Heinrich Baab (27 July 1908 - 23 May 2001) was a secretary and

Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one orga ...

chief of

Frankfurt Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , " Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on it ...

at the Lindenstraße station. The Gestapo (Secret State Police) was the official

secret police Secret police (or political police) are intelligence, security or police agencies that engage in covert operations against a government's political, religious, or social opponents and dissidents. Secret police organizations are characteristic of ...

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

and German-occupied Europe. After the war in Europe ended, Heinrich Baab received a sentence of life imprisonment in March 1950 for his involvement in the

Final Solution The Final Solution (german: die Endlösung, ) or the Final Solution to the Jewish Question (german: Endlösung der Judenfrage, ) was a Nazi plan for the genocide of individuals they defined as Jews during World War II. The "Final Solution to th ...

as the head of Division IIB2. He was imprisoned from 1948 to 1973. On 6 April 1950 he was convicted of murdering 55 Jews from 1938 to 1943 and the attempted murders of 21 Jews, as well as for maltreatment of 29 Jewish prisoners in Frankfurt. His trial was five weeks long, with 157 witnesses testifying, including some of his victims. Heinrich Baab sent many of Frankfurt's Jews to camps from the rail station. Baab's supervisor at the Lindenstrasse station was Oswald Poche. Before joining the police in 1928 in Stettin, Baab was a locksmith. Heinrich Baab's SS membership number was 306631 and his

Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported t ...

number was 1346669.

Hermann Schramm Hermann Schramm (1871–1951) was a German tenor who sang at the Oper Frankfurt in the 1920s and made several recordings for HMV Germany. Although he was Jewish he escaped the deportation and subsequent fate of his colleagues at the Oper Frankfur ...

, a German tenor who sang at the Frankfurt Opera, was a witness to the arrest of a Jewish woman caught with a tramway ticket in her handbag - evidence of her using public transport. Schramm attempted to intervene and was repeatedly struck in the face by Baab, but not arrested himself. Hermann Schramm testified against Baab at his trial. The Baab trial in Frankfurt was described by American journalist

Kay Boyle Kay Boyle (February 19, 1902 – December 27, 1992) was an American novelist, short story writer, educator, and political activist. She was a Guggenheim Fellow and O. Henry Award winner. Early years The granddaughter of a publisher, Boyle was ...

in an article in ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

'', later also published as an introduction to her story collection ''The Smoking Mountain''.Kay Boyle: ''The Smoking Mountain: Stories of Postwar Germany''. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1951 Baab served his sentence at Butzbach Prison. In clemency petitions, he portrayed himself as a victim who had gotten caught up in the Holocaust and was only a minor perpetrator. In 1972, Baab was granted clemency and released from prison. He died in 2001.

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Baab Heinrich, commander of the Judenreferat (Jewish Affairs Office)
at Yad Vashem {{DEFAULTSORT:Baab, Heinrich 1908 births 2001 deaths Gestapo personnel Holocaust perpetrators in Germany German police chiefs German police officers convicted of murder German prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment People convicted of murder by Germany Prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment by Germany People paroled from life sentence