Hellmut Peitsch was born in Oberzetzscha in 1906. After finishing school, he trained as a commercial clerk. Peitsch joined the NSDAP and the SA in 1925. From 1931 to 1935, he worked for the National Socialist Factory Cell Organization (NSBO), which the NSDAP used to control and unite workers in place of the crushed trade unions. After the founding of the German Labor Front (DAF), Peitsch headed the Labour Chamber in Saxony. There, he controlled the supply of foreign forced labourers during the war. In his pamphlet “Feind bleibt Feind – auch als Kriegsgefangener” (The enemy remains the enemy – even as a prisoner of war), he advocated for the inhumane treatment of Soviet prisoners of war in particular.
The Soviet secret service arrested Peitsch on October 10, 1945, as an “NSDAP activist.” He was sent to Special Camp No. 2. In the “Waldheim Trials” in 1950, he was sentenced to death for his role in the NSDAP and the DAF. In spite of appeals for clemency from his family, he was executed on November 4, 1950. In 1954, a court in West Berlin declared his death sentence invalid.
The trial against Peitsch was held in public. However, only a select audience was allowed in the courtroom. Witnesses for the defense were not permitted to testify on his behalf.
