Rosenbaum, William

Wilhelm Rosenbaum was born on April 27, 1915 in the family of the municipal official Peter Rosenbaum ^[1] . William's mother passed away when he was one year old. His father married a second time. From 1921 to 1926 he attended elementary school. Then he studied in high school, which he graduated in 1931 with poor grades. In 1930 he became a member of the Hitler Youth ^[1] . February 1, 1930 was enrolled in the Assault squads (SA). From November 1932 he studied at the sports school of the SA in Preden, . April 27, 1933 on his 18th birthday joined the NSDAP . From the spring of 1933 to the fall of 1934, he earned his living in various ways. From November 1934 until September 1935 he served in the 12th Reichswehr Infantry Regiment in Dessau-Halberstadt. On the recommendation of his colleagues, on July 1, 1936 he moved from assault troops to the SS. In the fall of that year, he entered the Gestapo office in Berlin . There he was primarily involved in the registration of firearms and confiscation issues.

World War II

After the start of the Polish campaign, Rosenbaum was appointed inspector of the security police in Oppeln . Subsequently, in the rank of Oberscharführer, the SS served in the unit of Otto Zens , in which he participated in the fight against partisans and the suppression of uprisings in Oppeln, Czestochowa and Krakow . Later he was in the firing squad of the security police under the direction of SS Hauptsturmfuhrer Hans Krueger in Krakow. In November 1939, he was transferred to the Office of the Commander of the Security Police and SD in Krakow, Karl Eberhard Schöngart . In December of that year, he became the head of the business unit at the Security Police School in Zakopane . In July 1940 he was seconded to Bad Rabka (now Rabka-Zdroj in Poland ) ^[2] . From June to autumn 1941 he was a member of the Einsatz command of a special mission , a specialized battalion conducting mass executions in Galicia . He then became the head of the School of Security Police and SD in Bad Rabka. In this position, he led the exploitation of Jews and forced laborers, and also organized mass executions. In addition, he was particularly cruel in the personal treatment of prisoners ^[3] . He personally shot people, constantly carried a whip with metal inserts. In 1943, he was again sent to Krakow, where he was detained for some time for embezzling Jewish property, and then was transferred to Salzburg . April 20, 1945 was promoted to Untersturmfuhrer SS.

After the war

After the war, he dealt with transport on a farm in the Soviet occupation zone. Then he moved to Hamburg, where he worked as an insurance agent, private investigator and salesman. In 1949 he opened his own confectionery store and wanted a future expansion in the wholesale trade of these goods. The annual turnover of his company was 1,300,000 German marks ^[4] . September 7, 1961 was arrested on suspicion of war crimes ^[5] . The subject of the trial was both the mass and hand-made killings of people in Bad Rabka. On August 15, 1968, he was sentenced by a Hamburg court to life imprisonment ^[6] . On August 9, 1982, he was released on parole ^[7] . He died in 1984 ^[7] .

• Michał Rapta, Wojciech Tupta, Gregorz Moskal. Mroczne sekrety willi "Tereska": 1939-1945. - Wadowice: Druckarnia i Wydawnictwo, 2009 .-- ISBN 978-83-60817-33-9 .
• Tadeusz Piotrowski. Poland's Holocaust: Ethnic Strife, Collaboration with Occupying Forces and Genocide in the Second Republic, 1918–1947. - Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 1998 .-- ISBN 0-7864-0371-3 .

• Profile of SS-Untersturmführer Wilhelm Rossenbaum . jewischgen.org . Date of treatment February 13, 2019.