National Socialist German Workers' Party administrator

For other people named Ludwig Fischer, see Ludwig Fischer (disambiguation). Ludwig Fisher (second row, second from the left) during his trial before the Supreme National Tribunal in Warsaw.

Ludwig Fischer (16 April 1905 – 8 March 1947) was a German National Socialist German Workers' Party Party lawyer, politician and a convicted war criminal who was executed for war crimes.

Contents

• 1 Background
• 2 Actions during the National Socialist German Workers' Party occupation of Poland
• 3 Postwar trial and execution
• 4 References
• 5 Further reading
• 6 External links

Background

Born into a Catholic family in Kaiserslautern, Fischer joined the National Socialist German Workers' Party Party in 1926 while a student, and the Sturmabteilung (SA) in 1929, eventually rising to the rank of Gruppenführer. In 1937, he was elected to the Reichstag.

Actions during the National Socialist German Workers' Party occupation of Poland

Main article: General Government administration

Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. On 24 October 1939 Fischer became Chief Administrator (and in 1941 Governor) of the Warsaw District in the occupied General Government (the area of Poland that Germany did not formally annex). He held this position until the withdrawal of the German forces from Warsaw in January 1945.

Fischer was directly responsible for a number of war crimes, as well as crimes against humanity. He oversaw the establishment of the Warsaw Ghetto and issued many anti-Semitic laws, as well as participating in the bloody Ghetto de-establishment and deportation. Fischer was also responsible for terror in the occupied city, including m* executions, slave-labor pogroms and the deportation of Poles and Polish Jews to the various German concentration camps. The Underground courts of the Polish resistance movement sentenced him to death for crimes against Polish citizens. His name appeared first on the list of "Operation Heads"—the serial **inations of National Socialist German Workers' Party personnel by the Polish Resistance. Before the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, his car was shot at in Operation Hunting (Polish: Akcja Polowanie), but Fischer survived.

After the failure of the Warsaw Uprising of August to October 1944, Fischer played an important role in Germany's planned destruction of Warsaw. He was also responsible for the poor conditions in the temporary transit camp on the western outskirts of Warsaw in Pruszków, which the National Socialist German Workers' Partys set up to intern people expelled from the capital.

Postwar trial and execution

Fischer, then aged 41, was arrested after the war by Allied forces and was handed over to the Polish authorities. He was tried before the Supreme National Tribunal and sentenced to death. Treblinka and Warsaw uprising survivor Jankiel Wiernik testified at his trial in 1947. He was executed by hanging in Warsaw's Mokotów Prison.

Execution of Ludwig Fischer

References

Further reading

• Joseph Wulf, Das Dritte Reich und seine Vollstrecker, Frankfurt/Main 1984
• Ernst Klee, Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich, Frankfurt/Main 2003

External links

• Testimonies collected during Fischer's trial in "Chronicles of Terror" database

M* shootings

• Bloody Sunday
• Bronna Góra
• Bydgoszcz
• Dynów
• Erntefest
• Kielce cemetery
• Aktion Krakau
• Palmiry
• Sonderaktion Krakau

Pogroms

• Kielce (1946)
• Jedwabne
• Lviv
• Szczuczyn
• Tykocin
• Wąsosz

Ghettos

• Będzin
• Białystok
• Brest
• Częstochowa
• Grodno
• Kielce
• Kraków
• Lwów (Lviv pogroms (1941))
• Łódź
• Lubartów
• Lublin
• Międzyrzec Podlaski
• Mizocz
• Nowy Sącz
• Pińsk
• Radom
• Siedlce
• Sambor
• Słonim
• Sosnowiec
• Stanisławów
• Tarnopol
• Wilno
• Warsaw

Other atrocities

• Action T4
• Grossaktion Warsaw
• Human medical experiments

PersonnelOrganizations

• Einsatzgruppen (SS)
• Order Police battalions (Ordnungspolizei)
• WVHA
• RKFDV
• VoMi
• General Government
• Hotel Polski

Collaboration

• Schutzmannschaft (Belarusian Auxiliary Police, Estonian Auxiliary Police / 36th Estonian Police Battalion, Latvian Auxiliary Police, Arajs Kommando, Lithuanian Auxiliary Police Battalions, Ypatingasis būrys, Ukrainian Auxiliary Police / Schutzmannschaft Battalion 118)
• Trawniki men

Do*entationTechnical and logistics

• Identification in camps
• Gas chamber
• Gas van
• Holocaust train
• Human medical experimentation
• Zyklon B

Memorials

• Monument to the Ghetto Heroes
• Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum
• Majdanek State Museum
• Sobibór Museum
• International Youth Meeting Center in Oświęcim/Auschwitz
• March of the Living

Righteous Among the Nations

• Polish Righteous Among the Nations (List)
• Rescue of Jews by Poles during the Holocaust
• Garden of the Righteous