Third Party Press

Latvian Police Btl Officers Soldbuch

Peter U

Moderator
Staff member
Today I show you guys one of the new additions to my collection, the story isn’t a very uplifting but those that take the time to read the thread will no doubt find it interesting.
Before I start telling the story, I want to thank “Hambone” for the assistance in shipping this grouping from the USA to Belgium.


Egon Erzum (1906-1974) was born in Prikule (Latvia), he was one of the many ethnic Germans living in the Baltic states.
In 1925 he does his final exam at a local high school and become a civil servant for the ministry of the interior of Latvia, in 1928 he is drafted and joins an officers training program at the war academy, in 1930 he gets his officers commission as a lieutenant, in 1931 he is promoted to first lieutenant and assigned to the “Ordnungspolizei” in Riga, in 1936 he is promoted to the rank of captain and finally in 1938 he is promoted to the rank of major and becomes the police chief of the harbor police in Riga.
When WW2 breaks out in 1939 and Latvia is occupied by the Soviets Egon Erzum is one of the Baltic refugees in Germany, in 1940 we can pick up his story again with documented evidence and it is now that it starts to become interesting.
Egon Erzum fabricates a law degree, he falsely claims to have obtained a PhD from the university of Riga in 1932; with the aid of this fake law PhD he manages to get a job with the “Treuhandstelle Ost, nebenstelle Posen”, this Nazi organization is part of the four year plan lead by H.Göring and it is responsible to confiscate businesses and property of Poles and Jews that are expelled from those parts of Poland that are to be Germanized. Also now although he isn’t a member of the NSDAP he applies for membership of the SA.
In September 1940 he joins the German police force in Posen and after a four week work in period he becomes the local police chief; in February 1941 he is assigned to the police force of Wüppertal but in August 1941 he once again is chief of police in Posen.
In March 1942 he is assigned to the office of “SS und Polizeiführer Weißruthenien”, the SS police chief of Belorussia, a month later he attends a training class in Berlin and in May 1942 he rejoins the office of the SS and Police in Belorussia.
In June 1942 he becomes the liaison officer of the “18 lettisches schutzmannschafts bataillon“, the 18th Latvian Police Btl, he is the German officer assigned to this Latvian volunteer force and he is also their unofficial CO, he calls the shot in the unit.
The 18th Latvian Police Battalion is infamously known for its cruelty in the dirty anti-partisan war that is fought in the occupied parts which were previously in Soviet control, their nick name in Belorussia, the part where they mainly operated was: the green death, green being the color of their uniform.
Besides regular military operations against the partisan groups, they also participated in numerous punitive missions against the local population, these mission always ended with the murder of entire village populations and the destruction of their homes, also they destroyed Jewish ghetto’s.
I will not go in to much detail about the war- and crimes against humanity that were committed by Egon Erzum and his band of killers, I will just give some examples.
In early 1943 they participated in opeation “Hornung”, the goal of this operation was to clear the swamps south of Sluzk, in the village Lenin they murdered 1046 civilians, in total all the units involved in this operation murdered 12718 civilians, from which 3300 were Jews.
On of the most cruel actions of which testimony was gathered after the war was the destruction of the village of Pusitschi, their they drove 700 civilians, women and children included in to a barn which they then set on fire, burning to death all those inside.
Egon Erzum was the CO, if he didn’t give the orders for these cruel actions he certainly condoned them.
In June 1943 the Baltic volunteer militias are disbanded and reformed in to Waffen SS units, the 18th Latvian Police Btl becomes the second battalion of the Latvian volunteer regiment; Egon Erzum will command this unit only for a short while, he is transferred to the office of the chief of the police for Latvia.
In July 1944 he becomes an officer in the SS Police Regiment 17, with this unit he fought in Slovenia.
At the end of the war he is with SS Police Regiment 25, with this unit he will surrender himself to the allies in Klagenfurt.
But the story doesn’t end here, just before he goes in to allied captivity he issues himself a new Soldbuch, he keeps his real name but changes his birthday, he makes himself two years older, he also removes all the entries that connect him with the anti-partisan warfare operations and punitive mission he has participated in.
The allied officers that check his story buy his BS and he is soon released from captivity and with his false identity he settles in the Bavarian town of Leuterhausen.
He not only settles in Letterhausen, he also joins the local political scene and becomes a member of the CDU (Christen Democratic Union) is elected in to the local parliament of Bavaria and final also becomes the mayor of Leuterhausen.
In 1965 someone tips an investigating Journalist of the political magazine “Der Spiegel” that the mayor of Leuterhausen isn’t exactly who he pretends to be.
This journalist starts digging in the past of Egon Erzum and finds out that none of the three PhD’s he claims (law, philosophy and theology) are genuine, the next thing that comes to the surface is that he got a death sentence in a post war trial which was held in Riga.
Now that the journalist of Der Spiegel has made a commotion, he has written three articles about himin which he gets the nickname: Doctor Police because when he is confronted with the facts that his name isn’t on any university list, he finally claims that he was awarded his PhD degree by SS General Daluge, which is such an obvious BS story that it becomes a joke.
Because of these articles in the German press the West-German justice system starts to investigate him too, the first fact for which he is prosecuted are the fake PhD’s for this he is sentenced to a 500RM fine.
The next thing the public prosecutor jumps on are his war crimes, his defense tactics is twofold, first he will claim that it is all Soviet propaganda and secondly he claims to be in such bad health that he can’t go to trial; he will die of an heart attack in 1974 and this will end all legal actions against him.
In 2013 the well known and respect German historian Stefan Klemp, the author of several books about the German Police on the Eastern front, will write an article about him and his Latvian unit and he will come to the conclusion that the evidence is there and that the Soviets didn’t need any false evidence to make a case against him and his Latvian volunteers.
 
In my collection I have his Soldbuch and Treuhandstelle ID card.

The German Cross in Gold isn’t recognized, who or why the entry was made, it sure hasn’t been done recently, I don’t know, perhaps it is one of the BS stories of Erzum himself just like his fake PhD’s?

Also notice the long list of combat days, a list of war crimes.
 

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The document grouping of Egon Erzum was broken up in the past, an auction house in the USA sold his Polizeidienstpaß, another Soldbuch and some award documents; the entries made in the Dienstpaß make it possible to puzzle his service prior to the issue of this Soldbuch together.
The Sold buch I show here, isn’t in my collection, it is the one he used when he was captured by the allies, the example with his fake birthday and no entries that connect him to notorious anti-partisan operations.

Also I have found images online of his Treuhandstelle service file, I'll show the page on which he claims his fake PhD.
 

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I also have a picture of him on which you can see him in his Police Officer uniform.
 

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Rather recently a dig was done around the villa he lived in Posen while was stationed there as the local Police chief, a local metal detectorist found this stuff.
 

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This is great work. What’s amazing is he did’t destroy his original Soldbuch and it ended up in the US. Not surprising as a narcissist feels he can never be caught as he is so much smarter than everyone else. Amazing he got away with it after the war!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Outstanding work as usual Peter, thanks for sharing it with us! :thumbsup:

Amazing he got away with it after the war!

There were alot more rats than ferrets to hunt them at that time. Add in the fact that they could blend in with the local population of Germany and Austria (at least to Allied eyes), and a complicated process of sifting through hard copy-only documents and records, and it was probably relatively easy to stay several steps ahead of the war criminal hunters.

Pat
 
Very interesting Peter U.

I've been to Riga one week ago and posted about my visit at the Museum of War there:
http://www.k98kforum.com/showthread.php?42251-Museum-of-War-in-Riga

Little information about the 18th Latvian Battalion or the Latvian Legion (the local Waffen SS) there.
One thing I learned in Riga is what they call the Year of Terror between the Soviet invasion and Barbarossa troops liberating Riga.
NKVD and their pals massacred what was left of Latvian elite. Erzum fled but probably found subordinates who went through that traumatic experience. Being the police chief of the harbor, he would have ended up with a bullet in his neck (Katyn-style).
Add to that some racial indocrination about the inferior Slavs and a righteous feeling of self-defense against Soviet invaders (Latvia was independent between 1920 and 1940) and you get a recipe for disaster.

How do they (he) got away with it ? Before WWII has even ended, it was already the Cold War.

To foreigners (including myself), it is puzzling to see how Latvians or Estonians involved in Third Reich troops are considered patriots until this day in their homeland.
Case in point, this movie : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1944_(film), a huge success in Estonia, financed by public funds and banned in Russia.

The hard question is what would you have done if you were him in 1940 and see your country invaded? As a Frenchman, this is a question I ask myself from time to time and I still do not have an answer (probably won't).
 
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The crimes of the Latvian militias, like those of the "18 lettisches schutzmannschafts bataillon" is something they want to forget in Latvia, with good reason because it is a serieus stain on their reputation.
Why especially the Latvians were so brutal is something historians haven't been able to answer. Anti communist feelings alone aren't enough to explain the cruelty they committed, for example the 22nd Latvian Btl aided the Germans with their mass murder operations in the death camp of Treblinka.
It also known that this type of units attract the lowest of the low, Egon Erzum, their CO is a good example, before he joined the German Police he already had committed fraud.


All these documents, including both Soldbucher with the different birthday in them, were once together when they came on the collectors market and there is no doubt that they came from his personel archive; it is indeed odd that he didn't destroy those ID booklets that linked him with the warcrimes of his unit, most likely like mfarb already wrote because of his narcism.


It was only after the investigating journalist of "Der Spiegel" outed him that the German prosecutors sprung in to action, in 1967 a case against him for multiple murders was opened, alas it never came to a trial or a conviction.
But what does surprise me is that even today in 2020 when you go to the website of the Bavarian parliament you can find his fake curriculum vitae with fake law PhD, despite that it has been proven that it is false and top of that that he has been convicted in 1965 for it:
https://www.bayern.landtag.de/abgeordnete/abgeordnete-von-a-z/profil/egon-erzum/
This isn't some Neo-Nazi fan website. :facepalm:
 
The crimes of the Latvian militias, like those of the "18 lettisches schutzmannschafts bataillon" is something they want to forget in Latvia, with good reason because it is a serieus stain on their reputation.
Why especially the Latvians were so brutal is something historians haven't been able to answer. Anti communist feelings alone aren't enough to explain the cruelty they committed, for example the 22nd Latvian Btl aided the Germans with their mass murder operations in the death camp of Treblinka.
It also known that this type of units attract the lowest of the low, Egon Erzum, their CO is a good example, before he joined the German Police he already had committed fraud.


All these documents, including both Soldbucher with the different birthday in them, were once together when they came on the collectors market and there is no doubt that they came from his personel archive; it is indeed odd that he didn't destroy those ID booklets that linked him with the warcrimes of his unit, most likely like mfarb already wrote because of his narcism.


It was only after the investigating journalist of "Der Spiegel" outed him that the German prosecutors sprung in to action, in 1967 a case against him for multiple murders was opened, alas it never came to a trial or a conviction.
But what does surprise me is that even today in 2020 when you go to the website of the Bavarian parliament you can find his fake curriculum vitae with fake law PhD, despite that it has been proven that it is false and top of that that he has been convicted in 1965 for it:
https://www.bayern.landtag.de/abgeordnete/abgeordnete-von-a-z/profil/egon-erzum/
This isn't some Neo-Nazi fan website. :facepalm:

The biggest lure of a crime is thinking you can get away with it.

As you may know, there were plenty of people with law degrees in OKW or RSHA and they probably thought that with the USSR having repudiated treaties signed by Imperial Russia (including the Hague conventions of 1899 and 1907), it could be war with no holds barred.
In the end, the Charter of the IMT made sure that what would not be considered war crimes would be crimes against humanity : https://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/judlawre.asp

Many members of the Schutzmannschaft and their SS masters got away with their crimes nevertheless and Egon Erzum is a perfect example. I'm not surprised that he was already morally dubious before 1940, his next job obviously didn't make him any better.

Narcissistic wound: perhaps coming from his early life in a country ruled by "untermenschen" ethnic Latvians who won over Baltic Germans (eine ganze welt gegen uns). A bit like so many Germans raised in the Dolchstosslegende and feeling humiliated by the Treaty of Versailles.

Bavarian authorities (incl. HDGB) shall definitely add comments/footnotes to his CV.
 
I didn’t even need to read to the end to know that he got away with it. The German government knew who he was for ten years, and they only managed to fine him for faking a degree. Typical German war crime “efficiency.”
 
Great information Peter well done. And yes it's sad to see a very evil man escape justice at the end of the war.

By the way the barn being burned with the villagers inside. I remember seeing the Russian film "Come and See" years ago. There is a big part in the film where that same thing happens to a village full of people. I wonder if the film and that scene were based off this man and his unit.
 
Great information Peter well done. And yes it's sad to see a very evil man escape justice at the end of the war.

By the way the barn being burned with the villagers inside. I remember seeing the Russian film "Come and See" years ago. There is a big part in the film where that same thing happens to a village full of people. I wonder if the film and that scene were based off this man and his unit.

This Wikipedia article mentions 5,295 burnt villages in Belarus alone (no footnote about the source): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khatyn_massacre
"Come and See" is set in Belarus, it was particularly hit. Scorched earth policy was unfortunately quite common. Erzum and his battalion are the tip of the iceberg.
 
Very fascinating, if not chilling documents! I suspect a lot of these "lesser monsters" were able to slip through the cracks with the immediate focus being on the Germans who committed atrocities. An old friend of mine had a neighbor named John Demjanjuk, aka reputedly "Ivan the Terrible". I recently saw the Netflix special series on him "The Devil Next Door".
 
I recently got a police Soldbuch from the Polizei Begleit Bataillon Steiermark. When I get time to research him I’ll post it. They were Himmlers personal police guard unit.


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Really interesting. I'm starting to get that Soldbuch fever Farb has... might have to start collecting them. Wheres the Soldbuch book Farb?!
 

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