. NMT04-T0542
Volume IV · Page 542
| ERNST BIBERSTEIN |
| Ernst Emil Heinrich Biberstein was originally
named Szymanowski. This striking change in name was no more extraordinary than
the change in his profession. From clergyman in the Lutheran Protestant Church
in Kating, Schleswig-Holstein, he went to a chiefship in the Gestapo in Oppeln,
Germany, in the meantime having renounced the church and his ecclesiastical
garb. In August 1935 he entered the Reich Ministry for Church Affairs and in
May 1936 was promoted to Oberregierungsrat in the State service. He served in
the Wehrmacht from 10 March 1940, until 20 October 1940, when he became chief
of Gestapo at Oppeln. In the meantime, he had become SS Sturmbannfuehrer and as
such went to Russia as chief of Sonderkommando 6 under Einsatzgruppe C. He
served in this capacity from September 1942 until June 1943. On 25 June 1947, at Edselheide, Germany, Biberstein declared in a sworn statement that his Kommando during the time he was its chief killed from 2,000 to 3,000 people. In Nuernberg he twice repeated these figures under oath. At the trial he sought to repudiate the total, saying that the interrogator, on the three different occasions, had insisted that he name a figure and that a discrepancy of one thousand more or less did not matter. It was then put to him that allowing for a margin of one thousand he had still admitted to from one to two thousand killings. He refused, however, at the trial to name any figure. Although he repudiated the totals, he did not attempt to deny that he had witnessed two executions, the precise details of which he had described in his three pretrial declarations. In his affidavit of 2 July 1947, he related — |
"I personally superintended an execution in Rostov which was performed by means of a gas truck. The persons destined for death — after their money and valuables (sometimes the clothes also) had been taken from them — were loaded into the gas truck which held between 50 and 60 people. The truck was then driven to a place outside the town where members of my Kommando had already dug a mass grave. I have seen myself the unloading of the dead bodies, their faces were in no way distorted, death came to these people without any outward signs of spasms. There was no physician present at unloading to certify that the people were really dead." |
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"I have also witnessed an execution carried out with firearms. The persons to be executed had to kneel down on the edge of a grave and members of my Kommando shot them in the back of the neck with an automatic pistol. The persons thus killed mostly dropped |
