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The Holocaust History Project.
The Holocaust History Project.

WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
 
 
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Müller knew what he was talking about. In 1938, Lischka, at the age of twenty nine, had directed, among other things, the Gestapo's Jewish Division. It was he who on June 16 ordered the first mass arrest of German Jews – two or three thousand, whom he sent to Buchenwald or Sachsenhausen, where ten percent died within two months. On October 28, 1938, he had supervised the terrible deportation of Jews to the Polish border – twenty thousand who had lived in Germany for generations arrested, piled into trains, left helpless a the frontier. The Poles would admit only Jews who had a valid Polish passport. Many of those who had to stay on the German side of the frontier perished, especially infants. It was this tragic event that induced Herschel Grynszpan, a young Jew whose parents were among the victims, to plan the murder of a Nazi diplomat in Paris. Ernst Achenbach and Ernst von Rath were both on duty. Fate chose Von Rath. The reprisals were terrible. As chief of the Gestapo's Bureau for Jewish Affairs, Lischka was definitely involved in the ruthless pogrom that took place in Germany on the night of November 9-10, 1938, now remembered as the "Week of the Broken Glass."

Lischka was a fastidious man. When his name came up in Nuremberg, someone recalled one of his conferences on the improvement of police interrogations. Lischka had said:

"You should interrogate a political prisoner in extremely polite language. If he does not confess, serve him a meal of salt herring without a drop of water. On the following morning resume the interrogation and give the prisoner a breakfast of salt herring. While you are questioning him, drink cup after cup of coffee. If he still will not talk, send him back to his cell without anything to drink and only salt herring to eat. These tactics are generally effective after a while."


Dr. Kurt Paul Werner Lischka was born in Breslau on August 16, 1909. He became No. 4,538,18 of the Nazi Party, and No. 195,590 in the S.S. He joined the Gestapo in Berlin in 1936. An extremely hard worker, he quickly rose to the top. In 1961 the Israelis asked Adolf Eichmann who had originated and directed Division IV B 4 of RSHA Jewish Affairs, located at No. 8 Prinz-Albrecht Strasse His answer:

"Regierungsrat Kurt Lischka. He was then Theo Dannecker's immediate superior."

It was Dannecker, under Lischka's supervision as chief of the
    
   
 
WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
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