Heinz Schmidt

Persönliches Dilemma

Abstract

The fact that a young SS man, who participated in mass shootings, makes a confession to a Moravian theologian and then says to him: “The one of us who survives all this has a great duty. He must then tell others how it was – really –!” is not only an extraordinary fact, but also represents a legacy that Heinz Schmidt recorded in his report and which, not least, is to be realized by the present article. Schmidt was left with a serious wound in a hospital where SS members were also treated and thus came into contact with young soldiers who came from the so-called SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS death’s head units). In his report he describes their internal conflicts as well as his own, which culminated in a Christmas celebration at the hospital in 1941. In order to shed light on the background to this, his CV is presented beforehand.