Ernst-August König

Ernst-August König (born July 31, 1919 in Althütten near Auschwitz, † September 18, 1991 in Siegen ) was a German SS Rottenführer in the Auschwitz concentration camp .

Life

King was the son of a farmer and had twelve siblings. After leaving school, he began training in forestry, but did not finish it. He was a member of the NSDAP . At the beginning of the Second World War he belonged to the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler , then to an SS-Totenkopfstandarte , that is, to one of the concentration camp guards. In June 1942 he was transferred to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where he worked as a block leader in the gypsy camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau from the spring of 1943 . From 1944, König was assigned to the Jaworzno satellite camp. He committed numerous crimes at each of his locations.

After the war he worked as a projectionist in a cinema until he retired early in 1972. König lived in the small town of Bad Berleburg in Wittgenstein . Sinti descendants lived there, whose ancestors had settled in Wittgenstein in the 18th century, and of whom a large number, most of them children, had been deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau on March 8, 1943. Few survived.

During the investigations of the Frankfurt a. M. (1958/59) on the first Auschwitz trial (1963–1965) there were a number of incriminating testimonies against König. An indictment came only after the now established Central Council of German Sinti and Roma reported the king in 1985, thereby triggering new investigations. After a high-profile trial from 1987 to 1991, König was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Siegen regional court responsible for Berleburg for multiple murders on January 24, 1991. The defense appealed against the judgment. King remained at large. Even before the appeal trial he committed in September 1991 suicide .

Among other things, the following was stated in the judgment:

“After the accused [King] had entered the block, the block elder shouted: 'Attention!' The inmates in the block then lined up in front of their bunk beds. Wolfgang Seeger was not able to stand up because of his age [67] and his poor health due to illness. He was holding on to a post in his bunk with one hand. The defendant told him to stand up straight. Seeger replied accordingly that he could not stand up straight. The defendant hit Seeger violently and brutally with the object about 25 times, in particular the defendant struck specifically in the kidney area. "K. beat the inmate to death. To the inmate Johann Weiß, who was lying on the floor, he explained:" Your brood must be destroyed. " The court came to the conclusion: "The defendant enjoyed basking in the power that the SS had given him over the prisoners."

literature

• Ernst Klee : Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices, victims and what became of them. A dictionary of persons . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2013, ISBN 978-3-10-039333-3 .
• Arnold Roßberg: Coming to terms with the Nazi genocide of the Sinti and Roma - investigative proceedings against the perpetrators and comments on the trial at the Siegen district court on the so-called "Gypsy camp" Auschwitz-Birkenau , in: Schonung für die Murderers? The judicial treatment of Nazi genocide crimes and their significance for society and the legal culture in Germany. The example of the Sinti and Roma , Heidelberg 2015, pp. 94–113

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Ernst Klee: Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices, victims and what became of them. Lexicon of persons , Frankfurt / M. 2013, p. 226
2. ↑ ^{a b c} König, Ernst-August. In: Regional personal lexicon on National Socialism in the old districts of Siegen and Wittgenstein. Retrieved August 4, 2020 . 
3. ↑ Ulrich Friedrich Opfermann , "That they shed their gypsy habit". The history of the "Gypsy colonies" between Wittgenstein and Westerwald, Frankfurt a. M. et al. 1997, 2nd, supplementary edition.
4. ↑ Arnold Roßberg, The processing of the Nazi genocide on the Sinti and Roma - investigative proceedings against the perpetrators and comments on the trial at the Siegen regional court over the so-called "Gypsy camp" Auschwitz-Birkenau, in: Schonung für die Murderers? The judicial treatment of Nazi genocide crimes and their significance for society and the legal culture in Germany. The example of the Sinti and Roma, Heidelberg 2015, pp. 94–113, here: pp. 98f.
5. ↑ From Nazi perpetrators, profiteers, informers, silent people and bystanders: König, Ernst-August. In: stolpersteine-gelsenkirchen.de. Retrieved on August 4, 2020 (with digital copies of the following article from the Siegener Zeitung : arrest of König rejected , November 29, 1990; König remains at large , January 25, 1991). 
6. ↑ For Wolfgang Seeger see: Duisburg Institute for Linguistic and Social Research, Searching for Traces of the History of Persecution of the Sinti and Roma in Duisburg ( [1] ).
7. ^ Ernst Klee: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 325; another, Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices, victims and what became of them. An encyclopedia of persons , Frankfurt a. M. 2013 226, 373.