Bernhard Lösener: statement under oath

Bernhard Lösener (1890-1952), as employee of the German Interior Ministry from 1933 to 1943 took part in drafting 27 anti Jewish decrees. Most important were the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 and the subsequent legal definitions that distinguished among different kinds of partial Jews or Mischlinge, in effect exempting quarter Jews and secularized half Jews from the full brunt of persecution. After the war, Lösener recalled how he was summoned at the last minute to bring his Interior Ministry files to the 1935 Nazi party rally, where the drafting of the Nuremberg Laws took place.

Lösener was the son of a minor judicial official. He served as a soldier throughout World War One, attended the University of Tübingen, and passed his civil service examinations, becoming a customs official in 1924. He joined the Nazi Party in December 1930. In April 1933, when experienced officials with Nazi credentials were in short supply, he was summoned from his obscure customs post to the Interior Ministry in Berlin.

Controversial in his memoir is the assertion that he claimed to work in numerous ways to mitigate the severity of the laws by among other things amending the wording of legislation to limit the number of people affected. He claimed that, though disaffected with the Nazis, he stayed in his post to prevent worse things from happening to the Jews, only requesting to leave when he learned of the massacres of Jews at Riga in 1941, although it was March 1943 when he eventually left.

Lösener was arrested in November 1944 for hiding a couple implicated in the July 1944 attempt to murder Hitler. He survived his Berlin imprisonment for treason and after the war was arrested first by the Russians then by the Americans. After emerging unscathed from the De-nazification process he worked briefly for the American JOINT Distribution Committee and then resumed government employment until his death.