Stille Hilfe
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Die Stille Hilfe für Kriegsgefangene und Internierte (German for "Silent assistance for prisoners of war and interned persons") abbreviated "Stille Hilfe" (Quiet Aid) is a relief organization for arrested, condemned and fugitive Nazi war criminals, set up by Helene Elizabeth, Princess von Isenburg (1900-1974) in 1951.
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[edit] History
Starting from 1946 supported aid, which later became "Stille Hilfe" also publicly active, the escape of hunted Nazi culprits over Allied lines designated escape route particularly to South America. Thus could Adolf Eichmann, Johann von Leers, walter Rauff and Josef Mengele escape to Argentina . The aids co-operated closely with the organization ODESSA (organization of former SS-members) and Bishop Alois Hudal in Rome. In 1949 Catholic Bishop Johannes Neuhäusler and Evangelical Bishop Theophil Worm founded "the Christian prisoner assistance".
[edit] Establishment
After the main exponents of the later association had already long formed an active network, it was decided a non-profit association facilitate primarily the campaign for donations should be formed. On 7 October 1951 the founders' meeting was held in Munichand on 15 November 1951 the organisaion was entered in the register of associations in the Upper Bavarian city Wolfratshausen. The first president, Helene Elizabeth, Princess von Isenburg was chosen because of her good contacts in the aristocracy and conservative upper middle-class circles as well as the Catholic church. Founding members of the committee included church representatives Theophil Worm and Johannes Neuhäusler, as well as high-ranking former functionaries of the Nazi state such as the former SS-Standartenführer and head of department in the Central Reich Security Office (RSHA), William Spengler, and SS-Obersturmbannführer Heinrich Malz, who was the personal adviser of Ernst Kaltenbrunner.
[edit] Objectives and activity in the mid 1950s
Helene Elizabeth, Princess von Isenburg explained its objectives in such a way: "From the start of its efforts‚ the Stille Hilfe sought to take care of, above all, the serious needs of the prisoners of war and those interned completely without rights. Later their welfare service applied in the context of the war discrete event type processes accused and arrested, whether in the prisons of the victors or in German penal institutions".
From the beginning Nuremberg Trials and the series of trials Victor's justice to protect in order to mobilize so the public and the accused and condemned the execution of the death penalty. In press campaigns, personal letters, petitions, open letters Nazi war criminals were usually represented as innocent victims, pure command receivers, irreproachable and often also having a blind faith in the Führer, who would have to suffer bitter injustice by Victor's justice.
Because Helene Elizabeth princess von Isenburg was particularly devoted for the Nazi war criminals condemned to death in Landsberg prison, she was called "mother of the Landsberger" and also called herself the same, in order to let “Stille Hilfe" be seen primarily as a charitable organisation.
The legal assistance for arrested Nazi war criminals was first organized by the attorney Rudolf Aschenauer (1913-1983), who also formulated and submitted requests for grace and revisions. The organisation paid vacation, dismissal and Christmas benefit to the prisoners and also supported their families. They were not only limited to humanitarian activities but also pursued also an past-ideological and revisionisti objective.
Princess Isenburg succeeded it to include conservative circles and to win high-ranking church representatives as moral authorities for itself: Theophil Worm and Johannes Neuhäusler (1888-1973). Neuhäusler in particular, who not only had to suffer detention by the Gestapo, but was also held in Dachau as a special prisoner, was the most effective in public opinion. The motives of the bishops lay probably less in a conscious ideological identification with the Nazi malefactorsLV authors, but rather in the effort regarding reconciliation with the past and the new start of the postwar society in Germany. Neuhäusler explained the he wanted to repay "bad with good". The further connections of the Princess Isenburg and Aschenauer led particularly to former SS organizations such as Gauleiterkreis under Werner Naumann, which was already partly formed in Allied prisoner-of-war camps. Princess Isenburg switched a whole set of organizations and combinations on for her actions as "The working group for the rescue of the Landsberger prisoners", who were essentially financed by the churches.
[edit] Activity up to today
After the churches had to a large extent withdrawn themselves, with the end of the main Nuremberg Trials and the dismissal of the in-sitting Nazi war criminals into Landsberg prison in 1958, Stille Hilfe, oriented themselves almost exclusively toward the "Altnazi" scene. In the following decades they worked somewhat in secret with revisionist organizations and prominent protagonists of the "Auschwitzluge" (Auschwitz lie) like Thies Christophersen and Manfred Roeder and co-operated with relevant organizations and personalities (Florentine rust van Tonningen, Leon Degrelle) abroadThies Christophersen and Manfred Roeder and worked with relevant organizations and personalities abroad, e.g. Florentine rust van Tonningen, Leon Degrelle). At the same time they maintained contacts with conservative politicians such as Franz Josef Strauß, Theodor Oberländer, Jörg Haider and probably also Alfred Dregger, though there is no clear proof. By a not insignificant number of inheritances and by regular donations the organisation controls considerable funds. Since they do not publish its end-of-year figures, one can only estimate the influx of capital: However perhaps donations (without inheritances) at least to the end of th 1990s were annually circa €60,000 to 80.000.
Stille Hilfe supported the condemned in the Düsseldorfer Majdanek trials, the former Female_Guards_in_Nazi_Concentration_Camps Hildegard Lächert ("bloody Brygida") and later Klaus Barbie, Erich Priebke and Josef Schwammberger, from 1942 to 1944 commander of of the Polish labour camps, massacres of [[Przemyśl] and Rozwadow. Whether they were involved in the release of Herbert Kappler from a prison in Rome in 1977 is not not clarified. Chairmen after Princess von Isenburg (until 1959) were to 1992 the former League of German Girls leaders Gertrude Herr und Adelheid Klug.
They have been led since 1992 by Horst Janzen, before cash examiners of the association and with the Düsseldorfer Majdanek trials as a responsible person and observer on their behalf. The organization has today approx. 40 members with decreasing numbers. At the same time however contacts were reinforced with "Hilfsorganisation für nationale politische Gefangene und deren Angehörige" ((relief organization for national political prisoners) (HNG), so continuity may be secured.
Based until 1976 in Bremen Osterholz, since 1989 in Rotenburg (Wümme), since 1992 in Wuppertal. In 1993/1994 it caused a a political debate in the Bundestag over its non-profit status of the revisionistic right-wing extremist association and to an examination by the fiscal authorities. In the Bundesfinanzhof (Federal Finance Court) it was decided to deny in November 1999 that Stille Hilfe has non-profit status.
For years they have has a prominent symbol: Gudrun Burwitz, the daughter of [[Heinrich Himmler]s, known by him as "Püppi", is a Idol to Stille Hilfe and their cronies. At meetings such as Ulrichsbergtreffen in Austria she appeared at the same time as star and authority. Gudrun Burwitz, born on 8 August 1929, has campaigned intensively in the last few years for Nazi malefactors. This particularly showed up in the case of Anton Malloth. Malloth, who had lived undisturbed for about 40 years in Meran, after Germany was proven, however for its acts as a supervisor in in the Gestapo-prison "Kleine Festung Theresienstadt", which was part of the larger Theresienstadt concentration camp. Only in 2001 was Malloth convicted by the district court of Munich for murder and attempted murder and sentenced to life imprisonment, after the public prosecutor's office in Munich had taken over the procedure of the public prosecutor's office in Dortmund, which had for many years had hijacked the procedure. From 1988 to 2000, Malloth lived in Pullach near Munich. Gudrun Burwitz, was instructed by the "Stille Hilfe" to rent a comfortable room for him in a home for the aged, which was built on a lot formerly owned by Rudolf Hess.
When it became public at the end of the 90s that the social welfare assistance administration (and thus the German taxpayers) had taken over to a large part the considerable running costs of the home where Malloth was staying, substantial public criticism resulted - also at the participation of Gudrun Burwitz.
[edit] literature
Oliver Schröm/ Andrea Röpke, Stille Hilfe für braune Kameraden, Christoph Links Verlag, 2002, ISBN 386153231X
- Franziska Hundseder, Rechte machen Kasse, Droemer Knaur Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3426800470
- Ernst Klee, Was sie taten - Was sie wurden, Fischer Taschenbuch (4364), 12. Auflage 1998, ISBN 3596243645
- Ernst Klee, Persilscheine und falsche Pässe, Fischer Taschenbuch (10956), 5. Aufl. 1991), ISBN 3596109566
