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August Meyszner (3 August 1886 – 24 January 1947) was an Austrian Gendarmerie officer and right-wing politician who held the post of Higher SS and Police Leader in the German-occupied territory of Serbia from January 1942 to March 1944, during World War II. Meyszner began his career as an officer in the Gendarmerie, served on the Italian Front during World War I and reached the rank of ''Major der Polizei'' by 1921. 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 a detention centre in Wöllersdorf. That July, he was rearrested following an attempted coup, but escaped police custody and fled to Nazi Germany, where he joined the ''Ordnungspolizei'' and then the ''Allgemeine SS''. After police postings in Austria, Germany and Norway, he was appointed as Higher SS and Police Leader in Serbia in early 1942. Meyszner's time in Belgrade was characterised by friction and competition with German military, economic and foreign affairs officials and by his visceral hatred and distrust of Serbs. During his tenure, he oversaw regular reprisal killings, and his Gestapo detachment killed as many as 8,000 Jewish women and children using a gas van. After the war, the Western Allies extradited Meyszner to Yugoslavia, where he was tried for war crimes. He was found guilty by a Yugoslav military court and executed in January 1947. ==Early life and World War I service== August Edler von Meyszner was born in Graz, Austria-Hungary on 3 August 1886, the son of Rudolf Edler von Meyszner, an ''Oberstleutnant'' in the Imperial-Royal Landwehr who had been knighted two years earlier, and his wife Therese ( Tuschner). His uncle was ''Feldmarschalleutnant'' Ferdinand von Meyszner. He completed primary and secondary schooling in Graz, before attending a cadet school in Vienna. In 1908, he was posted to the 3rd Imperial-Royal Landwehr Infantry Regiment in Graz as an officer candidate and on 1 May 1908 was commissioned as a ''Leutnant''. By May 1914, Meyszner had transferred to the Austrian Gendarmerie as an ''Oberleutnant'' and been appointed to command the gendarmerie unit in Görz (now the Italian town of Gorizia). Later that year, he was appointed to command the coastal gendarmerie section at Grado and then the border guard unit at Tolmein, in modern-day Slovenia. A few days after the outbreak of World War I, Meyszner married Pia Gostischa from Marburg an der Drau. In 1916, he was promoted to ''Rittmeister'', and commanded the 12th Alpine Company on the Italian Front in 1917. He was wounded once, and was also awarded several decorations for his service during the war, including the Order of the Iron Crown 3rd Class, Military Merit Cross 3rd Class, Military Merit Medal with Swords and War Decoration, Karl Troop Cross and Red Cross Decoration 2nd Class. In August 1917, Meyszner was recalled to the Styrian Gendarmerie Command and was appointed as gendarmerie section commander in Trieste. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「August Meyszner」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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