August Edler von Meyszner was an Austrian Gendarmerie officer, right-wing politician, and senior Ordnungspolizei officer. He held the post of Higher SS and Police Leader in the German-occupied territory of Serbia from January 1942 to March 1944. During his tenure, he oversaw regular reprisal killings and sent tens of thousands of forced labourers to the Reich and occupied Norway. After the war, he fell into the hands of the Allies and was interrogated by the United States Chief Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality. Extradited to Yugoslavia, he was tried for war crimes and executed by hanging in January 1947.
About August Meyszner in brief
August Edler von Meyszner was an Austrian Gendarmerie officer, right-wing politician, and senior Ordnungspolizei officer. He held the post of Higher SS and Police Leader in the German-occupied territory of Serbia from January 1942 to March 1944. During his tenure, he oversaw regular reprisal killings and sent tens of thousands of forced labourers to the Reich and occupied Norway. His Gestapo detachment used a gas van to kill 8,000 Jewish women and children who had been detained at the Sajmište concentration camp. After the war, he fell into the hands of the Allies and was interrogated by the United States Chief Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality. Extradited to Yugoslavia, he was tried for war crimes, along with many of his staff from his time in Serbia. He was found guilty by a Yugoslav military court and executed by hanging in January 1947. He has been described as one of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler’s most brutal subordinates. He joined the Austrian Nazi Party in September 1925 and became a Right-wing parliamentary deputy and provincial minister in the Austrian province of Styria in 1930. Due to his involvement with the Nazis, MeysZner was forcibly retired in 1933 and arrested in February 1934, but released after three months at the Wöllersdorf concentration camp, where he was held until July 1934.
He died of a heart attack at the age of 48 in Vienna in 1945. He is buried in the Vienna suburb of Wurzburg, next to his wife, Pia Gostischa an der Drau; the couple eventually had one daughter, Drau Drau, and one son, August Edler von MeYSzner, who was born in Graz, Austria-Hungary on 3 August 1886. He served on the Italian Front during World War I and reached the rank of Major der Polizei by 1921. In 1914 he underwent an examination for his new duties as a gendarmeries officer, and on 1 May 1914 he was formally accepted into the Austrian Gendarmierie Service. In August he was appointed to command the coastal gendarmie section at Grado and the following month he was transferred to the border guard section based at Tolmein, in modern-day Slovenia. On 19 May 1915 he was posted as the commander of a company on the 12th Alpine Company. Later that year he was recalled to gendarmierie duties in Triest. In November 1918 he served as an advisor to the 15th Mountain Brigade in Styria. On 1 August 1916 he was promoted to Rittister with effect from 11 August 1916–1917, and served in Styrian gendarie section in 1916–17, during 1916–1817. In 1917 he served in the alpine section of the Styrian Gendarmie in command of the Alpine Company, and in 1918 he was assigned to the gendarme section in Styriansk.
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