Auschwitz Personnel

           KZ Auschwitch Personnel - With Some Pen Pictures

 

Throughout its short history, the entire Auschwitz concentration camp system had between 7000 to just over 8000 camp personnel, below is a sample of those men and women who helped murder wholescale, men, women and children, including new born infants.

Rudolf Franz Hoess (1900-1947):

Rudolf Hoess, Auschwitz's first camp commandant, was born on November 25, 1900 at Baden-Baden. Hoess father, Franz, a local shopkeeper and staunch Catholic hoped that his son would join the priesthood but that was not to be, At the outbreak of the Great War, the young Hoess, who lied about his age, enlisted into the German army. After his basic training, Hoess was dispatched to the Turkish Front where he was awarded the Iron Cross, Second and First Classes. Hoess also was wounded in action on several occasions. After Germany's, Hoes enlisted in a right-wing nationalist paramilitary group calling itself the Freikorp. In 1923, along with Martin Bormann, he was arrested for the murder of a schoolteacher, whom had been suspected of betrayal, and was sentenced to imprisonment. As part of a general amnesty, Hoess was released from prison where he immediately joined the SS. Within a year of Hitler's assumption to political power, Hoess was attached to Dachau concentration camp. When Auschwitz was built in 1940, it was Hoess who built it and became its first Commandant with the rank of Hauptsturmführer (captain). Under his guardianship, the camp became the heart of the Nazi killing machine. In 1945, In an SS report, Hoess was commended and referred to as 'a true pioneer'. In 1945, at the recommendation of his friend, Martin Bormann, Hoess became the deputy to SS-Obergruppenführer Richard Glücks, head of the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps, a post he would retain until the end of the War.  But in relation to Auschwitz, Hoess would find himself transferred back in 1944 to run the death factory temporary so as to assist in the extermination of some 400,000 Hungarian Jews. On March 29, 1947, Hoess was sentenced to death for war crimes and crimes against humanity and was hanged a few days later within the compounds of Auschwitz itself.

Rudolf Hoess acting as a chief witness for the defence of Ernst Kaltenbrunner’s (Chief of the Reich Security Office) at the Nuremberg trials said in his affidavit

"It took from three to fifteen minutes to kill the people in the death chamber, depending upon climatic conditions. We knew when the people were dead because their screaming stopped. We usually waited about one-half hour before we opened the doors and removed the bodies. After the bodies were removed our special Kommandos took off the rings and extracted the gold from the teeth of the corpses…"

Source: The Nuremberg Trials - The Nazis Brought to Justice (2015) Alexander MacDonald p121

 

Artur Liebehenschel:

Second Camp Commandant. Born in Posen, Poland on 15 November 1901 to ethnic German parents [Anton Heinrich Weinert and Emma Ottilie Liebenhenschel].  Anton, a Catholic, was already married to another woman and had therefore denied paternal responsibility for Artur and as such, Emma, a Lutheran Protestant, had to raise her son as a single parent.  His father had worked as a teacher and had also worked as a railroad official and his mother acted as a seamstress and like Hitler, Arthur, thoroughly adored his mother. Though Arthur had half-siblings, it seems that he never met any of them. 

After the Great War had ended, Arthur served as a Border Guard-East as a member German Freikorps from January 1919 until August 1919.

In October 1919, Arthur joined the German army as member of the Reichswehr aged 18 years old.  He reached the rank of Master Field Sergeant within the Medical Corp. 

On 3rd December 1927, Arthur married Gertrud Baum in Frankfurt-Oder.  Baum had been born on 3rd October 1903 in Zuellichau, Poland and was also an ethnic German.  She worked as a secretary for a college professor within Zuellichau.  She also had worked for a period of time for Dr. Rudolf Hanov who had wrote a book that studied local student groups, which had been published in 1933 and which had been dedicated to her.

Arthur and Gertrud had three children, one son and two daughters.   Dieter, born 2nd September 1928, Brigitte, born 28 December 1932 and Antje, born 7th April 1937. 

On 3rd October 1931, after 12 years’ service, Arthur was discharged from the army and in 1932 he took on a job within a finance office within Frankfurt-Oder. 

On 1st February 1932 he joined the general SS as a private and was automatically joined the NSDAP.

"At the time I joined the SS, I automatically and also voluntarily became a member of the NSDAP, in which I never held any official offices, in accordance with the propaganda of the SS at that time, I informed my superiors in 1938 that I had relinquished my faith and religion and was no longer affiliated with the Protestant Church.  In actuality, however, I remained a member of my congregation and continued to pay my dues.  I never officially acted out my separation from the church.  I hid the truth from the SD to avoid their punishment."  Arthur Liebehenschel (Postwar statement whilst held in custody for War crimes by the Allies).

Arthur Liebehenschel's first job in the SS was working within the concentration camp administrative system - After August 1934, he was adjutant and head of staff within the 27th SS Regiment, serving the Kommandant of the concentration camp, and at the same time he was Section Chief of the Politisch Abteilung at Columbia Haus in Berlin (Columbia Haus was a concentration camp, which held prisoners under interrogation at Gestapo headquarters. 

He, along with his family, lived in P, on the Elbe, and he was part of the unit SS-Wachtgruppe "Elbe".  Here his role was as an adjutant of the commandant of the Lichtenburg Concentration Camp. 

From July 1937, he was department head and part of the staff of SS-Obergruppenführer Eicke until 1940.  Liebenhenschel was reassigned to administrative duties due to having heart troubles.  During his career, he was awarded the 'Orden & Ehrenzeichen' (medals and decorations) of the Wartime Cross of Merit I + II.  He also received the SS dagger and Ring.             

Richard Baer:

SS-Sturmbannführer (Major) The third and last Camp commandant who took control of the camp in 1944 until it was abandoned with the onset of the Red Army in January 1945.  

 

Josef Mengele - Angel of Death of Auschwitz:

"They come here as Jews, and leave as smoke up a chimney." (Statement attributed to Josef Mengele)

Josef was born in Gunzburg, Germany on March 16, 1911. His father was the founder of the farm machinery factory of Karl Mengele & Sons. In the 1920s Josef went to study philosophy. There he learnt about the racial ideology of Alfred Rosenberg, which deeply impressed him. After he met Hitler, the young Mengele became an ardent supporter of the Nazis. Later, Josef moved on to study for a medical degree at the University of Frankfurt am Main. Mengele combined his studies of philosophy and medicine. He believed that like dogs, humans had pedigrees. He became obsessed with genetic engineering. In 1939 he enlisted in the army as a medical officer within the Waffen-SS, with the rank of Untersturmführer (2nd lieutenant). He saw service in France and Russia, where he was awarded the Iron cross. In May 1943, he was attached as chief medical officer to the Auschwitz. Mengele viewed the camp as the ultimate human laboratory, with an unlimited supply of guinea pigs that he could pursue his research. Mengele was now an SS-Hauptsturmführer (captain). To Mengele, Auschwitz was the ultimate human laboratory with an endless supply of live guinea pigs so that he could practice his own research. He was well known to attend most of the transports and pace up and down the ramps calling out for twins to show themselves. Twins destined for his experiments were housed in Barrack 14, which was located in Camp F in Birkenau, which was nicknamed 'The Zoo'. Inside this barrack block, they were given good food and a comfortable bed. Mengele wanted to ensure that his lab rats were in perfect health prior to being dissected. Many of Mengele's child victims affectionately called him 'Uncle Pepi' for Uncle Pepi would bring them sweets and play games with them. When the twins were ready to be experimented on, they were moved to the camp hospital, which was located in Block 15, in the Main Camp. In one instance, the twins were separated and he would slowly torture one of them, just to see if the other felt any pain or sensed that their other half was in danger. He was also known to collect human eyes that he kept pinned to wooden boards. All of these eyes had been removed from his victims after experimenting on them. He would strap one of his victims down, and inject blue dye into the eyeball; just to see what effect it would have on the victim. In most cases no anaesthesia was used, and the victims always died. Victim's bones would be bleached and sent to Berlin for more studies. On 25, May 1943, He sent over 1000 women suspected of typhus to the gas chambers. and a further 600 women at the end of 1943. In late 1944, the camp was experiencing a severe food shortage, so Mengele decided, so as to save rations, that he would liquidate the entire women's camp, for which he was still in charge of. During those ten nights that it took to empty the camp, truck carried their human cargo to their deaths as their screams filled the air. Mengele fled Auschwitz in January 1945, just before the Russian arrived to liberate the camp. After the war, he managed to escape to South America, were he lived a comfortable life, with the help of his rich family. Mengele died a free man.

According Frau Grete Salus, a former inmate of Auschwitz, Mengele was a "Master at his profession." and the "devil who took pleasure in his work."  (Source: The Hunt for the Angel of death.  The "Last Nazi". The Life and Times of Joseph Mengele. (1985) Gerald Astor (p2))

 

Dr. Eduard Wirths: SS-Sturmbannführer (Major) Wirths was Born on 4th September 1909 at Geroldshausen, Bavaria, Germany. He had been a member of the NSDAP in June 1933, as well as the SA but applied to join the SS in 1934.  When war broke out in 1939, he joined the Waffen SS [Armed SS]. He participated in campaigns within Norway and on the Eastern Front but after a heart attack he was then transferred to Dachau conentraion camp where he trained to be a ward leader.  From Dachau, he went on to serve in Neuengamme concentration camp as a senior officer in psychiatry in 1942.

After his promotion to SS-Hauptsturmführer (captain) he was sent to Auschwitz as its chief physician in September 1942.  

Wirths was interested in how medicines worked on the human body and therefore used female inmates of Auschwitz as human Guinea pigs in block 10 within the main camp [Auschwitz I], he also did experiments on prisoners relating to typhoid and gynecological.  He was also deeply interested in studying cancer of the cervix and as such, he went on and serialised lots of female prisoners by cutting out their ovaries.

He reached the rank of SS-Sturmbannführer in September 1944, and when the Nazis had to abandon Auschwitz in January 1945 due the rapid advances of the Red Army, he was transferred to the Mittelbau-Dora conentraion camp Nordhausen near Thuringia, Germany, until the camp was evacuated in April 1945. Wirths was captured by the Allies after the war and whilst in custody, he committed suicide by hanging himself, rather than face the humiliation of being put on trial as a war criminal on 20 September 1945.

Hans Erich Merbach: SS-Obersturmführer (lieutenant), was the officer in charge of the dog handlers within Auschwitz, until his transfer to Buchenwald Concentration Camp where he took over the role of command within the camp’s protective custody unit

Johann Schwarzhuber: SS-Obersturmführer (Lieutenant) (29 August 1904 – 3 May 1947. Schwarzhuber was born in Tutzing, Bavaria. Printer by trade he joined the NSDAP in 1933, along with the SS and was posted to the Dachau concentration camp and became a Blockführer (Block Leader). He was later transferred to Klinkerwerk, one of the sub-camps of Sachsenhausen as its commander. In 1941, he was sent to the death camp at Auschwitz II (Birkenau) within occupied Poland to manage some prisoner barracks as a Lagerführer (Camp Leader). Later he would take on the role as a Schutzhaftlagerführer which maintained order and discipline within the camp and ensure that daily roll calls were carried out, they also designated work to be carried out outside the camp perimeter. Blockführers, Rapporführers would report to him, and because of the size of the camp, there were a few Schutzhaftlagerführer employed. Another sinister aspect of his job was to ensure those fit for work was swallowed up within the camp life itself whilst those deemed unfit (too old, too young, too unhealthy and those with young children or pregnant) went to the gas chambers, the camp doctors would off course do these selections at the railway ramp. Like many other SS guards, Schwarzhuber was always hitting the bottle to get help him get through his day. Near the end of 1944, he was transferred to Dachau concentration camp in Germany where he ran the sub-camps known as the Kaufering. He would only remain there until January 1945 from which he would be sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp where he worked within the women's section of the camp. When Ravensbrück was liberated in April 1945, Schwarzhuber was arrested. At his trial he was convicted of his crimes and was executed in 1947.

Otto Hermann Wilhelm Moll: SS-Hauptscharführer (Battalion Sergeant Major) was born on 4 March 1915 in Hohen Schonberg, Germany. Joined the SS on 01 May 1935. 

In May 1941, Otto Moll was transferred to Auschwitz from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp where he was originally involved in preparing mass graves for all those murdered within the gas chambers, but was later assigned other duties, such as a director of the employment department within Birkenau. He was also Lagerführer within the Fürstengrube subcamp, an IG Farben coal mining concern and the Gleiwitz I sub-camp. 

Moll was transferred to work within the crematoria in Birkenau in 1944, his job was to organise the mass gassings of the Hungarian transports. To help speed up the killing process he reopened the old gas chamber known as Bunker 2 (he would order 4 burning pits for those gassed within Bunker 2) and had 5 cremation pits dug next to Crematorium 5 in order to speed-up the cremation process. It has also been claimed that he personally killed thousands of victims, and one such incident is when he was overseeing the execution of victims at the side of the specially dug burning pits next to the crematoria, it has been reported that he would pick-up crying children and throw them alive into the burning pit. Another event as witnessed by Filip Müller, Moll has caught a member of his Sonderkommando with some US dollars, as a deterrent to other prisoners he took the young man to one of the burning pits next to Crematoria 5, here he offered the thief a chance, if he could run across the burning pit twice in his bare feet, he wouldn't shoot him, desperate to live, the Jew jumped into the fiery pit and tried to sprint to the side, but got caught in the flaming embers, screaming in pain, Moll finished him off with his pistol.  And again from the same source, Moll discovered another prisoner two gold rings in his possession and demanded to know who gave him them, but he refused to answer, so Moll had his hands tied behind his back and hung him from a hook, the prisoner fainted and was then taken down and was revived by the aid of a couple of buckets of water, again he refused to tell Moll who gave him the rings, fuming Moll stormed out of the room and returned with a can of petrol, and then preceded to pour the liquid all over the prisoner and then ignited him and watched as he ran screaming from the room towards the electrified fence opposite the building, but Moll shot him dead before he could reach the fence. Moll would device many horrendous and torturous games that he forced prisoners to play, which usually ended up with Moll killing some of them. 

Moll was described as *short and thick-set with a chubby face with gingery-blond hair and covered in freckles. Moll was regarded a man without scruples and brutal and heavily anti-Jewish who loved humiliating and torturing the inmates. Members of the Sonderkommando nicknamed him 'Cyclops' because of the fact that he wore a glass eye. (* Source: Eyewitness Auschwitz. Three Years in the Gas Chambers (1979) Filip Müller p.125)

When the SS abandoned Auschwitz in January 1945, Moll was transferred to one of Dachau's sub-camps where he remained until the end of April 1945 where he was arrested by American forces. In November 1945, Moll was one of the guards at Dachau that stood trial for the crimes committed there and after being found guilty he was sentenced to death and hanged in Landsberg prison on 28 May 1946.

Ludwig Plagge: SS-Oberscharführer (Company Sergeant Major) (13 January 1910 – 22 January 1948). He was born in Landesbergen, Lower Saxony, Germany. After he left school, he worked as a farmer. He joined the NSDAP on 01 December 1931, some 14 months before they came to power. In October 1934 Plagge enrolled into the SS but wouldn't be involved in the concentration camp system until November 1939 where he was assigned to Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg, 22 miles north of Berlin, Germany. In July 1940, he was sent to the new camp at Oświęcim (Auschwitz) in occupied Poland. At Auschwitz he worked with in various parts of the camp and witnessed the camp grow in size and scope. His roles included being a Blockführer (Block Leader) which entailed supervising work details and he also acted as a deputy Rapporführer (Report Leader) within the gypsy camp located within Birkenau (Auschwitz II) itself and he Rapporführer. This job entailed taking roll calls and ensuring prisoner discipline was maintained. He also worked within the much-feared Block 11 within the main camp (Auschwitz I), the prison block with Auschwitz where mock-trials, torture and executions were carried out. He was also involved in the gassing process. The prisoner nicknamed him 'the little pipe' (das Pfeifchen) due to his habit of having a pipe in his mouth. He left Auschwitz on 4 October 1943 and was posted to the Majdanek death camp in Lublin, Poland. With the Red Army closing in he was transferred to Flossenbürg concentration camp in 1944. By the end of the war, Plagge was senior camp leader within one of Flossenbürg’s sub-camps known as Regensburg. After the war he was arrested and put on trial in Poland where was found guilty of crimes committed within the Polish death camps and was hanged in Kraków in 1948.

Oskar Gröning: SS-Unterscharführer (corporal) (10 June 1921 – 9 March 2018) Born in Nienburg, Prussia.  Joined several right-wing youth movements as a teenager, Scharnhorst (youth group belong to the Stahlhelm) and then the Hitler Youth after Hitler had become Reich Chancellor.   Grew up as an antisemite who blamed the Jews for everything that was bad in Germany.  After leaving school, at age 17, he took on a job as a trainee bank clerk.  After war broke out, Gröning decided that he wanted to join the Schutzstaffel [the SS] in 1940. he worked initially within the SS as a clerk dealing with wages.  In 1942, he was sent to the Auschwitz Concentration camp system in Poland and became a book keeper (later became known as the 'Book Keeper of Auschwitz') whose primary job was to sort out all the money stolen from the inmates and sending it on to Berlin. 

Whilst at Auschwitz, he recalled a scene he witnessed whilst standing on the ramps after a trainload of prisoners had just disembarked, which would have left him no room to doubt what Auschwitz really was:

"In November 1942, during my first time on the ramp, there was a shocking incident.  A Jewish mother arrived and hid her baby in a suitcase.  The baby started crying. A SS corporal opened the suitcase, took out the baby by the legs and smashed it against the iron door of a truck and the crying stopped."

Later, he put in for a transfer to a front-line unit, and in 1944 he joined an SS unit during the Ardennes offensive [Battle of the Bulge]. He was wounded during this campaign and before he could rejoin his unit from the hospital, his unit surrendered to the Western allies.  When interrogated by the British, he chose to keep his past history in Auschwitz a secret.  As a Prisoner-of-War, he was eventually sent to Britain as a forced labourer in 1946.  After his realise in 1947, he returned to Germany and moved back in with his wife.

After meeting some holocaust deniers back home in Germany, Gröning decided to speak out against this kind of denial and to set the record straight.  That there was gas chambers and mass murder being implemented within places like Auschwitz, and that he was part of the camp system and therefore was an eye-witness.  He never tried to deny his role within Auschwitz.  

In September 2014, the legal system finally caught up with the 93-year-old Gröning as he was charged by state prosecutors for having been an accessory to murder between 300,000-425,000 Hungarian Jews in 1944.  At Lüneburg Regional Court in Germany, on 20 April 2015, he finally stood trial for his part in the holocaust.  On 15 July 2015, he was found guilty for being an accessory to the killing of some 300,000 Hungarian Jews who had been deported to Auschwitz and sentenced to four years imprisonment.  On 28 November his lawyers appealed tried to appeal the court’s decision but it was rejected.  Then another appeal was rejected by teh Constitutional Federal Court of Justice, and by this time, Gröning was deemed fit enough to serve a custodial sentence.  In January 2018, an appeal for a pardon was also rejected, however, he would not see the inside of a jail as he died before he could be transferred to a local prison.

 Stefan Baretzki: SS-Rottenführer (Lance Corporal) became a Blockführer (block chief) at Auschwitz who served in the camp from 1942-1945. Was accused of making 'selections' (choosing which inmates were sent to the gas chambers) and murder as well as beating prisoners. He was sentenced to Life plus 8 years imprisonment.

Irma Ida IIse Grese:  Female SS guard at Ravensbrück, Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen Belsen during the war.  Known for her brutality and inhumanity towards inmates.  She was involved in the selection of prisoners earmarked for the gas chambers at Birkenau.  Worked within the woman's subcamp BII/c at Birkenau.  It has been alleged that she had tied a heavily pregnant woman's legs together and watched as the woman painfully tried to give birth [Source: Irma Grese, A True Account of the Holocaust's Deadliest Woman (2016) p8. Stephanie T. McRae]

 

SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger

SS-Obergruppenführer Wilhelm Kopp

SS-Oberführer Julian Scherner

SS-Hauptsturmführer Josef Kramer Senior adjutant within the main camp (Auschwitz I)

SS-Hauptsturmführer Robert Mulka Senior adjutant within the main camp (Auschwitz I) and within Auschwitz-Birkenau (Auschwitz II)

SS-Obersturmführer Karl-Friedrich Höcker Junior adjutant within the main camp (Auschwitz I)

SS-Hauptscharführer Detlef Nebbe Members of the Commandant's staff

SS-Sturmscharführer Robert Heider was involved with the postal services within the camp.

SS-Obersturmführer Wilhelm Bayer Legal office.

SS-Obersturmführer Heinrich Ganninger legal office.

SS-Obersturmbannführer Lukas Möckel was in charge of administration.

SS-Unterscharführer Franz Romeikat was an administrative assistant.

SS-Obersturmführer Theodor Kratzer involved with prisoner property.

SS-Hauptscharführer Friedrich Schimpf Involved within personnel accommodation.

SS-Oberscharführer Hans Zobisch involved within the personnel department.

SS-Scharführer Georg Engelschall was involved in the technical section of the camp.

SS-Rottenführer Richard Böch was in charge of the camp's motor pool.