Helmut Kunz | |
---|---|
Helmut Kunz |
|
Born | September 26, 1910 Ettlingen, Germany |
Died | 1976 Freudenstadt, Germany |
Allegiance | Nazi Germany |
Service/branch | Waffen-SS |
Years of service | 1936 - 1945 |
Rank | Sturmbannführer (Major) |
Unit | Dental (medical) office |
Battles/wars | World War II |
Helmut Kunz (26 September 1910 - 1976) was an SS dentist who, after the suicide of Adolf Hitler, was ordered to administer anesthetic to the six children of Joseph Goebbels before they were killed.
Contents[hide] |
Kunz was born in Ettlingen, Germany. He first studied law, then dentistry. He wrote his doctoral thesis on "studies of dental caries among school children as related to their feeding in infancy." In 1936 he opened a dental practice in Lucka, south of Leipzig. He also joined the SS, unit Sturm 10/48.
In 1939, Kunz was a member of the 3rd SS Division Totenkopf. In 1941 he was seriously injured and assigned to the Waffen-SS medical office in Berlin. In April 1945 he was assigned to the Reich Chancellery.
Unlike many other leading Nazis by April 1945, Joseph Goebbels showed his strong support for Hitler by moving himself and his family into the Vorbunker, that was connected to the lower Führerbunker under the Reich Chancellery gardens in central Berlin.[1] Magda Goebbels was Kunz's first patient in the Chancellery. She had developed an abscess under a bridge in her lower jaw. In late April 1945, Magda took Kunz aside to ask his help in killing her children. Kunz at first refused, telling Magda that he had lost his two young daughters in an American air raid on Lucka. But Magda insisted that her request to kill her children was a direct order from Hitler. On 1 May 1945, according to Kunz, he injected the Goebbels children with morphine to render them unconscious before cyanide capsules were administered by someone else.
The Russians took Kunz prisoner and he spent ten years in Russian captivity, then returned to Münster. In 1955, a former SS sergeant and prisoner of war, Harri Mengershausen, implicated Kunz in the children's deaths.
In his testimony, Kunz said that he injected the children with morphine but it was Magda Goebbels, (Joseph Goebbels' wife and the mother of the children), who slipped the children cyanide pills.[2]
This contradicts the testimony of Oberscharführer Rochus Misch, a member of Hitler's Führerbegleitkommando bodyguard and head of communications in the Führerbunker and statements by Goebbels State Secretary in the Propaganda Ministry, Werner Naumann. Naumann and Misch both stated it was actually Hitler's surgeon SS Dr. Ludwig Stumpfegger who mixed a sweetened narcotic drink to put the Goebbels children into a deep sleep before Magda Goebbels placed cyanide capsules into their mouths.[3][4]
The German courts refused to convict Kunz, and he remained in dental practice, highly regarded until his death. He died in Freudenstadt in 1976, and is buried in the Städtischer Friedhof (municipal cemetery) division R, double grave 10/11.
Rochus Misch interview with the BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8234018.stm
|