Eggert Reeder " SS - Gruppenführer " Eggert Reeder ( 22 July 1894 , Poppenbüll – 22 November 1959 , Wuppertal ) was a German jurist , civil servant , and district President of several regions . Reeder served as civilian administrator of Wehrmacht occupied Belgium and northern France when Nazi Germany occupied those countries during World War II . Early life . Joining the Imperial German Army straight from school , he served on various fronts during World War I . At the end of the war , he joined the University of Halle - Wittenberg in Halle , where he studied law and political science . During this period he joined the Corps Palaiomarchia and also volunteered for the local Freikorps under Major - General Georg Ludwig Rudolf Maercker ( 1865 – 1924 ) . In this role , Reeder became involved from February 1919 onwards in the brutal suppression of the strikes and riots in Halle , which occurred as a result of the November Revolution , and resulted in the abdication of the monarchy in the early days of the Weimar Republic . After further study at the University of Kiel , from 1921 he was appointed a court clerk , and in 1922 a government clerk in the District government of Schleswig . From 1924 to 1929 he was an assessor in the Prussian district of Lennep , and then Cologne . NSDAP . Reeder joined the NSDAP on 1 May 1933 . Appointed district governor of Flensburg , two months later he was appointed district president of the government of Aachen . On 9 July 1936 Reeder was appointed governor of Cologne . In 1938 , the Belgian King Leopold III ( 1901 – 1983 ) appointed Reeder Grand Cross of the Order of Leopold . At the outbreak of World War II , he joined the Schutzstaffel ( SS ) on 31 August 1939 as a Brigadefuhrer , and given the additional governorship of Düsseldorf . Eggert became key in the planning of the invasion of Belgium during the Phoney War . Administrator of Belgium . On 10 May 1940 , the Wehrmacht invaded Luxembourg , the Netherlands , and Belgium under the operational plan Fall Gelb ( Case Yellow ) . Once the Wehrmacht had fully occupied Belgium , Adolf Hitler chose not to install a civilian government ( such as he had done in the Netherlands ) , but instead installed a military government headed by Alexander von Falkenhausen of the Wehrmacht . This intensified friction and disagreement between native - Belgian right - wing factions , including Verdinaso and Rexism , forcing them to fully collaborate with the occupying forces in order to gain influence . Hitler and SS - leader Heinrich Himmler profited from the situation by increasing competition between various native - Belgian groups by founding some more extreme collaborationist organisations , including the 6th SS Volunteer Sturmbrigade Langemarck and DeVlag , the German - Flemish Workers Community . After Ward Hermans and René Lagrou left the Flemish National Union ( VNV ) to form the Algemeene - SS Vlaanderen , their leader Staf de Clercq immediately choose to collaborate as well , despite pre - war statements to the contrary . Reeder was appointed head of the administrative staff of the Military Governor of Belgium and northern France under von Falkenhausen , in charge of all economic and political issues , and liaising with the occupation Government in charge . As a result , Reeder ' s his first official business in Düsseldorf was to appoint his Vice President William Burandt as his interim - successor , but retained his position in Cologne . Phantom trains . Reeder ordered the head of the Belgian State Security Service Robert de Foy , who had been allowed to stay in place , to hand over pre - war lists of Aliens he had been asked to prepare by King Leopold III , and to then use his forces to round them up . This included Flemish nationalists , communists and non - Belgian citizens , most of them Jewish refugees from Germany and Poland . These people were exported to France on so - called " phantom trains " the records for which were destroyed , but it is known that at least 3 , 000 were arrested under the plot in Antwerp alone . A phantom train on which Joris van Severen , leader of the pro - Belgian Fascist party was among 79 people deported is well recorded , as 21 people were killed by French soldiers on 20 May 1940 at Abbeville . Of the people deported on " phantom trains , " most including the Belgian Jews were released by the Wehrmacht , the only Jews released by the Nazi German Army . 3 , 537 Jews holding German and Austrian passports were kept imprisoned at location , and were transported to Auschwitz - Berkinau for processing . Relationship with Robert de Foy . On their return to Belgium in July 1940 , the Flemish - Nationalists complained to Reeder , who had De Foy arrested for the deportations . Instead of being sent to prison , De Foy was transported to Germany , initially held in a hotel in Münster , before being transported to Berlin . Questioned and held for a few weeks , he was released and told to make his way back to Belgium . In the mean time , SS - Chief Reinhard Heydrich communicated directly to Reeder that de Foy was to remain in position and untouched . From this point forward , a relationship of tension existed between de Foy and the Nazi occupying forces in Belgium . Although co - operative with them , de Foy had both his department and powers cut from this point forward , and it was not until after the Allied invasion of France and the oncoming collapse of Nazi control that the status - quo was disrupted . Arriving in Brussels on 14 August 1940 , De Foy resumed his duties , but the State Security Service had been abolished , and the activities of his residual department were now limited to the policing of Aliens . On October 1 , 1943 , de Foy succeeded Gaston Schuind as Secretary General of the Department of Justice , after he reached an agreement with Reeder that the autonomy of the Belgian justice system was guaranteed . At the same time , the Wehrmacht took over the policing of aliens in Belgium , which after this time greatly escalated . This was in part aided that from July to September 1944 , Reeder was appointed Deputy of the new Imperial Commissioner for the occupied Belgium and northern areas of France , the former Cologne and Aachen Gauleiter Josef Grohé ( 1902 – 1987 ) . Final solution . Throughout his period of administration , Reeder had co - operated with both von Falkenhausen and later Grohé , together with the administrator of France Dr Werner Best , to try to apply the rules of the Hague Convention against in their region , often against the wishes and instructions of their Wehrmacht and SS superiors . In part they were aided by an on - going conflict between Himmler and Heydrich , which locally manifested itself as to who had what control over the still in place Belgian Police . Reeder was directly responsible for the destruction of " Jewish influence " in the Belgian economy . But to ensure that the all the Belgian people co - operated in the German occupation , Reeder negotiated an agreement to allow native Belgian Jews to remain in Belgium . Part of this was the non - enforcement of the Reich Main Security Office order for all Jews to be marked by wearing a yellow Star of David at all times , until Helmut Knochen ' s conference in Paris on 14 March 1942 . While implementation of economic policy led to mass unemployment of Belgian Jewish workers , especially in the diamond business , Reeder ' s efforts preserved existing national administrative structures and business relations within Belgium and northern France during the German occupation . 2 , 250 of these unemployed Belgian Jews were sent to forced labour camps in Northern France ( still under Reeder ' s control ) , in order to build the Atlantic Wall for Organisation Todt . The one attempt at the mass deportation of Belgian Jews , attempted on 3 September 1943 , proved a failure . After Wehrmacht raids , hundreds of Antwerp Jews were taken in furniture vans from their homes to Mechelen transit camp . Soon afterwards , Reeder ordered their release at the direct instance of Queen Elizabeth of Bavaria and Cardinal Jozef - Ernest van Roey , and the attempt was not repeated . It was hence reported as " impossible " by local SS units charged with meeting Final Solution targets to find enough stateless and foreign Jews to fill another Auschwitz transport after 20 September 1943 , though 1 , 800 Jews of various privileged categories were taken in 1944 to camps including Theresienstadt and Bergen - Belsen . This meant that although 43 , 000 Jews left Belgium under the Final Solution up until the end of occupation in 1945 , many of these in the early months of occupation , this approximated to the number of non - Belgian Jews who had been resident in Belgium before the war , according to lists complied by de Foy . Post war , historians estimated that only 6 % of Belgian Jews were arrested and sent to camps in the east ; 13 , 000 of the non - Belgian Jews transported from the territory died . 1944 - 1945 . Eggert was promoted SS - Gruppenführer on 9 November 1943 . With both the build up of the US Army in England from 1944 , and the advancement of the Soviet Red Army in the east , the Nazi occupation in the west became more focused on the final solution . After the Allied Forces invasion of Normandy in June , the Nazis relieved de Foy of his position , in part driven by the rumours that he was " London ' s man , " having made contact according to post - War records with the Belgian Resistance via both Walter van der Ganshof Meersch and William Ugeux . After Robert Jan Verbelen was made head of the " De Vlag Veiligheidscorps " , a Nazi SS security force in Belgium , and a failed attempt to execute De Foy by firing squad , he was placed in jail . As the Allies entered Belgium , De Foy was released and went into hiding . Reeder was taken prisoner on 18 April 1945 and held in Belgium until the summer of 1947 . Post World War II . Reeder was placed on trial in Belgium on 9 March 1951 and defended by lawyer Ernst Achenbach . Reeder and Alexander von Falkenhausen were tried for their role in the deportation of more than 30 , 000 Jews from Belgium , but not for their deaths in Auschwitz . Both were found guilty on 9 July 1951 and sentenced to 12 years hard labour in Germany . On return to West Germany , on 30 July 1951 they were pardoned by Chancellor Konrad Adenauer , and Reeder subsequently retired at his own request . It was Reeder ' s efforts to preserve existing national administrative structures and business relations within Belgium and northern France during the German occupation , and the delayed and incomplete efforts to inflect the Final Solution on Belgian Jews that spared Reeder and gained him enough credit to earn a pardon .