Emil Bednarek
Emil Bednarek (* July 20, 1907 in Königshütte , Upper Silesia ; † February 27, 2001 in Waldsassen , Upper Palatinate ) was a prisoner functionary and block elder in Auschwitz I and later also in Auschwitz II .
Life
Bednarek was born the son of a miner. After attending elementary school, he worked in coal mining from 1920 to 1927 and did commercial training at evening school. In 1927/28 he had to do military service in the Polish army and was then unemployed. It was not until 1931 that Bednarek found a job as a commercial clerk at a mining company. He was married to Elfriede Sporcic on May 1, 1933, and the couple had two children.
In September 1939, in the course of the attack on Poland, he was drafted into the Polish army. Bednarek deserted and went over to the Germans. Then he found another job as a commercial clerk in a brick factory. After a major raid in mid-April 1940, Bednarek was arrested by the Gestapo because he was suspected of belonging to a Polish resistance organization.
After a short pre-trial detention, Bednarek was sent to Auschwitz concentration camp on July 6, 1940 as a political prisoner with registration number 1325. In October 1940 Bednarek was employed as a so-called Volksdeutscher by the SS as a prisoner functionary and initially worked in the main camp (including a prisoner functionary in the education company ), and from March 1942 as a block elder in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Most recently he was block elder of the penal company in the men's camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau .
As part of the evacuation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp , Bednarek led a group of Polish children to Mauthausen concentration camp in January 1945 . Here Bednarek experienced the liberation by the US Army and the end of the war.
post war period
After the liberation Bednarek returned briefly to Königshütte and then moved to the Franconian town of Schirnding , where he offered himself to the American military administration as a trustee for the Trautwein company at the end of 1945 and held this position until 1947. Then he opened a train station restaurant in Schirnding and later also a kiosk. In Schirnding it was known that he was an inmate in Auschwitz and the authorities granted him a reparation payment. In July 1959 in Riederau am Ammersee , after winning the lottery for over DM 15,000, he bought a piece of land on which there was a pension and a grocery store. Shortly afterwards he sold the property again due to a lack of personnel. Then he resided in Schirnding again and worked as an accountant in the grocery store that he had leased to his partner Frieda Thoma. His wife and their children lived in Poland.
Arrest, trial and conviction
Two Polish Auschwitz survivors, who were on their way back to Poland after being questioned by the Frankfurt public prosecutor, recognized Bednarek at the Schirnding border station in 1960. The informed Frankfurt public prosecutor carried out the previously issued arrest warrant in November 1960.
In the first Auschwitz trial , which began on December 20, 1963 in Frankfurt am Main , he was sentenced to life imprisonment in August 1965 for murder in 14 cases and the denial of his civil rights for life.
During the trial, Bednarek was incriminated by many witnesses. Bednarek is said to have beaten the prisoners in his block for the slightest offense that some died. The witness Schwarzbaum testified:
“From time to time it was checked to see if anyone had lice, and the inmate who was found lice was lashed with a stick. A comrade of mine by the name of Chaim Birnfeld slept next to me on the third floor of the cot. Many lice were probably found on him because Bednarek hit him badly and he must have injured his spine. Birnfeld wept and complained in the night. In the morning he was dead on the cot. "
Bednarek was in 1975 for a place given clemency from prison in Butzbach dismissed. Polish Auschwitz survivors, on the one hand, pointed out the survival of the Polish children on the evacuation transport to Mauthausen and, on the other hand, on Bednarek's silence about secret devotions, who supported the petition for clemency.
literature
- Ernst Klee : Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices, victims and what became of them. A dictionary of persons . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2013, ISBN 978-3-10-039333-3 .
- Raphael Gross , Werner Renz (ed.): The Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial (1963–1965). Annotated source edition , Scientific Series of the Fritz Bauer Institute, Volume 1, Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main / New York 2013, ISBN 978-3-593-39960-7 , p. 513ff.
- Hermann Langbein : People in Auschwitz. Ullstein-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1980, ISBN 3-548-33014-2 .
Web links
- Emil Bednarek short portrait at www.auschwitz-prozess-frankfurt.de
- Biography on www.auschwitz-prozess-frankfurt.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ Prisoner lists of the first six transports of Polish political prisoners between June 22, 1940 and July 6, 1940 (see PDF page 8, prisoner no. 1325), taken from the website of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum
- ^ Irena Strzelecka: Punishments and Torture . In: Wacław Długoborski, Franciszek Piper (ed.): Auschwitz 1940–1945. Studies on the history of the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp. , Oswiecim 1999, Volume II: The Prisoners - Conditions of Existence, Work and Death , p. 464
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Bednarek, Emil |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Polish prison functionary in Auschwitz concentration camp |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 20, 1907 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Koenigshütte |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 27, 2001 |
| Place of death | Waldsassen |