Karl Schomburg confession (Kaufering and Neuengamme)

[Archie]

I was looking through some (digital) newspaper clippings from the Times of London that I had in my files and I wanted to share one that quotes the early confession of camp guard Karl Schomburg. I've never heard of Schomburg. He seems pretty obscure. I did not find much of anything about him on CODOH or with a web search. I would be curious to know what happened to him, whether he testified further, whether he was prosecuted, etc.

Below is the text. Citation: Times (London), 18 July 1945, pg. 3

NAZI CAMP GUARD'S CONFESSION

PERSONALLY SHOT HUNDREDS

BAD OEYENHAUSEN, July 17.—Karl Schomburg, a former concentration camp guard, has confessed that he shot, tortured, or trampled to death hundreds of prisoners in various German concentration camps.

Schomburg, a 50-year-old company sergeant-major in the German infantry, who was caught as he was trying to escape through Bad Oeyenhausen, made his statement to-day. He laughed and made jocular remarks as he wrote his confession in the office of the French War Crimes Commission.

“I was a Feldwebel in the German infantry and was some months at the Auschwitz concentration camp,” Schomburg wrote. “Then, in August, 1943, I was occupied in the transport of 1,800 Polish Jews from Auschwitz to Kaufering concentration camp, which was an addition to the extermination camp at Lemberg. These Jews were taken in wagons with two guards; there were about 50 or 60 in each wagon. The journey took about five days; they were given only a little hot water. When they arrived about 30 or 40 had died of hunger.

“In Kaufering I killed about 17 people who did not go to work. They were Jews, Hungarians, and Rumanians. In the same camp 2,500 people were killed because they were Jewish. They were burned. I stayed in Kaufering camp until the end of 1944, after that I went to the camp at Neuengamme. In this camp I also killed about 40 people, mostly French Jews, because they did not want to work. In this camp many Jews were hanged and burned en masse.

SHOT AGAINST THE WALL

“The people who were no longer able to work were sent to underground gas chambers. I did not go into the gas chambers to kill the 40 people in Neuengamme; I put them in a line against the wall and I shot them with a rifle. After I shot them, prisoners had to come to carry away the bodies.

“I later went to Dachau, where I had the opportunity of executing about 200 people for several reasons. They were executed in batches of 10 by a firing squad and the bodies were immediately carried away to be burned. We did not check to see if they were really dead.

“At that time I was unaware of the crime I was committing, but I am now perfectly aware. I know what I deserve, it is death."

Another German, also captured at Bad Oeyenhausen, made a statement corroborating Schomburg’s confession, but declaring that Schomburg accurately killed about 500 people —Jews and non-Jews.

The witness said: “I have also seen many killing prisoners by trampling on them. They suffered dreadfully."

The witness added that the guards at Dachau robbed the prisoners of all their possessions. Hearing this statement, Schomburg said: “What he has said is true. I have perhaps stolen about 40,000 marks, also jewels belonging to prisoners.”—Reuter.

Commentary

1) He confessed to personally killing hundreds of people. "Many" were said to be by trampling. I would question whether trampling is a good method of mass execution. This seems like the sort of thing that gets included to up the brutality factor but that doesn't make a lot of sense.

2) The statement was collected by the French War Crimes Commission. Statements collected by the French seem even dodgier than the ones collected by the Americans (see Gerstein).

3) The reference to Kaufering concentration camp as "an addition to the extermination camp at Lemberg" is baffling. Kaufering was in Bavaria and was a system of subcamps of Dachau. There is no "extermination camp" in this area, according to current Holocaust doctrine. Likewise it is baffling why Jews would be transported OUT of Auschwitz and sent to a different non-extermination camp for extermination. Note that he says that 2,500 Jews were killed at Kaufering "because they were Jewish."

4) Probably most important: He mentions "underground gas chambers" at Neuengamme and he says this was for those who could not work. The mainstream actually still maintains some gassings were conducted at Neuengamme. But only two! One in Sep 1942 and another in Nov 1942. Schomburg wasn't there until 1944 yet he thinks gassings were an ongoing an routine thing there (to deal with those who couldn't work). True, he says he did not personally go into the gas chambers, but I don't think the usual "hearsay!" excuse works here since this guy was a German stationed at the camp. He should know if there were gassings or not, especially if he's this notorious executioner.

For the Neuengamme story, see here: http://www.deathcamps.org/gas_chambers/ ... gamme.html

5) The line "I know what I deserve, it is death" is a bit over the top and sounds like the sort of self-denunciation that was typical at the Moscow trials.

6) As an aside, the Neuengamme gas chamber is not discussed much but it seems to be one of the more ludicrous ones. They supposedly made extensive modifications to the bunker, including installing five pipes in the roof and a hot air device (Auschwitz didn't even have this), all to do two gassings! Orthodox sources on this gas chamber are meager. (See Mattogno, Inside the Gas Chambers, HH#25).

Overall, this struck me as a very dubious confession even from the orthodox perspective. It's good to highlight these because I think bad confessions are much more difficult for the other side to deal with. With all the ludicrous Jewish testimony there are many excuses they can use. Hearsay, emotional trauma, exaggeration, etc. With a bogus confession, it's harder to come up with an innocuous explanation.

Original article scan

Spoiler

Times (London) - 18 Jul 1945 pg3 - Karl Schomburg confession.jpg (199.07 KiB) Viewed 516 times

[Wetzelrad]

I went looking for any information about "the French war crimes commission" and found this.

Women Guards At Ravensbruck Report 200,000 Slain There
BAD OBERNHAUSEN, Germany, Sept. 4
The French war crimes commission arrested two S.S. women guards of the notorious Ravensbruck concentration camp today and heard from them that 200,000 women and children were slain there during the war. The camp was northeast of Berlin. Officials said the women told calmly of the camp’s methods. Feeble inmates were made to stand in water to their necks for 24 hours. The captives were quoted as saying many bodies were taken daily from the “pool of death.” Thousands of French girls were sent to the camp.
The Shelby Daily Star, Sept. 4, 1945, p.1
https://newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/s ... d-1/seq-1/

So it's the same investigatory body, at seemingly the same location, with a massively inflated victims tally, and another novel execution method. While it would be fruitful to explore every individual witness, I'm more interested to know who was in that French commission. Who was it that procured these false confessions?

[Wetzelrad]

I searched for any reference to this Karl Schomburg. Substantially the same article appears in The Jewish Chronicle, The Daily Telegraph in Sydney, The Sun-News Pictorial, the Guinea Gold, The Calgary Herald, and the Edmonton Journal.

There's also a book by revisionist Heinz Roth that quotes the same news story from an American Army newspaper. Roth makes similar critiques as you do.
https://archive.org/details/was-geschah ... homburg%22

So outside of that one news day, there is nothing to show for Schomburg's existence. Too bad, because the story of him transferring from camp to camp executing people in different ways for different reasons is as ridiculous as the stories of inmates who transferred from camp to camp narrowly surviving execution at each.

[Archie]

Roth notes that the article describes him as a Feldwebel in the German infantry, so not even an SS man. His CV seems strange for that rank, to say the least.

Bad Oeynhausen looks like it would have been in the British occupation zone, so it is unclear to me why the French would have taken this statement. There was a Neuengamme trial held by the British in 1946, but Schomburg does not appear to have been one of the defendants.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/ne ... h-may-1946

Kaufering would have probably fallen under the American Dachau trials. As far as I can tell he was not prosecuted there either.

There might be service records for him on the Bundesarchiv which could perhaps verify whether he was even in all these camps.