Hans Schepmann, during the Nazi regime chief of staff of the brownshirted SA Storm Troopers, was named a teacher at the local school by the town council of Gifhorn, with the Social Democratic Councilmen voting in the affirmative.
Although he is an elementery school teacher by training, Schepmann has not entered a classroom for a quarter of a century. A Nazi Party member since 1922, he was chief organizer of the brownshirted hoodlums in the Ruhr area even before Hitler’s advent to power. Thereafter, his rise was swift–SA general, police chief of Dortmund, governor of Danzig, stormtroop chief of staff. “After the war I shall be an even more fanatical National Socialist,” he once declared in a public address at Frankfurt.
This record notwithstanding, a denazification court ruled that he had never been a Nazi. He joined the BHE refugee party, became an official thereof and, in a development that alarmed the world, was elected to the Gifhorn town council two years ago.
The Lower Saxony Ministry of Education has refused to confirm him in his new position, at least until the conclusion in July of a trial he faces for crimes against humanity. If he is acquitted, and in view of the fact that he has been “denazified, ” observers doubt whether he can still be barred from becoming an educator of German youth.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
