Erich Gust

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Erich Gust (born August 31, 1909 in Klein Bölkau ; †  February 18, 1992 in Melle ) was a German SS-Obersturmführer and second protective custody camp leader in Buchenwald concentration camp .

Life

Gust, member of the NSDAP ( membership number 465.978) and SS (membership number 54 444), SS-Obersturmführer from April 20, 1935, from January 30, 1943 SS-Obersturmführer dR Waffen-SS belonged to the Buchenwald concentration camp team from 1938. In 1941 Gust was transferred to the Stutthof concentration camp . There Gust became camp leader of the Mühltal labor education camp of the Danzig migrant center , which was also subordinate to the camp commandant of the Stutthof concentration camp, Max Pauly . From there he was transferred back to Buchenwald concentration camp in 1942. From 1942 to 1944 Gust was the second protective custody camp leader in the Buchenwald concentration camp and from 1944 the report leader there. In these functions Gust took part in the murder of concentration camp prisoners.

Gust is also associated with the murder of Ernst Thälmann in Buchenwald concentration camp. Thälmann's death on August 18, 1944 has not been cleared up. The former Buchenwald prisoner Marian Zgoda testified in the main Buchenwald trial that he saw that, in addition to Werner Berger and Wolfgang Otto , Erich Gust also took part in the shooting of Thälmann. Otto and Berger had been charged and convicted of crimes against members of Allied states in the Buchenwald main trial and a secondary trial.

Gust, who went into hiding under the pseudonym Franz Giese after the war ended, was added to the list of wanted war criminals of the United Nations War Crimes Commission in 1946 .

From 1966 Gust ran the restaurant "Heimathof" in Melle together with his wife. The Ministry for State Security (MfS) had known Gust's whereabouts through unofficial employees since 1969 at the latest. Although an arrest warrant against Gust was already in place in the GDR in 1948, the West German investigators, who had also been looking for Gust since 1959, were not informed. Until 1984 unofficial employees were assigned to Gust. The MfS file on Gust said: "Gust should be used for operational purposes in the operation area".

Well-known Bonn politicians also frequented the "Heimathof" bar, such as Kai-Uwe von Hassel and Willy Brandt . The MfS wanted to use this fact to expose Bonn politicians later. For unknown reasons, this did not happen. The West German judiciary, however, was accused by the GDR authorities of not investigating the Gust case energetically enough. Due to a mix-up, another Erich Gust was investigated in West Germany, but these proceedings were discontinued in 1976 - after the mix-up became apparent.

The files of the MfS put the investigators on the right track in November 1992 after reunification . However, Gust had died nine months earlier, unmolested by the judiciary.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Erich Gust at www.dws-xip.pl
  2. ↑ Marek Orski: Organization and organizational principles of the Stutthof camp. In: Ulrich Herbert et al. (Ed.): The National Socialist Concentration Camps. Frankfurt / M. 2002, ISBN 3-596-15516-9 , p. 298.
  3. ↑ a b c Ernst Thälmann and the innkeeper from the "Heimathof" - When was the communist murdered? , in: Welt-Online of October 10, 1996
  4. ↑ Photo by Erich Gust  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.buchenwald.de  
  5. ↑ a b c Falco Werkentin: Political criminal justice in the Ulbricht era. Berlin 1995, pp. 203ff
  6. ↑ a b c For honest cooperation (PDF; 341 kB), in: Der Spiegel , edition 19/1994, p. 89
  7. ↑ Falco Werkentin: Political criminal justice in the Ulbricht era, p. 204 ff.
personal data
SURNAME Gust, Erich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Giese, Franz (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German protective custody camp leader in Buchenwald concentration camp
DATE OF BIRTH August 31, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Klein Bölkau
DATE OF DEATH February 18, 1992
Place of death Melle