Talk:Eduard Roschmann

The ODESSA File
Why is Frederick Forsyth's novel cited as a source for his biography? If the novel is based on documentary evidence, shouldn't the factual documents be cited, rather than the work of fiction? PhilipC (talk) 18:38, 21 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree, will strike cites to novel as not being reliable, and replace with citation needed tags. Mtsmallwood (talk) 14:39, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Spelling
I wonder why his name is spelled "Edward" in the title of the article, but then correctly spelled "Eduard" in the body? I see very few other Wiki articles that anglicize proper names - most adhere to the traditional spelling.....I first searched for "Eduard Roschmann" and got the remark no matches found, or some such. Personally I believe the title should be left as Eduard.Engr105th 13:29, 29 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree, it looks very odd. I don't know what the logic of the original editors was, but I have created a redirect at Eduard Roschmann so people will at least find this article if they use the alternative spelling. -- Arwel (talk) 10:23, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Major problems with this article
This article appears to be based largely on the fictionalized account of a character said to be a portrayal of Roschmann. The NYT article cited in the notes appears to be talking about what the fictionalized character is portrayed as doing, not what the actual person did. For example, the claim is made that Roschmann was responsible for over 35,000 deaths in this article. The source is the NYT, but when you go to the linked source, it appears that the discussion is about the novel's attribution of these crimes to a fictional character. Please refer to the fully sourced article on the Riga ghetto where it is established that no more than about 20,000 German Jews were transported to the Riga ghetto in any case. There is much in this article that is unsupported statements. A complete, properly sourced rewrite is necessary. Mtsmallwood (talk) 15:06, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Article rewrite and suggestions for further work
I used parts of the German article in this rewrite. Unfortunately the German article does not include in-line citations, but it does include references. Accordingly, I marked the portions in the rewrite with commented out start and stop flags. The two sources cited in the German article were: I don't have access to these sources.
 * Schneppen, Heinz, Ghettokommandant von Riga Eduard Roschmann. Fakten und Fiktionen Metropol, Berlin 2008 ISBN 3938690933
 * Klee, Ernst, Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich. Wer war was vor und nach 1945 S. Fischer, Frankfurt 2003 ISBN 3-10-039309-0

The following statements about Roschmann were raised at the Axis History Forum discussion of Eduard Roschmann. They should not be included in the article without further support, because, while the Axis History Forum sometimes refers to sources, often it is simply a blog, and in this particular case, no sources are cited. If supporting references can be found for the following facts, or at least claimed facts, many of which are important, they could be included in the article.

Biographic details

 * Roschmann was a liquor salesman before World War II;
 * Roschmann worked at a brewery and a distillery in Styria, Austria;
 * Roschmann held the rank of Hauptsturmführer (approximately captain). (Note: sources state his rank was Hauptscharführer (approximately sergeant). Assigning him the higher rank of Haupt sturm führer without a source may be a simple matter of confusion of the two similar-sounding terms.)

World War II crimes

 * Roschmann was the deputy commander of the Riga ghetto.
 * Comment: There appears to be a general lack of sourced information about what Roschmann's activities were between the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 and his appointment as commandant of the Riga ghetto in January 1943.  Max Kaufmann doesn't mention anything at all about Roschmann until January 1943, which is particularly important because Kaufmann of all the historians, would have been least likely to have ignored crimes by Roschmann'';


 * Roschmann was responsible for the murder of at least 3800 Jews, including 800 children under the age of ten.
 * Comment:These numbers almost certainly refer to the two massacres in March 1942 which have become known as the Dünamünde Action. A source is needed to confirm this however.  The Dünamünde Action occurred before Roschmann was commandant.  It is fairly well documented by Schneider and Ezergailis.  Neither of them mention any role by Roschmann.  Of course, he could have been involved, but what his role was needs to be supported by authority, particularly because about one half of the victims in Dünamünde Action came from the Jungfernhof concentration camp, over which Roschmann has not been shown to have any authority, or even any involvement.


 * Roschmann was responsible for the murder of 35,000 Jews.
 * Comment: This general number is seen a lot, but it requires a source for inclusion in the article, because the numbers don't add up, at least for Latvia. According to the Jäger report, by the end of 1941, as a result of massacres such as Rumbula, Jelgava, Liepāja, and many others, there were only about 3,500 Jews left alive in Latvia.  Ezergailis proposes a number of about 66,000 of those that were actually killed, but the total number will never be clear.  By far the greater number of these deaths occurred in 1941, a time period for which we have no sourced information as to Roschmann's activities.  Schneider calculates that just over 20,000 Jews were transported to Latvia from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia in late 1941 and early 1942.  A significant number (I think the sources will support a figure of 3,000) of the Jews transported on these trains were shot on arrival, either at Rumbula or Biķernieki forests.  No source identifies Roschmann as having anything to do with these shootings, again which occurred before he became commandant in January 1943, Of the survivors, about 3,800 were killed in the Dünamünde action (see above), leaving perhaps 13,000 survivors (even if we assume no mortality due to any cause) by the time Roschmann comes on the scene in January 1943.  According to Ezergailis, about 2,000 Hungarian Jews were transported to Latvia in 1944, with 500 going to the Riga area, but what Roschmann's role was with regard to these people is unknown.  In any case, it appears that during Roschmann's time as commandant, there were no more than about 13,000 to 15,000 Jews in the entire Riga area, so the assert that he was responsible for the deaths of 35,000 must rest upon activities outside of Riga for which no sourced information has been adduced.


 * Roschmann arranged for the deportation of Jews to the Auschwitz concentration camp.
 * Comment: This could have happened.  According to both Ezergailis and Schneider, when the Riga ghetto was dissolved in the summer and fall of 1943, some of the occupants were sent to Auschwitz.

Escape from Europe

 * In 1947, in Graz, Roschmann was arrested at his family's residence, not for his crimes in Riga, but for membership in a Neo-Nazi organization.;
 * Roschmann was not actually sent to Dachau, but escaped on his way there by climbing out through a lavatory window on the train that was taking him there. This was the middle of the winter.  Roschmann hid outside for a considerable time to avoid capture.  As a result, he lost some toes due to frostbite;
 * The newspapers didn't report Roschmann's escape because the occupation government didn't want to look foolish, and this probably helped Roschmann escape to Italy;
 * Roschmann escaped at Hallein.
 * Roschmann went to a staging post for Nazi fugitives at Ostermiething on the border between Upper Austria and the province of Salzburg.
 * Aided by others, Roschmann hid in a brickworks for a few weeks in Ostermiething until he could be smuggled across the border to Italy.
 * Once in Italy, he was allowed by Bishop Alois Hudal to live at a Franciscan monastery on Via Sicilia (presumably in Genoa).

Life in Argentina

 * Once in Argentina, Roschmann settled with some relations of his wife.
 * He first worked at the Aeros travel agency.
 * In 1955 he went through a ceremony of marriage with his secretary Irmtraud Schubert, although he had a wife and children back in Graz. His legal wife heard about this and notified the authorities. Then in 1959 a warrant for his arrest was issued, not however for his activities at Riga ghetto but for bigamy.
 * In 1958 his secretary left him and he returned to Germany, where her marriage was declared null and void by a Hamburg court.

Extradition proceedings

 * Following his arrest by Argentine police in 1977, Argentina released him on condition that he leave Argentina and not return.
 * Argentina falsely told the German authorities that that the person they'd arrested had not been Roschmann after all.
 * Argentine authorities returned Roschmann's false papers (in the name of Frederico Wegener) to him on his release.

Flight to Paraguay and death

 * After his release, Roschmann went to Paraguay, where he lived on Hurba street,always paid his rent ten days in advance, and received neither letters nor visitors.
 * Roschmann was described by his Paraguayan landlord as an insecure nervous man who often spent days on end in his room without contacting anyone. When he did go outside he would not look at anyone and always wore dark glasses.
 * After only two weeks, on 25 July, Roschmann went into cardiovascular shock. He was taken to hospital where he claimed to be Ramon Nahrea, from Uruguay. As soon as he felt better he discharged himself and went back to Hurba street. He now made ready to move again. But soon afterwards he had another heart attack and was readmitted to hospital where he died during the night of 10 August 1977.
 * Wegener was identified as Roschmann only after his death, largely because the former SS officer was distinguished by the absence of three toes on his right foot, two from his left.
 * Roschmann ended his time a poor man, and was buried in a paupers grave. Mtsmallwood (talk) 14:46, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Strange style of article
This article has a feel as if it was written by two people: one who is apologizing for roschmann and another who thinks he is a cold blooded killer. it goes like : 'roschmann shouldn't be called the butcher. he killed hundreds of children and infants'. very confusing. most of the confusion seems to come from statements from books written by Gertrude Schneider. I would really like to see this article rewritten or cleaned up a bit. Meishern (talk) 12:10, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The source indicates that a warrant was issued for his arrest by a West German court.  The source in question does not provide the details, but the numbers of the victims (approximately 3,800) appear consistent with the Dünamünde Actions.  Previously in the commentary, I noted that these massacres occurred in March 1942, eight months before Roschman became commandant.  What he was doing or where he was stationed during March 1942 is not supported by any sourced statement.  However, none of the sources I consulted in writing the article on the Dünamünde actions mentioned Roschmann in any way.
 * The sources are clearly identified in the article. Please refer in particular to the numerous citations to the Max Kaufmann's early and important work The Destruction of the Latvian Jews.  Kaufmann, a Latvian Jew, hated Roschmann, as it was Roschmann who had murdered his son, Arthur.   Kaufmann was writing in the immediate aftermath of the war, and he lacked access to the war crimes records and other information available to later historians.  I would say his main focus was on the Latvian Jews.  Gertrude Schneider, whom you identify without any source as a "German" and a "Nazi apologist" was actually an Austrian Jew who was deported to the Riga Ghetto.  She has written a number of books on the Riga Ghetto, which mostly focus on the experience of the German, Austrian, and Czechoslovakian Jews.   I think she must be regarded as the principal historian regarding the operation of the Riga Ghetto.  Schneider's main flaw is that she has a tendency to personalize the history, which, given what she lived through, is perfectly understandable.  She has made up for it by gathering large amounts of evidence and statements from other German and Austrian survivors.  She is weak on the experience of the Latvian Jews however. Andrew Ezergaillis is or was a professor at Cornell.  He wrote the main work in English on the Latvia Holocaust, in which he hardly mentioned Roschmann at all.  Ezergaillis was weak, however on the Riga Ghetto, which became, after the Rumbula massacre in December 1941, primarily a German affair, and Ezergaillis was focused more on the Latvian involvement. Bernard Press, a Latvian Jew but not a ghetto survivor, wrote a book on the Latvian Holocaust; Ezergaillis has criticized him for being too closely associated with the Soviet propaganda machine.
 * Curiously Press and other historians identify not Roschmann, but Herberts Cukurs as the "Butcher of Riga." I can find no reference in any work other than Forsythe's 1972 novel which describes Roschmann as being known the "Butcher of Riga".  What appears to have happened is that Forsythe came upon the story of Cukurs, who, having been murdered in 1965 would not have the attraction of a living fugitive, and then transferred the appellation "Butcher of Riga" from Cukurs to his fictionalized version of Roschmann.
 * No one is "apologizing" for Roschmann. There is a strong and appropriate distinction being drawn between the fictionalized version of Roschmann and what is actually known about him based on sources.  For a number of reasons, as I have discussed above, these sources do not always agree.Mtsmallwood (talk) 15:46, 7 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Thank you for that detailed, well written analysis. I made a mistake when I called Schneider a nazi apologist. It was a knee jerk reaction based on the quotes from her books in the article (I haven't read them myself, and the books are sold for $100+ dollars each on Amazon, so I doubt I will). As for being called the Butcher of Riga, since he was the commandant of the ghetto, I think it would be an appropriate name since all his underlings like herbert cukurs (aka The Hangman of Riga) took their orders from roschmann. cukurs was a Latvian and thus took all his orders from the Germans in charge and was nothing more than a puppet or a dog who jumps at the commands of his master. I read Forsythe's novel and vaguely remember watching the movie decades ago. If the only reference we have regarding roschmann being called the Butcher of Riga comes from that novel, we should remove it from the page. Cheers! Meishern (talk) 18:40, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Deleted claim of personal responsibililty for murders of 800 children
The source cited (Rathkalb) does not support this claim. The subject was charged with these crimes by a West German court but never convicted. See above discussion. I'm unaware of any source that establishes the subject's responsibility for these crimes, which appear to have been what is now called the Dünamünde Action.Mtsmallwood (talk) 20:19, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Confusion with Dr Mengele?
I have read in a book (1980s) about various crimes that pictures of the body of Roschmann "on the mortuary slab" were misleading published in newspapers as being that of fellow fugitive war criminal Dr Mengele, who in fact survived Roschmann, at a time when a visit to Paraguay by a German politician was about to take place, but was established later to be that of Roschmann. Any citeable evidence?Cloptonson (talk) 13:34, 18 February 2017 (UTC)