Herbert Gerigk

After the Second World War Gerigk was never brought to justice for his complicity in the Holocaust. Although his Nazi past prevented an academic career, he worked as a music critic at the Dortmund Ruhr-Nachrichten. In 1954 he wrote a Dictionary of Music, which was issued by the same firm (Bernhard Hahnefeld) that had published him during the Nazi era.

In 1943 he became chief editor of the music magazine promoted by Rosenberg, Music in War; in 1944 he was promoted to SS-Hauptsturmführer.

During the Second World War Gerigk took a leading role in the persecution of Jews. He headed the Office of Music in Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, and was a driving force in all activities of the 'Music Special Staff' in occupied countries. The activity included the plunder of cultural property in the occupied countries and its transport to Germany. In occupied France alone, Gerigk's investigators carried out roberries over two years from 34,500 Jewish houses or apartments, including those of Emmerich Kálmán , Darius Milhaud , Fernand Halphen, Arno Poldes, and Gregor Piatigorsky. Of the machinery of destruction of the Holocaust , Gerigk wrote in 1942: "The question must be raised as to whether it is appropriate, given the liquidation of European Jewry, to permit Jewish half-breeds as cultural workers in any form."

Gerigk joined the Nazi Party in 1932 and joined the SA in 1933. From 1935 he worked in the National Socialist German Reich as "head the music section for the monitoring of the intellectual and ideological training and education of the Nazi Party". In 1935 he joined the SS.

After graduation in 1928, Herbert Gerigk published in 1932 a thesis on Giuseppe Verdi. It was the first important musicological overall presentation of Verdi in Germany and appeared in the series "The Great Masters of Music."

Herbert Gerigk (2 March 1905, Mannheim – 20 June 1996, Dortmund) was a German musicologist, notable for his co-authoring of the Nazi Lexicon of Jews in Music.