Josef Blösche

Josef Blösche ( December to February of 1912 – 29 of July of 1969 ) was a member of the National Socialist German Workers Party ( Nazi Party ) in Germany during World War II , and lent his service in Warsaw as Rottenführer (Corporal) Of the SS .

He came to be known in the world as a symbol of the cruelty of the armed groups of the SS in the ghetto of Warsaw , especially through a famous photograph showing in the foreground a child surrendering, and Blösche as the SS armed together to the.

World War II

Blösche spent his early years working as a farmer and working at the hotel from his father, and joined the Nazi Party and the SS in 1938 after the annexation by Adolf Hitler the Sudetenland . After serving the SS in Warsaw with menial jobs, from March 1940 he joined the Security Service Sicherheitsdienst (SD), a division of the SS, which operated in the Warsaw ghetto in summer 1942, when the movement began mass of Jews to the death camp of Treblinka .

He was nicknamed Frankenstein , for his sadistic treatment of Jews in the ghetto. 1 In his case, the term sadism refers not only to the mental, but also in fact to an apparent sexual disorder. Blösche was feared for shooting any Jewish woman who could be considered a victim of sexual abuse , immediately after the rape .

Blösche received the War Merit Cross with swords for his actions during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising .

In May 1945, he became a prisoner of war in the Soviet Union , where he was deported to forced labor shortly after. In early 1946, he was sent to East Germany , still a prisoner of war. In August of 1946 he suffered a serious work accident, which seriously deformed his face. In 1947 his field of work was dissolved, Blösche was released, and returned to the house of his parents. His wounds protected him from being discovered as the SS armed depicted in the photos.

He began a normal life, married, and had two children.

Judgment for war crimes

In 1961 , a former SS colleague who was being tried by a court in Hamburg linked to Blösche to crimes committed in Warsaw, which led to a series of investigations for identification and discovery, in January 1967 . Blösche was brought to trial in Erfurt ( German Democratic Republic ) in April 1969 . He was found guilty of:

  • Have participated in the deportation of 30,000 Jews.
  • Murder of an undetermined number of people (possibly 2000), including children, pregnant women, the disabled and the elderly.

He was sentenced to death and executed in Leipzig , on 29 July as as 1969 .


  1. Back to top↑ Blösche’s file in Jewish virtual [1]