I would like to share a short reflection on a research project that was important to me as a historian in which I was able to assist in a search for German war dead.

On April 24, 1945, four police officers were executed by the Nazi regime as Berlin fell to the invading Soviet Army. The men – police sergeant Otto Jordan, air raid protection officer Erich Bautz, and police officers Willi Jenoch and Reinhold Hofer – were shot and buried in a mass grave located somewhere in a large wooded area used today by the Berlin Police (Polizei Berlin) for training exercises. Searches for the remains have been complicated by the overgrown vast terrain. The area spans roughly the size of five football fields.

I was honored to work together with Polizei Berlin as a volunteer researcher thanks to the tireless dedication and efforts of the German War Graves Commission (Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge), who searched diligently to help locate these fallen police officers as part of their mission to help find all war dead and clarify the fates of those lost.

I spent several months locating and analyzing aerial photos from the U.S. National Archives to try to help provide possible clues to pin down a burial site – no easy task. Most of these aerial film rolls, taken to gather intelligence and aid in bombing missions, had not been opened since they were sealed inside metal canisters after World War II.

It was a special experience to crack open the canisters and be the first person to see what those skies over Germany looked like some 80 years ago.

I helped analyze some case documents in German and English, including testimonies of one of the perpetrators who oversaw the killings: Polizeimeister Alfred Wandelt, who lied repeatedly to both U.S. Army investigators and a Berlin court about what had happened, telling different versions of events to both sides.

Examining Wandelt’s statements, I noticed only one detail that was consistent: the time he said he arrived back at his HQ from the execution site on foot. I used the time that Wandelt provided to investigators plus the distance to calculate possible burial locations within the overall area of the killings.

Using this information, plus their own information and resources, the police narrowed the search area and conducted another search last fall. Unfortunately, the remains of the officers have not yet been located.

It is difficult to understand why these police officers were executed while Berlin became an inferno and the Red Army encroached. The accusation made against them was that they were homosexual – a crime punishable by death under the SS, who at that time controlled all police forces.

One of the victims was Otto Jordan, a sergeant of the Schutzpolizei (the equivalent of uniformed local and metropolitan police). Otto was a married man who had been accused by his neighbor. Otto and his wife Erna strenuously denied the allegations.

Erna was a strong and dedicated woman. She remained constantly in the jail with Otto after his arrest and was fighting to get him legal representation when he was killed. She was so devoted to him that, after his death, she braved the shattered maze of bombed Berlin, then a dangerous wasteland, to track down and confront the man who ordered his execution. She hunted down Wandelt, reported him to the U.S. Army as a murderer, testified against him, and petitioned – in vain – for her husband to be recognized as a victim of the Nazis. Her dedication to him was impressive.

It was an honor for me to have been part of this search, and I hope that one day the resting place of these policemen will be uncovered. It is one of those many unseen war stories that will slip through the cracks of most history books but will stay with me.