallschirmjäger Regiment , refused to shoot civilians and removed his helmet as a symbolic gesture and joined together with the condemned. He was immediately shot in the head by the German Commander at the spot behind a wall. The other designated Germans for the execution carried out their assignments. Less than 45 minutes after the executions, the first Canadian liberators arrived in Deventer.

Gräwe, Ernst

Schöngarth served as Higher SS and Police Leader during March and April 1945. Schöngarth’s eventual fate was sealed when ReichsfuhrerSS Heinrich Himmler issued his directive concerning the treatment of captured English and American airmen. Rauter after World War II he was convicted download in the Netherlands of crimes against humanity and executed by firing squad, age 54 on 24-03-1949, near Scheveningen.

Death and burial ground of Schöngarth, Karl Georg Eberhard.

    Schöngarth was captured by the allies at the end of the war. After an investigation into his background, Dr Eberhard Schöngarth died as he had lived, “by the sword.” His death was by the sword of justice, enacted in the city of Burgensteinfurt, Germany in the British zone of occupation. He was charged with the crime of murdering a downed Allied pilot, on 21-11-1944) and tried by a British Military Court in Burgsteinfurt. He was found guilty of this war crime on 11-02-1946 and sentenced to death by hanging. On the 21-11-1944 the crew  of an Allied bomber baled out near Enschede in Holland. One of the crew, the co-pilot 2nd Lieutenant Americo S Galle  from New York, dropped in the grounds of a villa outside the town, which in fact turned out to be the Headquarters of the German Security SS/SD.

The airman who was estimated to be aged twenty-six years old, who was apparently unhurt, was taken by the SS to the cellar of the villa, where he was kept under guard, while arrangements were made for his disposal. These arrangements consisted of the removal of his flying kit and the substitution of a civilian light coloured shirt, a pair of dark trousers and a pair of socks. In this outfit he was put into a security vehicle, his hands handcuffed behind his back and taken some distance within the grounds of the Security Forces HQ to a spot within the compound where a grave had already been prepared. The airman was marched from the car by an escort of two SS men, one of whom dropped back and shot the airman in the back of the neck. He was buried and the grave was carefully camouflaged.

On his arrest Schöngarth denied complicity in the murder throughout, It was clear from the evidence of the co-accused that Schöngarth was implicated and had in fact given the order to execute the airman.

Schöngarth was executed by Albert Pierrepoint

     on 16-05-1946, age 43 at Hameln Prison. Pierrepoint himself died old age 87 on 10-07-1992 in Southport, England All war criminals were reburied in holy ground at Am Wehl Cemetery. The graveyard had graves with crosses but after many discussions about the Neo Nazi visits, on 05-03-1986 all 200 Iron Crosses were removed and the graveside is now a grass field. “Am Wehl” cemetery, today the final resting place of more than 1,800 war dead. In 1986 more than 200 grave crosses were removed, including that of Schöngarth.

Albert Pierrepoint subsequently became a pub owner in Lancashire and wrote his memoirs, in which he concluded that capital punishment was not a deterrent. There is no official count of the number of people he executed, which some have estimated at more than 600; the most commonly accepted figure is 435

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