Ferris Barracks
Back in January, I wrote an article about the October 16, 1945 executions of the top Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg and the possibility they may have been transported to Munich for cremation via air using the airstrip formerly located behind the Erlangen caserne.
I referred the question to my friend, Dr Andreas Jakob, Chief Archivist of the Erlangen City Archives, and in turn, he contacted Dr. Ewald Behrschmidt, former vice president of the Nuremberg-Fuerth court, which includes the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, courtroom 600, where the trials were held. (It is still a functioning courthouse.)
Dr Behrschmidt's reply (in German) is quite long and detailed, so I will summarize it rather than translate all of it. He confirms that the bodies of the executed men arrived at the East Cemetery of Munich in the morning of 16 October in two lorries accompanied by 6 jeeps and American soldiers. They were cremated one by one in the cemetery's crematorium, a process which took several hours. The urns were then transported to a residence in the Munich-Solln area which had been requisitionsed by the US Army. The residence overlooked a stream in the rear where the ashes of the 11 dead men were poured. The stream led into the Isar River which runs through Munich.
As to the Erlangen angle, Dr Behrschmidt acknowledged one news reporter's account that the lorries left the Nuremberg courthouse and proceeded north to Erlangen (Munich is south of Nuremberg) where the following reporters were blocked. According to that report, the writer was speculating that the bodies would be put on a plane to Berlin! It appeared that the convoy's heading north towards Erlangen was likely a divsersionaty tactic to conceal the final destination.
Thus, it appears that the bodies were transported, albeit in a roundabout way to Munich by lorry.
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