Gustav Richter
Gustav Richter (12 November 1913 – c.1982) was an aide to Nazi Adolf Eichmann during World War II.
Richter was born in 1913 and he received a law degree (died about 1982).
Richter was a devoted Nazi. He was a member of the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP) and he joined the "Protective Squadron" (Schutzstaffel, SS).
Romania
In April 1941, Richter was sent to Bucharest, Romania, as the adviser on Jewish Affairs. He collaborated closely with the German Ambassador to Romania, Manfred Freiherr von Killinger.
After returning to Berlin in September 1941, Richter returned to Romania. He remained there until August 1944. It was Richter who insisted on the reintroduction of repressive measures. On 3 September 1941, it was by his order that wearing the yellow badge was re-endorsed.
Richter's primary task was to take a census of the Jews in Romania. He planned the ghettoization and ultimate extermination of 300,000 Romanian Jews. Richter planned the deportation of Romanian Jews to the Belzec extermination camp in occupied Poland. His other task was to prevent the emigration of Jewish children from Romania to Palestine.
On 22 July 1942, Richter received permission from Romania's Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Mihai Antonescu, to deport the Romanian Jews to Belzec. However, while hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed in Romania, in general, Richter's plan to deport them to Belzec fell through.
Richter did manage to prevent the emigration of deportees, particularly orphans from Transnistria, to Palestine. Richter did this in accordance with the detailed instructions he received directly from Eichmann and the German Foreign Ministry.
On 23 August 1944, the Romanian royalist forces under King Michael I (King Mihai) staged a coup, deposed the government of Ion Antonescu (Romania's military dictator), quit the Axis, and joined the Allies. Richter found himself besieged in the German embassy in Bucharest by royalist forces. He was captured by the Romanians and he was delivered to the Soviet liberation forces.
Prisoner of war
On 21 January 1945, while in Soviet custody immediately following World War II, Richter shared a prison cell with Raoul Wallenberg at Lubyanka prison. On 1 March 1945, Richter was moved from his cell and he never saw Wallenberg again. Richter testified in Sweden in 1955 that Wallenberg was interrogated at least once by the Soviets for about an hour-and-a-half. According to Richter, this interrogation took place in early February 1945.
After ten years in prisoner-of-war camps in the Soviet Union, Richter was transferred to Germany in 1955 but he never fully escaped prison. Preparations for Richter's trial began in Germany in 1961. But the trial did not begin until December 1981. The basis for Richter's conviction was the plan, signed by him, to deport Romanian Jewry to Belzec. In early 1982, Richter was sentenced to four years of imprisonment but was released on the basis that he had already spent time in prison whilst in the Soviet Union.[1]
See also
- Wiesel Commission
- History of the Jews in Romania
- Romania during World War II
- Battle of Romania (1944)