August Kolb

August Heinrich Kolb (born August 15, 1893 in Rößleinsdorf / Neustadt an der Aisch ; † October 2, 1962 in Nuremberg ) was a German SS-Hauptsturmführer (1943) and was employed as a protective custody camp leader in Sachsenhausen concentration camp .

Life

Kolb was a member of the NSDAP ( membership number 3,958,173) and SS (SS number 222,497). From the beginning of March to the end of May 1942, Kolb led the guards in the Arbeitsdorf concentration camp . Afterwards Kolb worked in the camp commandant of Sachsenhausen concentration camp. From October 1943 to April 1945, Kolb was the camp leader in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

After the war ended, Kolb's family stated that he was missing . During interrogations by West German investigative authorities, there were indications that Kolb was still alive. A house search of the family revealed an address in Bückeburg where Kolb lived under a false name until 1952. On October 13, 1954, Kolb was sentenced to four years and three months in prison by the Nuremberg-Fürth regional court . The subject of the proceedings was his involvement in the hanging of concentration camp prisoners on the roll call square as well as in at least 100 individual executions that were carried out by shooting in the neck or hanging on the order of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) in the Industriehof . He was also involved in the shooting of at least 50 disabled concentration camp prisoners and 19 Luxembourg police officers who refused to take the oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler . His involvement in the shooting of at least 20 concentration camp prisoners who remained weak during a death march in April 1945 was also the subject of the proceedings. Kolb was convicted of aiding and abetting murder in one and an accessory to manslaughter in ten cases. In the other cases accused of Kolb, the judges did not see sufficient evidence of Kolb's responsible involvement or that he recognized the illegality of the RSHA-ordered executions. According to the verdict, Kolb was "one of the most decent" in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. The judges saw the fact that he had become an “accomplice in murder and manslaughter” in the “circumstances” at that time; Kolb had "devoted himself body and soul to the National Socialist tyranny".

In a second trial on March 16, 1961, Kolb was sentenced to three years and two months in prison because of a flogging sentence he had ordered, as a result of which two German concentration camp prisoners died. The sentence was reduced to a total of six years in prison with the first conviction. The second trial was the result of investigations in the Sachsenhausen trial in Bonn in 1958 and 1959. In 1962 he was released on grounds of illness.

literature

• Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . (updated 2nd edition) Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .
• Regional Court of Nuremberg-Fürth, October 13, 1954 . In: Justice and Nazi crimes . Collection of German criminal judgments for Nazi homicide crimes 1945–1966, Vol. XII, edited by Adelheid L Rüter-Ehlermann, HH Fuchs and CF Rüter . University Press, Amsterdam 1974, No. 405, pp. 635-660

Individual evidence

1. ↑ August Kolb on www.dws-xip.pl
2. ↑ Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (ed.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 7: Niederhagen / Wewelsburg, Lublin-Majdanek, Arbeitsdorf, Herzogenbusch (Vught), Bergen-Belsen, Mittelbau-Dora. C. H. Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-52967-2 , p. 117.
3. ^ Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 328.
4. ^ Andreas Eichmüller: No general amnesty. The criminal prosecution of Nazi crimes in the early Federal Republic. (= Sources and representations of contemporary history , volume 93) Oldenbourg, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-486-70412-9 , p. 409 f.
5. ^ Proceedings against August Kolb 1954 ( Memento of the original from December 21, 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. on www1.jur.uva.nl 
6. ↑ Eichmüller, General Amnestie , pp. 252, 410.
7. ↑ Eichmüller, General Amnestie , p. 410;
   Proceedings against August Kolb ( Memento of the original dated December 21, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on www1.jur.uva.nl 
8. ^ Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung: International Scientific Correspondence on the History of the German Labor Movement , 1997, p. 208.