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 Europe ended, Heinrich Baab received a sentence of life imprisonment in March 1950 for his involvement in the
Final Solution as the head of Division IIB2. He was imprisoned from 1948 to 1973. On 6 April 1950 he was convicted of murdering 55 Jews from 1938 to 1943 and the attempted murders of 21 Jews, as well as for maltreatment of 29 Jewish prisoners in Frankfurt. His trial was five weeks long, with 157 witnesses testifying, including some of his victims. Heinrich Baab sent many of Frankfurt's Jews to camps from the rail station. Baab's supervisor at the Lindenstrasse station was
Oswald Poche. Before joining the police in 1928 in
Stettin, Baab was a locksmith. Heinrich Baab's SS membership number was 306631 and his
Nazi Party number was 1346669.
[ The End of the Holocaust, p. 662, edited by Michael Robert Marrus,][Zeitschrift für Rechtspolitik 1969 "Heinrich Baab befindet sich seit dem 7. April 1948 in Haft, also mehr als 21 Jahre. Mildere Urteile Auch hier nur ein Beispiel aus der heutigen Praxis: Auf Grund von Anzeigen des Verurteilten Baab hat die Staatsanwaltschaft Frankfurt wegen der Judendeportationen aus Frankfurt zwischen 1941 und 1945 gegen neun weitere "][2004 "Im Jahre 1973 wurde Heinrich Baab durch den hessischen Justizminister begnadigt und aus der Haft entlassen"][ Jewish Telegraphic Agency, German Court Sentences Ex-gestapo Officer to Life for Murder, Maltreatment of Jews, April 6, 1950]
[ jta.org, Heinrich Baab][ Legal documentation including the indictment and verdict handed down against Heinrich Baab at the Frankfurt Court regarding the torture of inmates at the Gestapo station in Frankfurt am Main, 1940-1944, from 1949-1950]
Hermann Schramm, a German tenor who sang at the Frankfurt Opera, was a witness to the arrest of a Jewish woman caught with a tramway ticket in her handbag - evidence of her using public transport. Schramm attempted to intervene and was repeatedly struck in the face by Baab, but not arrested himself. Hermann Schramm testified against Baab at his trial.[Zeitungs-Artikel Herbert Küsel p 174, 1973 "Da fand Baab ein Straßenbahnkärtchen in der Handtasche; sieh mal an, eine Jüdin, die trotz dem Verbot mit der Straßenbahn fuhr. ... Es ist der alte Opernsänger Hermann Schramm, Ehrenmitglied der Städtischen Bühnen "]
The Baab trial in Frankfurt was described by American journalist Kay Boyle in an article in The New Yorker, later also published as an introduction to her story collection The Smoking Mountain.[ The New Yorker, 9 Sep 1950][Kay Boyle: The Smoking Mountain: Stories of Postwar Germany. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1951]
Baab served his sentence at Butzbach Prison. In clemency petitions, he portrayed himself as a victim who had gotten caught up in the Holocaust and was only a minor perpetrator. In 1972, Baab was granted clemency and released from prison. He died in 2001.
External links
