Albin Gretsch

Albin Gretsch interned in America. Photo from 1945.

Albin Gretsch (* 1899 in Augsburg ; † unknown) was a German SS-Unterscharführer and deployed in the Riederloh subcamp of the Dachau concentration camp .

Life

Gretsch, who was drafted into the Waffen-SS , was a security guard in the Dachau subcamp Riederloh II in Kaufbeuren from August 16, 1944 , from November 11, 1944 to January 6, 1945 a member of the security team of the Dachau concentration camp, and then again in the same position used in Riederloh. From March 6, 1945 he was again employed by the Dachau concentration camp guards. On April 26, 1945, he accompanied an evacuation march of almost 7,000 prisoners from the Dachau concentration camp, which arrived at Wolfratshausen on April 28, 1945 . On this march, many prisoners died by being shot by SS men because they were unable to march. However, quite a few also died from exhaustion.

“The younger guards attacked the prisoners who could not go on badly, set the dogs on them and urged them to go on. I myself confronted a guard who set a dog down on a defenseless prisoner who collapsed and lay a little off the road. The name of this post, perhaps 18 years old, is unknown to me, but an Oberscharfuhrer of the dog squadron took the young man under protection. I don't know whether the man who fell over got up again and whether the big German shepherd bit his throat. I don't know the name of the dog leader either. I heard people scream too. I left collapsed prisoners on the right and left. Just as the civilian population wanted to give the prisoners water and bread, individual guards forbade the civilians to do so and said: 'They are criminals!' They then chased the prisoners away with the rifle butts. The worst were the regular SS men from the protective custody camp, mostly Unterführer. ... But since many prisoners were too weak to march along the whole way, they were shot by individual guards on the way. I could hear the shooting, for example in the woods of Wolfratshausen, but I didn't see with my own eyes how people were shot. There were also guards who beat the prisoners with sticks. The prisoners had bad shoes, many had wooden shoes and had trouble walking from sore feet. They hobbled and limped. "

After his arrest on May 2, 1945, Gretsch was tried on November 15, 1945 in the main Dachau trial, which took place as part of the Dachau trials , on charges of war crimes before an American military court . On December 13, 1945, Gretsch, who had no individual criminal offenses, was sentenced to ten years in prison for participating in the crimes in the Dachau concentration camp. Gretsch was imprisoned in the Landsberg War Crimes Prison and released early from prison in August 1950 for good conduct. Nothing is known about his further life.

literature

• Case No. 000-50-2 (US vs. Martin Gottfried Weiss et al) Tried 13 Dec. 45 in tight. Language (PDF file; 40.9 MB)
• Holger Lessing: The first Dachau trial (1945/46). Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, Baden-Baden 1993, ISBN 3-7890-2933-5

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Affidavit from Albin Gretsch on October 31, 1945. Quoted in: Andreas Wagner: Death March - The living conditions of the concentration camp prisoners during the march ( Memento of the original from January 2, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .