Anton Burger (SS member)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Anton Burger (born November 19, 1911 in Neunkirchen , † December 25, 1991 in Essen ) was an Austrian SS-Obersturmführer and camp commandant in the Theresienstadt ghetto .

Life

The son of a stationery dealer completed a commercial apprenticeship after attending elementary and community school and joined the armed forces in 1930 .

He joined the Austrian NSDAP in 1931 (membership number 611.604). The NSDAP was banned in Austria on June 19, 1933 and Burger was dishonorably discharged from the army in July 1933. Burger traveled illegally to Germany and joined the “ Austrian Legion ” in Lechfeld . Soon afterwards he joined the SA . In 1935 he received German citizenship and because of his unemployment he lived in SA barracks.

With the “Austrian Legion”, Burger was also involved in the “ Anschluss ” on March 12, 1938 in Vienna . After joining the SS , Burger worked in the “ Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Vienna ”; his immediate superior was Adolf Eichmann .

In the summer of 1939 he was transferred to the Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Prague , and in April 1941 he was promoted to the Untersturmführer. In the spring of 1941 he was promoted to head of the branch in Brno .

In February 1943, Burger and SS-Hauptsturmführer Dieter Wisliceny were sent to Saloniki to direct the deportation of the Jews there to Auschwitz-Birkenau . In the six months up to August 1943, 46,000 people were deported to Auschwitz - to certain death.

As a result of his deployment, Burger became camp commandant in the Theresienstadt concentration camp on July 5, 1943, succeeding Siegfried Seidl . Here, Burger was soon feared because of his cruelty and arbitrariness. He himself compiled transport lists to the Auschwitz extermination camp and executed prisoners.

In March 1944 he became head of the “ Judenreferates ” at the command of the Security Police and the SD (BdS) in Athens . His job was to deport the Jewish population of Corfu and Rhodes - almost 7,000 people - to Auschwitz .

At the end of the war, he was taken, unrecognized, to the American internment camp Glasenbach near Salzburg , where Burger was only revealed in 1947 as the commander of Theresienstadt. In the meantime, however, he had been sentenced to death in absentia by the People's Court in Litoměřice, Czech Republic . In June 1947, shortly before his planned extradition to Czechoslovakia , Burger was able to flee the camp. Until he was arrested again in March 1951, he lived under an assumed name in the underground in his hometown of Neunkirchen. But his second arrest only lasted a few weeks. On April 9, 1951, he managed to escape again.

He lived under the family name Bauer with changing identities on the border between Austria and Germany and between 1960 and 1961 was able to work as a hut warden on an alpine pasture . Soon afterwards, Burger called himself just Wilhelm Bauer and in January 1962 found a job with a company in Essen, which he lost again in 1974. After a heart attack and despite inadequate forged papers, Burger lived as a pensioner in Germany until his death. It was not until March 1994, over two years after his death, that the Bavarian State Criminal Police Office was able to confirm Burger's identity as Wilhelm Bauer's, following information from Simon Wiesenthal .

literature

  • Hans Safrian : Eichmann and his assistants . Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1995, ISBN 3-596-12076-4 .
  • Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich: Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .
  • Karla Müller-Tupath: Lost in Germany: The secret life of Anton Burger: camp commandant of Theresienstadt , Konkret Literatur Verlag, Hamburg 1994, ISBN 3-89458-132-8 and structure paperback publishing house, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-7466-8048- 4th

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Burger, Anton
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bauer, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian SS-Obersturmführer and camp commandant in the Theresienstadt ghetto
DATE OF BIRTH November 19, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Neunkirchen (Lower Austria)
DATE OF DEATH December 25, 1991
Place of death eat