Horst and Erna Petri

Horst Petri (March 18, 1913 – December 12, 1962) and Erna Petri (May 30, 1920 – July 2000) were married Nazi war criminals during World War II.

During this time, he joined the Nazi Party and SS, the former in 1932 and the latter in 1934.

Erna Kürbs was born into a farming family in the village of Herressen near Weimar.

After graduating from high school, Horst trained as a farmer and received a graduate degree in farming in 1935.

In 1936, the 16-year-old Erna met Horst, who spoke to her about the Greater German Reich.

Although her father was opposed, the two quickly struck up a relationship.

When Erna became pregnant a year later, the two wed in 1938.

The child was a boy.

In 1939, Horst received SS training at the Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps.

During the war, he would eventually rise to the rank of Untersturmführer.

Erna became pregnant once more in 1942 and had a daughter in January 1943.

In June 1942, the Petris moved to the Grzenda manor house in Poland after Horst was appointed as a plant manager there.

They received frequent visits from SS and Wehrmacht officers.

Within two days of moving, Erna witnessed her husband beating a laborer.

Horst also routinely raped his female servants.

Local farmers called him a sadist who enjoyed whipping Ukrainians, Poles, and Jews.

When four Jews were caught in the estate while trying to escape from a transport to a death camp, Horst told Erna and her female guest that "this was men's work, nothing that women should be concerned about."

Horst then executed the Jews as they were walking away.

When Horst was not home, he participated in mass shootings of the Jewish population in a town next to the estate.

He also participated in mass deportations, and the massacre of 15 Ukrainian farmers who were reported to have delivered food to partisans.

He also once indiscriminately bombed a Ukrainian village with grenade launchers after suspecting the citizens of supporting partisans.

Seven villagers died.

Erna followed her husband's lead and abused her farm workers.

She often fired warning shots at them, sometimes as her son watched.

On one occasion, Erna had her husband send three Ukrainian peasant women to Janowska concentration camp after they refused to work.

To her surprise, all three women were spared death, and she allowed them back to the manor several weeks later.

Erna also accompanied her husband on hunts for fugitive Jews, during which she personally killed four Jewish men.

After the harvest in autumn 1942, the approximately 150 Jews from Grzenda were also transported to the Janowska concentration camp or the Belzec extermination camp.

In September 1943, Erna was returning from a shopping trip in Lviv in her carriage when she came across six nearly naked boys (aged 6 to 12) crouching by the side of the road.

The children had escaped from a railcar destined for Sobibor extermination camp.

The children were terrified and hungry.

When Erna realized they were Jewish escapees, she calmed them, took them home, fed them and waited for her husband to return.

When Horst did not return after several hours, Erna took the children into the woods to a pit where other Jews had been buried, lined them up, and shot them one by one execution-style.

In 1944, the Petris fled their manor due to the advance of the Red Army.

Horst got his SS tattoo removed to destroy evidence.

He was taken prisoner by U.S. soldiers, but was released in May 1945.

Horst and Erna both avoided detection during the initial search for war criminals in the post-war period.

They settled down in East Germany and became farmers.

Horst joined the Liberal Democratic Party of Germany, the Free German Trade Union Federation, and the Peasants Mutual Aid Association.

In 1957, the Petris' son fled the country, drawing the attention of the Stasi, which started surveilling them.