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Heinz Heydrich

Heinz Heydrich
Reinhardheinz.jpg
Reinhard Heydrich (left) and Heinz Heydrich
Birth name Heinz Siegfried Heydrich
Born (1905-09-29)September 29, 1905
Halle an der Saale
Died November 19, 1944(1944-11-19) (aged 39)
East Prussia
Allegiance  Nazi Germany
Service/branch SS
Rank Obersturmführer
Commands held editor of Die Panzerfaust
Battles/wars World War II
Spouse(s) Trude Heydrich (née Werther)
Relations

Heinz Siegfried Heydrich (29 September 1905 – 19 November 1944) was the son of Richard Bruno Heydrich and the younger brother of SS General Reinhard Heydrich. After the death of his brother, Heinz Heydrich helped Jews escape the Holocaust.

Heinz Heydrich was born in Halle an der Saale to composer Richard Bruno Heydrich and his wife Elisabeth Anna Maria Amalia Krantz. Her father was Eugen Krantz, director of the Dresden Royal Conservatory. The Heydrich family were well-to-do Catholics. The father, Richard Bruno Heydrich, was an opera singer, the founder of a music conservatory in Halle, and a German Nationalist who instilled patriotic ideas in the minds of his three children. The Heydrich household was very strict and the children were frequently disciplined. As a youth, Heydrich engaged his older brother, Reinhard Heydrich, in mock fencing duels.

Heinz Heydrich was an Obersturmführer (lieutenant), journalist and publisher of the soldiers' newspaper, Die Panzerfaust. He was at first a fervent admirer of Hitler. But before Reinhard Heydrich’s State funeral in Berlin in June 1942, Heinz Heydrich had been given a large packet containing his brother’s files, released from his strongbox at Gestapo Headquarters, 8 Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, Berlin. Heinz had shut himself away in his room with the papers. Next morning his wife noticed that her husband had sat up all night burning the documents from the package. Heinz, on leave from the front, could not be engaged in conversation, his wife remembered; he seemed to be elsewhere mentally, and like stone. The files in the package were probably Reinhard Heydrich’s personal files, from which Heinz Heydrich understood for the first time in all its enormity the systematic extermination of the Jews, the so-called Final Solution. Thereafter, Heinz Heydrich helped many 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 Panzerfaust, Heinz Heydrich thought he had been discovered and shot himself in order to protect his family from the Gestapo. In reality, the attorney knew nothing about the forgeries, and was only trying to find out the reason for shortages in paper supplies. Heinz Heydrich is buried in the Soldatenfriedhof (soldiers cemetery) Riesenburg, according to the Deutsche Dienststelle (WASt).


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