Wolfgang Hoffmann

Confirmed findings

• He commanded the 3rd Company of Reserve Police Battalion 101 until November 1942, encompassing its actions during the first phase of mass shootings and ghetto liquidations in the Lublin District.
• During the briefing at Józefów on 13 July 1942, he objected when one policeman stepped forward to accept the opportunity to decline participation in the execution; battalion commander Wilhelm Trapp interrupted Hoffmann's intervention.
• At Józefów, he ordered two platoons of his company to encircle the locality and shoot people attempting to escape. This finding concerns the assignment he issued, not every individual shot fired by the policemen.
• After the part of the 1968 judgment concerning him was overturned, the Hamburg Regional Court sentenced him again on 24 April 1972 to four years' imprisonment for aiding the murder of 800 people. The Federal Court of Justice upheld the decision on 13 March 1973.

Place in the chain of responsibility

Hoffmann illustrates a company commander's responsibility for sealing off the site of an operation, setting rules for the use of weapons and exerting pressure on subordinates. The profile presents the final outcome after appellate review and retrial rather than stopping at the harsher first-instance sentence.

Key events and mechanisms

• commanding the 3rd Company of Reserve Police Battalion 101 in 1942
• attempting to prevent a refusal to participate and ordering the encirclement of Józefów on 13 July 1942
• the Hamburg Regional Court judgment of 8 April 1968, which sentenced him at first instance to eight years' imprisonment
• the Federal Court of Justice decision of 7 April 1970 overturning the judgment insofar as it concerned Hoffmann
• the retrial judgment of 24 April 1972 and its confirmation by the Federal Court of Justice on 13 March 1973

Postwar accountability

After the war, he served in the Hamburg police; he was suspended in January 1963 and arrested in 1964. In 1968, he received eight years' imprisonment for aiding the murder of 1,810 people, but the part of the judgment concerning him was overturned. After a retrial, he was finally sentenced to four years for aiding the murder of 800 people; he was released on 16 May 1975.

Limits of the evidence

Sources

The source set combines institutional, archival, trial or scholarly material from at least two independent publishers.

• uni-bielefeld.de
• zeitgeschichte-hamburg.de
• suche.transparenz.hamburg.de
• hamburg-ns-dabeigewesene.de
• Justiz und NS-Verbrechen