Bernhard Rakers

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Bernhard Rakers (* 6. March 1905 in Sögel ; †  10. August 1980 in Barmstedt ) was a German SS - Hauptscharführer , active in several German concentration camps , including the command and report leader in Auschwitz ( main camp and Buna / Monowitz ) from October 1942 until December 1944. He was the first Auschwitz perpetrator to be brought to justice for his crimes before a West German jury.

Life

Raker's father was an innkeeper and rail freight forwarder, his mother a housewife. After attending elementary and secondary school in Sögel, he trained as a baker. In 1930 he completed the master craftsman's examination, but had to give up his job in 1933 due to illness and became unemployed. In March of the same year he joined the NSDAP and the SA . In February 1934 he applied as a guard for the Emsland camps , but had to break off his training as a concentration camp guard due to an accident. He then retrained to become a cook and was sent to the Esterwegen concentration camp , where he first worked in the SS and later in the camp kitchen.

In autumn 1934, Rakers joined the SS-Totenkopfverband when the SS took over the Emsland camps. In August 1936, following the dissolution of the Esterwegen concentration camp, Rakers was transferred to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp , where he initially worked as a chef. In May 1937 he was promoted to SS-Scharführer, in 1939 to SS-Oberscharführer and in May 1940 to Hauptscharführer. In autumn 1942 he was assigned to Auschwitz by the WVHA for embezzlement and food deportation.

In Auschwitz, Rakers acted for a short time as the leader of the Rohrleger Kommando (Ruta AG) in the main camp Auschwitz I. At the beginning of 1943 he came to Buna / Monowitz, where he was appointed to the command of the entire Buna Command. Complaints were made against Rakers because of his cruelty and brutality, which led to his replacement and promotion to the report leader in the Buna / Monowitz concentration camp, where he became known among inmates for not reporting misconduct by inmates, but by blackmailing the inmates in kind to demand for his silence.

Again Rakers misconduct led to his being transferred to the Upper Silesian subcamp Gleiwitz II (Deutsche Gas-Ruß-Werke GmbH) in December 1944, where he worked as a camp manager until the main and subcamps of Auschwitz were dissolved in mid-January 1945 came. During these days, together with SS-Hauptscharführer Otto Moll , he commanded a prisoner transport from Gleiwitz via Pregarten to Sachsenhausen . When he arrived there, in February 1945 he was transferred to the Weimar Gustloff Works , an external command of the Buchenwald concentration camp .

At the end of the war, Rakers became an American prisoner of war , was then transferred to a French prisoner of war camp and was finally in the Fallingbostel internment camp from April to June 1948 . In December 1948 he was sentenced to 2½ years imprisonment by the Bielefeld Spruchkammer because of his membership in the SS, which, however, was considered served because of his imprisonment as a prisoner of war and in the internment camp. Then Rakers worked as a baker in Lingen (Ems) .

Rakers was arrested in Lingen on July 24, 1950, because a former concentration camp inmate believed he had known him from Neuengamme concentration camp , where he was supposed to have taken part in the shooting of a mutinous German submarine crew. The district court of Lingen / Ems issued an arrest warrant, the investigation was pending with the public prosecutor's office at the district court of Osnabrück (Az. 4 Js 491/50). The Lingen Criminal Police was soon investigating Rakers' crimes in the Esterwegen and Sachsenhausen concentration camps. In August of that year, however, Norbert Wollheim reported to the Kripo, who informed them about Rakers' activities in Monowitz and named other witnesses.

The main proceedings against Rakers were finally opened on August 20, 1952 before the LG Osnabrück, the main hearing began on December 11 of that year. In 17 days of the hearing, 49 witnesses were heard on oath and 23 witness hearing protocols and numerous documents were read out. The charges against Rakers were murder and serious bodily harm with permanent damage to health or death in the Esterwegen and Sachsenhausen concentration camps, the factory premises of IG Farben , in the Buna / Monowitz concentration camp (participation in selections for registration for the " special treatments " in Birkenau together with Vinzenz Schöttl and SS-Ärzten) and during the transport in January 1945. On February 10, 1953, Rakers was put in office for grievous bodily harm, attempted and committed murder and complicity in murder in five cases, to life imprisonment , a total sentence of 15 years in prison and one convicted of lifelong deprivation of civil rights . The judgment became final in November 1953.

In the course of the main hearing, two allegations were separated, which were negotiated in subsequent trials, also before the district court in Osnabrück. In the second trial against Rakers on June 10, 1958, Rakers had to answer for the killing of a French prisoner with an iron bar on the way to work on the IG factory premises. The proceedings (for willful bodily harm resulting in death) were discontinued on the first day of the hearing, as the act was statute barred in May 1950. The third trial against Rakers began in late September 1959 and lasted eight days through October of that year. In it, Rakers was charged with killing prisoners by shooting in the neck during the transport of prisoners in 1945, which he is said to have committed together with Moll. Presumed Innocent Rakers was up to a case acquitted of all: Rakers had shot a prisoner who's on the wagon edge necessities was doing. This was viewed as murder of low motives and in an insidious manner and led to the sentencing of Rakers to six years in prison on October 9 of that year, which ultimately only led to the reversal of the previous total sentence and a redefinition of it for another 15 years.

Rakers served most of his sentences at the Celle Penal and Security Center . In his requests for clemency from there, he presented himself as an innocent victim of justice. Finally, in mid-1971, he was released on March 2nd of the year by the Minister-President of Lower Saxony, Alfred Kubel , and placed under probation supervision for five years. Rakers returned to work as a baker and received a pardon in 1975.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hermann Langbein : People in Auschwitz . UNC Press, Chapel Hill / London 2004, p. 298f. ISBN 0-8078-2816-5 .
  2. ↑ Compare the representation in Hans Frankenthal : The Unwelcome One: Returning Home from Auschwitz . Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Ill. 2002, pp. 64ff. ISBN 0-8101-1887-4 .
personal data
SURNAME Rakers, Bernhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS-Hauptscharführer, active as a command and report leader in concentration camps
DATE OF BIRTH March 6, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Sögel
DATE OF DEATH August 10, 1980
Place of death Barmstedt