A Serial Killer in Nazi Berlin

by Scott Andrew Selby

  In November 1938, the men of the SA took part in a brutal, all-out attack on Jewish citizens of the Reich. The excuse for this attack was an incident that had taken place in Paris on November 7, 1938. Polish-born Jews in Germany were being deported to Poland. But Poland, not yet a conquered country, refused to let them in. It was a nightmare for the thousands of people stuck between these two countries. One such family was Riva and Sendel Grynszpan’s.

  Their teenaged son Herschel lived in Paris, and when he heard about the perilous situation his parents were in, he went to the German embassy in France and asked to be brought to an official. He was seen by the most junior official on duty, a man named Ernst vom Rath. Herschel Grynszpan shot Ernst vom Rath, repeatedly. Ironically, vom Rath had expressed anti-Nazi views, including concern over the mistreatment of Jewish people. Ernst vom Rath died two days later on November 9.

  The Nazis used this murder as an excuse to engage in organized violence against Jews, while pretending that it was a spontaneous outburst from the population. Reinhard Heydrich, the head of the Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei, which means Secret State Police), issued detailed, secret instructions to the SA and the Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei) on this matter.

  In what has come to be called Kristallnacht, also known as the Night of Broken Glass, the SA and other Nazi groups attacked Jews and locations linked to Jews, such as synagogues, businesses, and residences. This took place across Germany and Austria, and was organized such that non-Jewish property was to be protected. So, for example, in Berlin, a synagogue in a Jewish area would be burned, while one next door to an Aryan-owned business would be smashed up instead.

  Many young, healthy Jewish men were rounded up and detained, then shipped off to concentration camps. Others were simply beaten to death.

  Having been an active part of the SA, Ogorzow became increasingly comfortable with violence. He’d risen to the rank of SA Oberscharführer (senior squad leader). It was the second noncommissioned officer rank in the SA, just above his prior rank of Scharführer (squad leader).

  His activities with the SA desensitized him to beating people. Such violence, of course, was supposed to be directed against perceived enemies of the Nazi Party, not German housewives.

  The garden allotments that had been Ogorzow’s hunting grounds, an area he lived near and knew intimately, no longer felt safe to him. While the extensive green areas that filled this place provided him with plenty of cover, and the blackout meant that the area had no lighting in it, he was now afraid.

  He’d attacked a woman who he had mistakenly thought was alone, and her brother-in-law and husband had beaten him badly. Even in his prior attacks, a woman screaming out for help had often foiled his plans, and so he thought about a new place where he could attack women and not face this danger.

  He passed through the garden area on his way to and from one of the S-Bahn stations near his home. It may have been during one these trips that he realized that the trains themselves could serve as a new, safer, hunting ground for him. He knew them just as intimately as he did the garden area near his home, and by carefully waiting to attack until the only ones in a compartment were him and his intended victim, he could greatly minimize the risk of interruption or anyone hearing his victims’ screams. And the trains themselves were darkened—not the complete darkness of the garden area, but still enough to make them an attractive place for a violent criminal like him.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Blackout

  The S-Bahn train compartments were dark (a little light was allowed though, so they were merely poorly lit, not pitch-black), as was the city of Berlin, because the Nazi regime had mandated a blackout in order to make it harder for British bombers to hit their targets.

  The first British bombs landed in Berlin on August 25, 1940. Little actual damage had been done during that attack (the British only managed to destroy a garden house), but the city was on edge now that the war had finally come to its doorstep.

  The famed historian William Shirer was in Berlin that night, and he wrote that despite the “material damage [being] negligible . . . the effect on German morale was tremendous. For this was the first time that bombs had ever fallen on Berlin. ‘The Berliners are stunned [I wrote in my diary the next day, August 26]. They did not think it could ever happen. When this war began, Goering assured them it couldn’t. . . . They believed him. Their disillusionment today therefore is all the greater. You have to see their faces to measure it.’”1

  The head of the German air force, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, famously announced about a year before, in September 1939, “No enemy bomber can reach the Ruhr. If one reaches the Ruhr, my name is not Göring. You may call me Meier.”2 By this he meant that he was so confident that the British would never bomb Germany, that if the impossible happened, and Germany was bombed, he would trade in his high-status identity as Göring for the common, everyman status of Meier. It was like a prince saying he would become a blue-collar worker if a certain event came to pass.

  Despite Allied bombs raining down on the Ruhr region, and past it, on Berlin itself, Göring did not change his name. However, cynical Berliners, when they thought it safe to do so, would refer to him as Hermann Meier. And air raid sirens became informally known among the embittered as “Meier’s trumpets.”3

  The night before Great Britain bombed Berlin, the Germans had accidentally bombed a church and civilian housing on the outskirts of London. Their mission had been to hit an oil terminal. Hitler did not want London bombed.

  The prime minister of the United Kingdom, Winston Churchill, was furious about this attack and ordered the immediate bombing of Berlin. While their first raid killed no one, the next attack on Berlin killed eight. About two weeks after the first bombs fell in Berlin, Germany began the Blitz (the German word for lightning), a 267-day-long campaign of German bombing of British cities.

  Aerial bombardment of cities meant that places like London or Berlin were blacked out during the night so as to make it harder for planes to find targets. Nowadays, planes usually find targets using a global positioning system (GPS), but in World War II that was still thirty years in the future. Nor did those going on bombing runs have the advantage of night-vision goggles. Air-to-ground radar would come into use as the war progressed, but it still was not nearly as useful as being able to see a target. Other means of navigating to targets included astronavigation (used by the British) and radio navigation (used by the Germans).

  As a practical matter, pilots needed to actually see targets with their own eyes to know where to bomb. Other ways of bombing tended to result in bombs landing far from their intended targets.

  Daylight bombing runs were much more accurate than attacks by night, but with the German air force still a power to be reckoned with and antiaircraft fire coming from batteries on the ground, it was very dangerous for the Allies to fly bombing sorties while the sun shined. Bombers were much slower than fighter planes and were especially vulnerable during the day. At night, painted black, flying high in the sky, such bombers were harder to intercept.

  On the other end of the spectrum, during times of storms or heavy cloud cover, while they were safe from enemy fire, it would be hard for bombers to find targets to hit. They would not know if they were above the center of Berlin’s government district or a farm twenty miles away. The key then for planes to find targets to hit was for them to look for the telltale sign of modern civilization—lights at night.

  The populations of these cities faced the dangers of a bomb hitting their homes, their places of work, their various modes of transportation, or wherever they happened to be walking. And as William Shirer wrote, the British air force “came over in greater force on the night of August 28–29 [1940] and, as I noted in my diary, ‘for the first time killed Germans in the capital of the Reich.’”4

  While the United States would not enter World War II until December 7, 1941, President Franklin R
oosevelt had spoken out early on against the aerial bombardment of cities. On September 1, 1939, he proclaimed, “The ruthless bombing from the air of civilians in unfortified centers of population during the course of the hostilities which have raged in various quarters of the earth during the past few years, which has resulted in the maiming and in the death of thousands of defenseless men, women, and children, has sickened the hearts of every civilized man and woman, and has profoundly shocked the conscience of humanity. If resort is had to this form of inhuman barbarism during the period of the tragic conflagration with which the world is now confronted, hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings who have no responsibility for, and who are not even remotely participating in, the hostilities which have now broken out, will lose their lives.”5

  President Roosevelt went on to appeal to all sides to stop bombing civilian populations, but the problem remained that as long as one side was willing to do it, the other belligerents felt compelled to do so as well.

  Hitler promptly released a statement to the press: “The opinion expressed in President Roosevelt’s message that it is the law of humanity to refrain under all conditions of military activity from bombing non-military objectives is fully in accordance with my viewpoint and in accordance with what I have always represented. Therefore I agree unconditionally to the proposal that governments participating in current hostilities give a public declaration to this effect. For my part, I already announced publicly in my Reichstag speech on Friday that the German air forces have received orders to restrict their action to military objectives.”6

  Hitler’s statement was contingent on the British not bombing civilians, and in the end, both sides continued to bomb cities.

  These attacks were not even accurate in terms of being able to hit military targets within a city environment. For example, in September 1941, the British would analyze their past bombing attacks on Germany and find that only 20 percent of their planes bombed within five miles of their targets.

  During the war, Berliners were free to wander around at night and go to normal activities like the theater, a restaurant, or a bar. The insides of such places were usually full of smoke, as the blackout meant that doors and windows could not be left open, and the air inside would soon grow stale and smoky. Restaurants in particular were often packed, as one did not need ration cards to get food there, just money. And this meant that if one had the money, there was food to be had without any hassle.

  If an air raid siren went off, signaling that British bombers had been spotted, then everyone had to get off the streets and into the nearest air raid shelter. A reporter explained in August 1940 that in Berlin, “the streets were quickly cleared when the alarm sounded. Buses, street cars, subway trains were halted according to regulations.”7

  Any German citizens caught on the street during the air raid had to pay a fifty-mark fine, which was then equivalent to twenty U.S. dollars. As the reporter was an American, he was allowed to continue on with a warning and the sense that if he wanted to risk his own life to get to work during an air raid, that was on him. Only once the all-clear signal was sounded could civilians go out again.

  The main regulations for implementing the blackout in Germany were issued by the Nazi government on May 23, 1939.8 The blackout had not yet begun, as it was not needed until Germany was actually at war, but Hitler planned to attack Poland later that year and so needed the regulations in place beforehand. It would take time for the Reich to be ready to implement the blackout.

  The Blackout Regulation, the informal name for the Eighth Regulation Implementing the Air Protection Act, spelled out how the blackout would work. This regulation was divided into two main parts. The first part dealt with general regulations that impacted private spaces, while the second part covered special regulations, which dealt primarily with public space issues such as how transportation and signage would work.

  Section One explained that these regulations covered implementation of the blackout throughout the Reich.

  Section Two proscribed that “responsibility for implementation of the blackout” fell on those who owned a property or at least exercised actual control over it. This was combined with the next section, which set forth that as a general rule the costs of implementing the blackout requirements fell on those responsible for implementing them. The only exceptions being if the person had a contract that said otherwise or if specific legislation addressed this issue for them. These two provisions combined meant that it would be up to a home or business owner to do what was needed to prevent light from spilling out into the night. And any associated expenses, such as purchasing heavy-duty blackout curtains for windows, would be that person’s responsibility.

  Section Four, “Preparation of Blackout Measures,” required that people ready themselves to implement the blackout immediately, so that the government could announce at any time that they wanted it to begin right away. The real date for when the blackout would begin would be the invasion of Poland, but that date was a closely guarded secret, and so instead of including an actual date for when people would need to start implementing the blackout, the Blackout Regulation mandated that the populace ready themselves now. The announcement of when the blackout would actually begin would come later on.

  Section Five, “Commencement and Duration of the Blackout,” explained that the police would announce the start and end of the blackout. Once it began, the default timing for it would be from dusk to dawn every day.

  Section Six covered the very narrow circumstances under which relief from the mandatory blackout would be granted. This primarily applied to essential factories that needed light to operate and could set up a connection to the air raid warning system so they could go dark if bombers were actually coming.

  Section Seven covered monitoring of the implementation of the Blackout Regulation. Those making sure that the people followed these rules were given the police powers needed to enforce them and to punish those who did not abide by them.

  The second part, special regulations, contained twenty-one sections that covered everything needed to convert a modern industrial city, powered by electricity and filled with cars, buses, trams, and trains, into something that did not leak light into the night. There were a host of issues, big and small, that needed to be covered to enable this massive transformation and to try to accomplish it while still allowing the city to be productive at night and to minimize the loss of life that would result from the removal of proper outdoor lighting.

  This section included rules on such subjects as the nature and implementation of blackout measures; the dimming of light sources; preventing the exit of light from buildings and vehicles; traffic lights; road sign lighting; the lighting of land vehicles such as cars and bicycles; road safety; and more.

  Train platforms became dark as a result of Section Sixteen (traffic lights), Clause One: “The lighting of streets, roads, squares, railway and port facilities, waterways, and properties of all kinds, to the extent not otherwise provided below, are to be shut down.”9

  Road safety was a major issue, and Section Twenty-Eight prescribed that weatherproof white paint, highly visible in the dark, be applied to the curbs of major traffic points such as crosswalks, bus stops, and intersections. This paint was also to be applied about a meter up on any dangers near the road, such as fences, trees, bends, houses, and more. Otherwise, cars might veer off the road and crash into these obstacles.

  The third part consisted of a single section, numbered twenty-nine, which covered the authorization needed to amend the second part of the regulation. It granted this power to the reich minister of aviation and commander of the air force, Hermann Göring, although any changes to rules about traffic lighting needed to be approved by the minister of the interior and the minister of transport.

  The Reich held elaborate practice runs for the blackout before starting World War II. In July 1939, Berlin prepared for Germany’s upcoming attack on
Poland by blacking out the whole city. The population of this city of four million people all played some role in this exercise, from the civilians who responded to the air raid sirens by quickly entering the closest air raid shelters to the first responders who attended to those who acted as if they were injured or dying.

  Planes flew overhead and dropped fake bombs while the city’s defenders tried to shoot them up with fake antiaircraft fire. As the Associated Press reported, “The raiders theoretically shattered hundreds of buildings, tore up streets, overturned street cars, and caused casualties among civilians. . . . Buildings poured forth specially manufactured smoke while red flares added to the simulation of buildings set afire by bombs. Detonations like exploding bombs could be heard.”10

  On September 1, 1939, Germany attacked Poland, and the blackout began. Strangely, that same night, the air alarm went off, even though no Polish bombers had come to attack and a practice air raid had not been announced. In December, a foreign correspondent wrote, “When evening falls, Berlin becomes literally a ‘city of dreadful night.’ This blackout must be lived to be understood. It is almost total. Trams and buses still run, but virtually dark. The few automobiles that circulate have their headlights hooded save for a small slit, which emits only a faint ray. You pick your way warily through inky-black streets, sensing rather than seeing the passers-by.”11

  German propaganda posters emphasized this element of threat and the need for diligently following the rules and regulations related to the blackout. One particularly memorable poster featured a malevolent skeleton riding on top of a plane painted with a Royal Air Force roundel while hurling down a black ball on a German city. At the bottom left of the poster, we see how the bomber found a target—a person stands in an open doorway leaking light out into the street. The same building has windows that are lit up as they lack blackout curtains. Scrawled across the poster are the words “The Enemy Sees Your Light! Blackout!”12