Historical profiles

Josef Schultz was born in Germany in 1910. He was a Wehrmacht soldier of the 714th Infantry Division, who allegedly refused to take part in the execution of civilians and partisans of a Yugoslavian village on July 20, 1941. Schultz laid down his helmet and rifle and walked over to a haystack to join the execution line to be killed.

Sophia Magdalena Scholl was a German student, active within the White Rose non-violent resistance group in Nazi Germany. She was convicted of high treason after having been found distributing anti-war leaflets at the University of Munich with her brother Hans. As a result, they were both executed by guillotine.

Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst Paulus was an officer in the German military from 1910 to 1945. In WWII, he attained the rank of Field Marshall, and is best known for having commanded the Sixth Army’s assault on Stalingrad during Operation Blue in 1942.

Paulus surrendered to Soviet forces in Stalingrad on January 31, 1943, a day after he was promoted to the rank of Generalfeldmarschall by Adolf Hitler. Hitler expected Paulus to commit suicide, citing the fact that there was no record of a German field marshal ever surrendering to enemy forces. While in Soviet captivity, Paulus became a vocal critic of the Nazi regime and joined the Russian-sponsored National Committee for a Free Germany. He was not released until 1953.

Arthur Schmidt was an officer in the German military from 1914 to 1943. He attained the rank of General Lieutenant during World War II, and is best known for his role as the Sixth Army’s chief of staff in the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942–43. In the final stages of which he became the army’s de facto commander, he played a large role in executing Hitler’s order that it stand firm despite being encircled by the Red Army. He was a prisoner of war in the Soviet Union for twelve years, and was released following Adenauer’s visit to Moscow in 1955.

Adolf Otto Eichmann was a German Nazi and SS- Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel) and one of the major organizers of the Holocaust. Because of his organizational talents and ideological reliability, Eichmann was charged by Obergruppenführer (General) Reinhard Heydrich with the task of facilitating and managing the logistics of mass deportation of Jews to ghettos and extermination camps in German- occupied Eastern Europe. It was Adolf Eichmann who compiled the protocol of the Wannsee Conference.

After the war, he fled to Argentina using a fraudulently obtained laissez-passer issued by the International Red Cross. He lived in Argentina under a false identity, working for Mercedes- Benz until 1960. He was captured by Mossad operatives in Argentina and taken to Israel to face trial in an Israeli court on 15 criminal charges, including crimes against humanity and war crimes. He was found guilty and executed by hanging in 1962. He is the only person to have been executed in Israel on conviction by a civilian court.

Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich was a high-ranking German Nazi official during World War II, and one of the main architects of The Holocaust. He was SS-Obergruppenführer (General) and General der Polizei, chief of the Reich Main Security Office (including the Gestapo and Kripo) and Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor (Deputy Reich-Protector) of Bohemia and Moravia. In August 1940 he was appointed and served as President of Interpol (the international law enforcement agency). Heydrich chaired the January 1942 Wannsee Conference, which laid out plans for the final solution to the 9 Jewish Question — the deportation and extermination of all Jews in German-occupied
territory. Historians regard him as the darkest figure within the Nazi elite; Hitler christened him “the man with the iron heart”.

Roland Freisler was a prominent and notorious Nazi judge. He became State Secretary of Adolf Hitler’s Reich Ministry of Justice and President of the Volksgerichtshof (People’s Court), which was set up outside constitutional authority. This court handled political actions against Hitler’s dictatorial regime by conducting a series of show trials. It was Roland Freisler who sent the members of the White Rose to their death.
In 1945, American bombers made a raid on Berlin. On that day, several Government and Nazi Party buildings were hit, including the People’s Court.

Hermann Wilhelm Göring was a Nazi military leader, Commander of the Luftwaffe, President of the Reichtag, and Hitler’s designates successor.

It was Göring who instructed Reinhard Heydrich on the 31st of July in 1941 to “carry out all preparations with regard to ....a general solution (Gesamtlosung) of the Jewish question in those territories of Europe which were under German influence....” It was this initiative that resulted in the gathering of the Wansee conference.

After World War II, Göring was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg Trials; he was the highest-ranking Nazi to be tried there. He was sentenced to death by hanging, but committed suicide by ingesting cyanide the night before the sentence was to be carried out.

Rudolf Walter Richard Heß was a prominent politician in Nazi Germany. Appointed Deputy Führer to Adolf Hitler in 1933, he served in this position until 1941, when he flew solo to Scotland in an attempt to negotiate peace with the United Kingdom during World War II. He was taken prisoner and eventually was tried for war crimes, serving a life sentence.

Janusz Korczak was a Polish-Jewish educator, children's author, and pediatrician known as Pan Doktor ("Mr. Doctor") or Stary Doktor ("Old Doctor"). After spending many years working as director of an orphanage in Warsaw, he refused freedom and stayed with his orphans when the institution was sent from the Ghetto to Treblinka extermination camp, during the Grossaktion Warsaw of 1942.