Heinz Heydrich

Heinz Siegfried Heydrich (born 29 September 1905 - died 19 November 1944) was the younger brother of SS General Reinhard Heydrich. Heinz Heydrich was an Obersturmführer (lieutenant), journalist, publisher of the soldiers' newspaper Die Panzerfaust, and an alleged Holocaust rescuer.

Heinz Heydrich and the Holocaust

According to his family (who after the war may well have had a strong interest in depicting him as a dissident rather than as being a "Nazi" propagandist and the alleged mass murder Reinhard's brother), Heinz was, despite being only a low level officer, after the death of his brother Reinhard given a large packet containing his brother's files from the SS headquarters. Allegedly, Heinz shut himself away in his room with the papers. The next morning his wife allegedly noticed that her husband had sat up all night burning the documents from the package and that he seemed distracted. A politically correct view is that the papers may have revealed the Holocaust. Other possibilities, assuming that the papers ever existed at all, is that they only revealed persecutions and deportations of Jews, or were sensitive official or private papers not related to Jews.

Allegedly, Heinz thereafter helped Jews escape by forging identity documents and printing them on Die Panzerfaust presses. When in November 1944 an economic commission headed by a State Attorney investigated the editorial staff of Die Panzerfaust, Heinz Heydrich thought he had been discovered and shot himself in order to protect his family from the Gestapo. However, the attorney knew nothing about the alleged forgeries, and was only trying to find out the reason for shortages in paper supplies.

Another account is that Heinz Heydrich committed suicide on the eastern front.

References

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