Bremen (Weltexpresso ) – In March 1964, the editor-in-chief of the Israelitisches Wochenblatt in Zurich, Kurt Roschewski, received a text that took his breath away. He offered it to his readership with the words: „These days we received the following message from Frankfurt“:
„One wonders what devil the German President’s Office of the Order of Merit was up to when it proposed a man for the award of the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany whose name is remembered most unpleasantly in connection with National Socialist persecution. We are referring to the former director of the IG Farben Group and former SS-Obersturmbannführer Dr Heinrich Bütefisch.
Bütefisch was sentenced to six years in prison by the Allied Military Tribunal in Nuremberg in 1948 for his proven involvement in the enslavement and killing of the civilian population, prisoners of war and concentration camp inmates. Bütefisch was jointly responsible for the use and treatment of prisoners from the Auschwitz-Monowitz camp in the IG Farben Group’s operations at the same location. These two profited greatly from the connection between the SS and IG Farben. As a member of Himmler’s circle of friends, Bütefisch also supported the SS with direct financial contributions on behalf of his company.
Such an award, which one would hardly have thought possible, does not exactly enhance the reputation of the Federal Republic of Germany. One must ask oneself how it could have happened that Federal President Lübke was so incompletely informed about Dr Bütefisch’s past and that he remained unaware of his involvement in the despicable events in Auschwitz.“
I sent this article to the Israelitisches Wochenblatt der Schweiz after I had failed to rouse the responsible authorities in Germany with a headline on the front page of the weekly newspaper Die Tat , published in Frankfurt am Main, and to persuade them to retract this insult to millions of victims of the Holocaust. My article on the first page of the 21 March 1964 edition read as follows:
„It was during the Week of Brotherhood. Worthy events took place in many cities of the Federal Republic. Statesmen and public figures made fine-sounding declarations. In the Paulskirche in Frankfurt, the „Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstädter Prize“ was awarded to the meritorious scientist Prof Dr Fritz Kauffmann in the presence of the Federal President Dr Lübke. On this occasion, the Federal President called for reverence and referred to the „terrible and despicable events“ that are now being discussed in the Auschwitz trial.
But what a fatal coincidence: a few days earlier, the Deputy Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Ruhrchemie AG, Dr Heinrich Bütefisch, had been awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. The North Rhine-Westphalian Economics Minister Gerhard Kienbaum had presented it to him in Oberhausen on behalf of the Federal President – the same Dr Heinrich Bütefisch who had been sentenced to six years in prison by the Military Tribunal in Nuremberg in 1948 because it was proven that he was responsible for the exploitation of 300,000 prisoners at the Auschwitz concentration camp. He had „rented“ mainly Jewish men and women from the SS slave labourers for a small fee. He was the same Dr Bütefisch who, as SS-Sturmbannführer and Wehrwirtschaftsführer, belonged to Himmler’s circle of friends and had made large sums of money available to the SS on behalf of the IG Farben industry, including 100,000 Reichsmarks on one occasion. (See Die Tat No. 10 of 7 March 1964)
The Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany was established on 7 September 1951 by the then Federal President Prof. Heuss in the desire to visibly express recognition and gratitude to deserving men and women of the German people and abroad, as stated in the preamble to the decree. The Chancellery of the Order of the Federal President’s Office oversees all Order procedures, which are treated confidentially in accordance with the established guidelines. It would certainly not be uninteresting to analyse who has rendered such great personal services to the state and the people in recent years that they have been awarded the Grand Cross, the Grand Order of Merit or the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. The fact that former Hitler generals such as Speidel and Heusinger and the former government councillor in the Nazi Ministry of the Interior, who later became State Secretary Dr Globke, are among those decorated has already been noted with indignation in the past. And they are certainly not the only ones who have become the „new masters“ despite their involvement in measures of the National Socialist state of injustice.
So now Dr Heinrich Bütefisch also belongs to the elite of the Order’s recipients. This honour at the time of the Week of Brotherhood and the Auschwitz trial seems like a diabolical satire. What can we say about the fact that some of the most vile abusers and manslayers of Auschwitz are being tried in Frankfurt for the „terrible and despicable events“, to use the words of the Federal President, and that at the same time, in the name of the Federal President, a man punished by the courts as a slave exploiter is awarded the Grand Federal Cross of Merit? What does the public, what do the other recipients of the Order of Merit say about this disgraceful act that makes our faces flush with shame?
Or is this supposed to herald the „reconciliation“ that Chancellor Erhard spoke of at the CDU party conference in Hanover?
The order for Bütefisch is a macabre contribution to the Weeks of Brotherhood, the judgement of which also falls back on those who staged this unbelievable mockery of the Auschwitz victims.“
The editor-in-chief of Switzerland’s oldest Jewish newspaper, Kurt Roschewski, commented on my description of the Bütefisch medal affair in the issue of 27 March 1964 as follows:
„As the editors of the ‚Israelitisches Wochenblatt‘ were still unaware of Dr Bütefisch’s medal award from other sources at the time the notification from Frankfurt arrived, they felt compelled to contact German authorities in order to obtain confirmation of this news.
We have received this confirmation.
The Chancellery of the Order is also extremely dismayed by this mishap. Enquiries are now being made as to why the reports routinely obtained on the person to be honoured did not include his connection with the crimes against humanity.
One of the information centres for the Chancellery of the Order is the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. It is a cause for great concern that this office should not be aware of the past of a Nazi war criminal convicted by the court! Until it is proven, we do not want to assume that this is due to the collusion of the Gestapo and SS members still working in this office. However, the incident is a clear indication of the repeatedly criticised single-mindedness of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in the exercise of its mandate: this office apparently only sees the threat to the German democratic constitution from the left and believes it can neglect the dangers from the right. The complete technical failure in this case is indisputable.
Our intervention with the German authorities has led to them immediately ordering an investigation into the incident, and this must be clearly recognised. All holders of the Federal Cross of Merit must see this award as an insult. And if it is not cancelled immediately, it represents a complete devaluation of this high honour. The investigation into the origins of this embarrassing incident must lead to the complete eradication of the personal, ideological and psychological basis for a repetition.“
In the next issue of the Israelitisches Wochenblatt , which appeared on 3 April 1964, Roschewski praised what he described as the courageous decisiveness with which Federal President Lübke had acted in withdrawing the Order of Merit. „We have no hesitation in formally recognising the promptness with which he intervened. It is a pleasing sign that in this case the positive democratic tendencies within the Federal Republic have been able to assert themselves with clarity. By recognising this, we in no way diminish the concern that fills us in view of the fact that this proposal for an order and this interim awarding of the order could take place at all.“ It was significant that Bütefisch’s friends had not had the slightest hesitation in proposing this award. This was serious because it shed light on the state of mind of leading German industrial circles and it was particularly serious when one knew what influence these circles were still able to exert on German politics.
„We have already pointed out another serious point in this affair in last week’s commentary: the downright frightening failure of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, to which such award proposals are always submitted for review. The revocation of this award to a Nazi criminal must not be the end of the story. The German authorities, who are working to rebuild Germany’s reputation in the world, the new generation in Germany, who have a right to be freed from the horrific mortgages of the past, Europe and the world, who have a vital interest in the consolidation of the democratic spirit in Germany – they all have a right to demand that the foundations for the repetition of similar incidents, such as the Bütefisch affair, are not only shaken, but also completely destroyed. This includes the complete distancing from the spirit and from the men responsible for the atrocious crimes of the past – from the criminals in uniform, the criminals in the ministerial chancelleries and the criminals at the executive desks of German industry.“
Sixty years have passed since Kurt Roschewski spoke to the conscience of the Germans in this moving way in Switzerland’s oldest Jewish newspaper. It was the same Kurt Roschewski who, in March 1964, had called the Chancellery of the Order in Bonn to make sure that a former exploiter of Auschwitz prisoners had indeed been awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. What reason did the employees of the Chancellery of the Order have to claim to the news magazine Der Spiegel that a stranger had pointed out Bütefisch’s Nazi past? Sixty years after the events of that time, the German historian Norbert Frei has apparently not found it worth the effort to look behind the scenes and search for any traces that may have been covered up. The suspicion therefore remains that the Jewish involvement in uncovering the biggest religious scandal in post-war history was deliberately concealed for political reasons and continues to be concealed to this day.
As for the appeal by Switzerland’s oldest Jewish newspaper that Germans should never forget the lessons of the past, a large part of the younger generation seems determined to resolutely oppose the dangers from the right. Danger is imminent. The neo-Nazis in the AfD and the conservatives from the right wing of the CDU gathered in the Werteunion will soon have a majority in several state parliaments. The Brandenburg AfD MP Lars Hürich has already called for the AfD to „abolish this party state“ as soon as it comes to power. According to the polls, the AfD currently has around 30 per cent support in Brandenburg. This would make it by far the strongest force in the next state parliament.
I sent the following letter to Federal President Frank Walter Steinmeier on 7 February 2024:
Dear Mr Federal President,
My aim is to put an end to the lie created by the Chancellery of the Order in 1964 that an unknown caller had prompted the then Federal President Lübke to reverse the honouring of the former slave exploiter of Auschwitz and later Deputy Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Ruhrchemie AG in Oberhausen, Heinrich Bütefisch, with the Grand Federal Cross of Merit. This is only possible with your help.
The enclosed documents show that the editor-in-chief of the „Israelitisches Wochenblatt“, the oldest Jewish newspaper in Switzerland, Kurt Roschewski, called and had the order revoked. The Chancellery of the Order acted against its better judgement when it set SPIEGEL on the wrong track, and the historian Norbert Frei left it at that 60 years later.
The members of the Jewish families who suffered under the Nazis‘ racial mania have a right to know the truth. The truth also includes a clear answer to the question of why the Chancellery of the Order of the German Head of State has concealed from the public to this day the Jewish authorship of the scandal surrounding the honouring of an unworthy person.
Yours sincerely,
Kurt Nelhiebel
