1969: Joseph Blösche, Der SS-Mann
4 comments July 29th, 2012 Headsman
On this date in 1969, Joseph Blösche was executed in Leipzig, German Democratic Republic, for his part in the Holocaust.
Blösche (far right) chills out at the Warsaw Ghetto with, among others, Jurgen Stroop (fourth from right, in profile).
Blösche (English Wikipedia entry | German) was an SS Rottenführer and a Nazi Party member whose particular contribution to deporting Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka was fitting in some opportunistic rape, typically followed with summary murder. The ghetto’s wards called him “Frankenstein”.
Blösche was eventually captured by the Red Army, which you’d think might augur ill for his survival prospects. However, with the aid of a horrible accident he suffered in a postwar labor camp that helpfully disfigured his face, Blösche managed to fade quietly into East German society, wed, and raise a family.
He would need that facial anonymity, because the un-disfigured version is there full-frontal gazing over his submachine gun in one of the war’s most iconic and chilling images — snapped for the benefit of the Stroop report documenting the ghetto’s liquidation.
An SS trooper, eventually identified as Joseph Blösche, looms over a frightened Jewish boy in the Warsaw Ghetto. (The child might be one of Artur Dab Siemiatek, Levi Zelinwarger, Israel Rondel, or Tsvi Nussbaum)
This photo was published in the U.S. in Life magazine on November 28, 1960. The terrible image haunted Holocaust survivor Peter Fischl into writing his poem “The Little Polish Boy”.
Blösche’s luck ran out when his name came up in a West German war crimes trial in 1961; East Germany’s follow-up eventually zeroed in on the man, and he was convicted in April 1969 for directly killing up to 2,000 people, and participating in deportations that killed 300,000 more. He was executed in Leipzig with a single shot to the neck.
Joseph Blösche is the subject of the German documentary Der SS-Mann (there’s also a book of the same title).
On this day..
- 1869: Katkeena and John Anayitzaschist, Glyphs and Gallows - 2020
- 1948: Ruth Closius-Neudeck - 2019
- 1566: Agnes Waterhouse, the first witchcraft execution in England - 2018
- 1598: Lucas, waterboarded Guale - 2017
- 1741: Not Sarah Hughson, "stubborn deportment" - 2016
- 1629: Louis Bertran, martyr in Japan - 2015
- 1938: Janis Berzins, Soviet military intelligence chief - 2014
- 1879: Kate Webster, of the Barnes Mystery - 2013
- 1947: Three Jewish terrorists and two British hostages - 2011
- 1936: Aboune Petros, Ethiopian bishop - 2010
- 1600: The Pappenheimer Family - 2009
- 1747: Alexander Blackwell, who left them smiling - 2008
Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Capital Punishment,Death Penalty,East Germany,Execution,Germany,History,Shot,Soldiers,War Crimes
Tags: 1960s, 1969, communism, fascism, holocaust, joseph bloesche, july 29, jurgen stroop, leipzig, photography, warsaw, warsaw ghetto, world war ii
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