Albert Sauer (concentration camp commander)

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Albert Sauer (born August 17, 1898 in Misdroy ( Pomerania ), † May 3, 1945 in Falkensee ) was a German SS officer and from 1938 to 1939 the first camp commandant of the Mauthausen concentration camp .

Life

“Wiener Graben” quarry (1941/42), photo from the Federal Archives

Sauer, a carpenter by trade, was a member of the NSDAP (membership number 862.698) and the SS (membership number 19.180) from 1931 . After a period of unemployment, he became a full-time SS employee.

In April 1935, the inspector for the concentration camp, Theodor Eicke, sponsored Sauer for use by the SS guards of the Oranienburg concentration camp . From April 1, 1936, he was the camp commandant of the early Bad Sulza concentration camp . Between August 1, 1937 and mid-1938, Sauer was Second Protective Custody Camp Leader in Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp and thus belonged to the “Brandenburg Guard” . Between August 1, 1938 and April 1, 1939, he officially held the position of commandant of the Mauthausen concentration camp, which at that time was still housed in a temporary facility in the Wienergraben quarry of the Mauthausen granite works. Sauer was dismissed from service in April 1939 due to negligence and excessive leniency towards the concentration camp prisoners. Albert Sauer was subsequently replaced as camp commandant by SS-Sturmbannführer Franz Ziereis, who had been posted to Mauthausen on February 17, 1939 . In the period from 1941 to 1942 he was employed by the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Ethnicity .

From September 1942 to April 1943 Sauer was again head of the protective custody camp in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Sauer was involved in the liquidation of the Riga ghetto in 1943 . Later he was temporarily camp commandant in the Riga-Kaiserwald concentration camp , which was cleared in July 1944. This action was completed in September 1944. As in Riga itself, there were major massacres of prisoners and people trapped.

In January 1945 Albert Sauer took over the post as representative of the camp commandant Fritz Suhren in the Ravensbrück concentration camp and is said to have been in charge of building a gas chamber . Rudolf Höß , who had been in the concentration camp since November 1944 and the former commandant of Auschwitz, then coordinated the mass killings after the gas chamber was completed. Höß and other SS criminals left in May 1945 via the so-called Rattenlinie Nord to Flensburg . Albert Sauer died on May 3, 1945 under unknown circumstances in the Berlin suburb of Falkensee.

literature

  • Eberhard Jäckel et al .: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust , Volume 2, Tel Aviv
  • Stefan Hördler: The final phase of the Ravensbrück concentration camp. In: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft, issue 3, 2008, p. 229, fn. 34
  • Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (ed.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 4: Flossenbürg, Mauthausen, Ravensbrück. CH Beck, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-406-52964-X .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stefan Hördler: The final phase of the Ravensbrück concentration camp. In: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft, issue 3, 2008, p. 229, fn. 34
  2. ^ Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich, p. 520
  3. ↑ a b Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (ed.): The Place of Terror: History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps, Flossenbürg, Mauthausen, Ravensbrück , Volume 4, Munich 2006, p. 295
  4. ↑ Udo Wohlfeld: the network. The concentration camps in Thuringia 1933-1937. Documentation on the Nohra, Bad Sulza and Buchenwald camps, = wanted 2. Save the past for the future !, Weimar 2000, ISBN 3-935275-01-3 , p. 194ff.
  5. ^ Rudolf A. Haunschmied , Jan-Ruth Mills, Siegi Witzany-Durda: St. Georgen-Gusen-Mauthausen - Concentration Camp Mauthausen Reconsidered . BoD, Norderstedt 2008, ISBN 978-3-8334-7440-8 . Pp. 54-58.
  6. ^ Hermann Kaienburg : Sachsenhausen concentration camp . In: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror. Sachsenhausen, beech forest. Beck, Munich 2006 (series, volume 3) ISBN 978-3-406-52963-4 , ISBN 3-406-52963-1 , p. 40
  7. ^ Stefan Hördler: Order and Inferno. The concentration camp system in the last year of the war . Göttingen 2015, pp. 165 and 171 f.
  8. ^ Stefan Hördler: Order and Inferno. The concentration camp system in the last year of the war . Göttingen 2015, pp. 165 and 172
  9. ^ Stefan Hördler: Order and Inferno. The concentration camp system in the last year of the war . Göttingen 2015, p. 165
personal data
SURNAME Sauer, Albert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Camp commandant of the Mauthausen concentration camp
DATE OF BIRTH 17th August 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Miedzyzdroje
DATE OF DEATH May 3, 1945
Place of death Falkensee