Arthur Rödl

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Arthur Rödl (born June 13, 1898 in Munich , † April 1945 in Stettin ) was a German SS leader and camp commandant of the Groß-Rosen concentration camp .

Life

The son of a bank messenger and a kiosk owner grew up with three other siblings in a strictly Catholic family. After finishing school, Rödl began an apprenticeship as a blacksmith and joined a nationalist paramilitary organization. At the outbreak of the First World War , at the age of sixteen, he wanted to be recruited as a soldier for the German army, but was turned down because of his age. After he had forged his papers by declaring himself eighteen, he was accepted and served in various combat units at the front until the end of the war.

Rödl, who was injured at least once during his missions at the front, had no prospects after the end of the war because he found it difficult to return to society due to the difficult economic conditions and without professional experience. Eventually he married a woman 14 years his senior, and the marriage resulted in a child. From 1920 he was a member of the nationalist Bund Oberland and participated in the fighting between Poles and Germans in Upper Silesia in the early 1920s. Because of his absence due to this, he ran into difficulties at his job, a post office, which he had started in the meantime. After the distribution of nationalist leaflets at his place of work and after it became known that he had participated in the Hitler coup in November 1923, he was fired.

Rödl, after that unemployed, found work in the printing press in the Nazi headquarters, the Brown House , and in 1928 became a member of the NSDAP ( membership number 98.023) and SS (SS number 1.240 ). In the SS, Rödl rose to SS-Standartenführer in 1943 . Because of his participation in the Hitler putsch, he was later awarded the blood order . He was also awarded the NSDAP's Golden Party Badge .

Service in concentration camps

From 1933 Rödl was head of political readiness in Munich . Thereafter, from November 1934, Rödl headed the SS-Totenkopfsturmbann Elbe . This Totenkopfsturmbann performed guard duties around the Lichtenburg women's concentration camp . Rödl, who was aiming for a military career with the SS-Totenkopfverband, was assigned to the Sachsenburg concentration camp by Theodor Eicke against his will . In the Sachsenburg concentration camp, Rödl served as a protective custody camp leader from September 1935 to July 1937 . In August 1937 he rose to the position of First Protective Custody Camp Leader of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp and remained at this post until 1941. At the end of 1938, Rödl ordered the prisoners to create a Buchenwald song. The Austrian prisoners Fritz Löhner-Beda and Hermann Leopoldi wrote and composed one in a very short time . Satisfied with the result, Rödl had the song practiced vigorously. It became the standard on roll calls and other occasions. It was also played as a marching song when the work columns moved in and out. Because the mass singing did not always work immediately, Rödl regularly had fits of anger and drilled mass or individual punishments. The inmates therefore organized it so that the blocks standing near Rödl sang with double strength and the more distant inmates only moved their lips.

At the beginning of May 1941, Rödl was appointed camp commandant of the Groß-Rosen concentration camp; he held this post until September 15, 1942. In the late summer of 1942, Rödl was released from his post as camp commandant by Oswald Pohl . He was followed by Wilhelm Gideon as camp commandant , until he was replaced by Johannes Hassebroek in October 1943 . Like Rödl, camp commanders from other concentration camps were also released from their posts in the summer of 1942, such as Hans Loritz , Karl Otto Koch , Karl Künstler , Alex Piorkowski , Wilhelm Schitli and Hans Hüttig . The reasons for these large-scale implementations were immense violations of the SS code of being "decent", mainly in the area of ​​alcoholism and corruption.

After the camp headquarters in Groß-Rosen

In mid-September 1942 Rödl was transferred to the " Higher SS and Police Leader " in the Ukraine in Kiev and then to the HSSPF Russia-South. From there he was transferred to the Waffen SS in 1944, where he commanded an Estonian construction regiment of the 15th SS Waffen Grenadier Division to build defenses in Thorn . In the course of the coming war end Rödl committed in April 1945 in Szczecin suicide , as they say, with a hand grenade .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 502.
  2. ↑ a b c d e Tom Segev: The Soldiers of Evil. On the history of the concentration camp commanders. Reinbek near Hamburg 1992, p. 164ff.
  3. ↑ a b c d Johannes Tuchel: Concentration camps: organizational history and function of the inspection of the concentration camps 1934–1938. 1991, p. 389f.
  4. ↑ a b Holm Kirsten, Wulf Kirsten : Voices from Buchenwald. A reader. Göttingen 2002, p. 17.
  5. ↑ Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (ed.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 2: Early camp, Dachau, Emsland camp. CH Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-52962-3 , p. 197.
  6. ^ Walter Poller : Doctor's writer in Buchenwald . Phönix-Verlag, Hamburg 1946, p. 129.
  7. ↑ Karin Orth: The Concentration Camp SS. Munich 2004, p. 206.
personal data
SURNAME Rödl, Arthur
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS leader and camp commandant of the Groß-Rosen concentration camp
DATE OF BIRTH June 13, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH April 1945
Place of death Szczecin