Arthur Breitwieser

Arthur Breitwieser (born July 31, 1910 in Lemberg , Austria-Hungary , † December 20, 1978 in Bonn ) was SS-Unterscharführer and, as a disinfector, was a member of the camp staff in Auschwitz .

Life

Breitwieser was born the son of a waiter in Lemberg and attended a German high school there, where he graduated from high school in 1931. He then studied law at the University of Lviv and graduated with a Magister Juris in 1938 . During his studies he was a member of the Young German Party in Poland for two years . After graduation, he worked as a legal advisor in Lemberg and Bromberg . On September 1, 1939, the day of the German invasion of Poland , Breitwieser was arrested by the Polish police. On September 9th he was liberated by the German Wehrmacht and found another job in Bromberg. He joined the Volksdeutsche Selbstschutz in Bromberg and was drafted into the Waffen SS in November 1939 . After stops in Warsaw and Buchenwald concentration camp , he was transferred to Auschwitz in May 1940, where he stayed until January 1945.

Auschwitz concentration camp

Breitwieser initially worked in the camp administration during his time in Auschwitz. After a year of administrative work, he took part in a course in the summer of 1941 to learn how to use Zyklon B. He probably took part in the subsequent test gassings in which the SS tried the poison gas on people. Soon after, Breitwieser was entrusted with the management of the prisoner's clothing store administration, since working with the gas was damaging to his health. After four and a half years working in Auschwitz, he accompanied a prisoner transport to Buchenwald concentration camp in January 1945 as part of the “evacuation” of Auschwitz . There he was assigned to an SS combat unit and was soon taken prisoner by the Americans.

War processes

Breitwieser was extradited to Poland in December 1946 and sentenced to death by the Supreme National Tribunal of Poland in December 1947 in the great Kraków Auschwitz trial against Arthur Liebehenschel and 39 other SS members . However, a Polish court granted his pardon and in early 1948 commuted the death penalty to life imprisonment . After Breitwieser had been imprisoned in Poland for eleven years, he was expelled to Germany in January 1959, where he was able to work as an accountant in the company of a brother-in-law. He was in custody from June 9, 1961 to June 22, 1961, but was acquitted in August 1965 by a Frankfurt jury in the first Auschwitz trial for lack of evidence.

literature

• Ernst Klee : Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich - Who was what before and after 1945 , Fischer, Frankfurt am Main, 2nd edition: 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 , p. 74

Web links

• Short portrait of Arthur Breitwieser at www.auschwitz-prozess-frankfurt.de
• Short biography on www.auschwitz-prozess-frankfurt.de