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" or "Silent Help") is a relief organization for arrested, condemned and fugitive SS members, similar to the veterans' association, set up by Helene Elizabeth, Princess von Isenburg (1900-1974) in 1951.

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[edit] History

Operating covertly from 1946, the organisation which later became publicly active as "Stille Hilfe", aided the escape of hunted Nazi fugitives over Allied lines via escape routes particularly to South America. Thus Adolf Eichmann, Johann von Leers, Walter Rauff and Josef Mengele could 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 should be formed primarily to facilitate a donations campaign. On 7 October 1951 the founders' meeting was held in Munich and on 15 November 1951 the organisation 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 was active for those accused and arrested as a result of the war trials, whether in the prisons of the victors or in German penal institutions".

From the beginning of the Nuremberg Trials and in the cause of victims of Victor's justice public opinion was influenced in order to prevent execution of the death penalty. In press campaigns, personal and open letters and petitions, the 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 Princess von Isenburg was particularly devoted to the war criminals condemned to death in Landsberg prison, she was affectionately known as "Mother of the Landsbergers" in order to let "Stille Hilfe" be seen primarily as a charitable organisation.

The legal assistance for arrested 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 a past-ideological and revisionist objective.

Princess Isenburg tirelessly pleaded the victims' cause in conservative circles and with high-ranking church representatives (even up to the Pope - she was a strict Catholic). Johannes Neuhäusler (1888-1973) in particular, who not only had suffered detention/imprisonment by the Gestapo, but also had been held by the Nazis in the Dachau concentration camp as a special prisoner, was most effective in public opinion, even among western Allied officials. The motives of the bishops lay probably less in a conscious ideological identification with the war criminals, but rather in the effort regarding reconciliation with the German past and the start of the new post-war society in West Germany. Neuhäusler explained the he wanted to repay "the bad with good". The further connections of 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 initiated a whole series of organizations 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 support and with the end of the main Nuremberg Trials and the release of the time-serving Nazi war criminals from Landsberg prison in 1958, Stille Hilfe, re-oriented almost exclusively toward the "Altnazi" scene. In the following decades they worked somewhat in secret with revisionist organizations and prominent protagonists of the "Auschwitzlüge" (Auschwitz lie) like Thies Christophersen and Manfred Roeder and co-operated with relevant foreign organizations and personalities e.g. (Florentine Rost 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 end-of-year figures, one can only estimate the influx of capital: However perhaps donations (without inheritances) at least to the end of the 1990s were annually circa €60000 to 80000.

Stille Hilfe supported the condemned in the Düsseldorfer Majdanek trials, the former concentration camp guard Hildegard Lächert ("bloody Brygida") and later Klaus Barbie, Erich Priebke and Josef Schwammberger, who from 1942 to 1944 was commander of Polish labour camps, involved in the massacres of Przemyśl and Rozwadow. Whether they were involved in the release of Herbert Kappler from a prison in Rome in 1977 is not clarified. Chairmen after Princess Isenburg (until 1959) were to 1992 the former Bund Deutscher Mädel leaders Gertrude Herr and Adelheid Klug.

They have been led since 1992 by Horst Janzen. The organisation 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 political debate in the Bundestag over its non-profit status as a revisionistic right-wing extremist association and was submitted to an examination by the fiscal authorities. In the Bundesfinanzhof (Federal Finance Court) it was decided in November 1999 to deny Stille Hilfe non-profit, i.e. charitable, status.

For years they have had a prominent symbol: Gudrun Burwitz, the daughter of Heinrich Himmler, known by him as "Püppi", is an idol to Stille Hilfe and their affiliates. 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 who had lived undisturbed for about 40 years in Merano. He was proven guilty for his acts as a supervisor in the Gestapo-prison "Kleine Festung Theresienstadt", which was part of the larger Theresienstadt concentration camp. 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 for many years had hijacked the procedure. From 1988 to 2000, Malloth lived in Pullach near Munich. Gudrun Burwitz was instructed by 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] References

  • 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

[edit] External links