Erwin Lambert

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Erwin Lambert

Erwin Hermann Lambert (born December 7, 1909 in Schildow ; † October 15, 1976 in Stuttgart ) was a German master mason and NSDAP member. He built u. a. the gas chambers for the killing centers of " Aktion T4 " and in the extermination camps of " Aktion Reinhardt ".

Youth and education

Erwin Hermann Lambert was born as the son of the married couple Hermann and Minna Lambert in Schildow, Niederbarnim district near Berlin on December 7, 1909 and had one sister. His father was killed in World War I in 1915; his mother later married a building contractor.

Lambert belonged to the Evangelical Church and attended elementary school in Schildow. Then he began an apprenticeship as a locksmith . After a year he decided to train as a bricklayer , which he completed after three years with a journeyman's examination . After three semesters at the building trade school in Berlin-mid-twenties and practical work at various construction companies, he successfully passed the master mason examination in 1936/37 . In 1939 he worked as a bricklayer foreman at the Vollmann und Schmidt construction company in Berlin.

In the "Action T4"

He had already joined the NSDAP on March 1, 1933 (membership number 1.491.565) and in 1938 and 1939 block leader of the party in Schildow. At the beginning of 1940 he was obliged to serve by the “non-profit foundation for institutional care”, one of several cover organizations of the Führer’s office , which was commissioned to carry out “ Operation T4 ”, i.e. the killing of the mentally ill and the disabled. At that time, the offices of this "foundation" were still in the Columbushaus on Potsdamer Platz in Berlin. Lambert was instructed by the head of this organization, Schneider, about its tasks and its status as a secret Reich affair. He had to confirm the confidentiality obligation in writing.

Lambert's first task was to convert the villa at Tiergartenstrasse 4 in Berlin . Offices were set up here for the front organizations. After this address, the "euthanasia" campaign was referred to in future with the abbreviation "T4".

The central office in the aforementioned villa ordered Lambert to be a master bricklayer for the installation of gas chambers in the “euthanasia” killing centers in Hartheim , Sonnenstein , Bernburg and Hadamar . The experience gained in this way predestined Lambert as a specialist in killing systems wherever they were needed. In March 1940 he began the renovation work in Hartheim, which took about four to five weeks. He describes his work after the end of the war as follows:

“During my first assignment in Hartheim, a breakthrough had to be broken in a room. Then a door was installed that was used for air raid shelters . There was already a normal door in this room (...). This was eliminated and replaced by another air raid door. That was the room that was then used as a gassing room in Hartheim. I had nothing to do with the construction of the crematorium in Hartheim. That was the business of the Kori company from Berlin (...) A peephole was also attached to the gassing room in Hartheim. There was an old door from the courtyard. This was not removed, only the inner door jamb was bricked up. However, there was room for a small peephole at head height. (...) So you could open the old door from the courtyard, then stand in front of the walled-up inner door jamb and see through the peep window into the gassing room. "

After his last assignment in Hadamar and a Christmas vacation in 1940, he was given the task of converting a building on the Attersee in Austria as a rest home for T4 members.

At the Reinhardt campaign

In the early summer of 1942, Lambert was sent to Lublin in the Generalgouvernement as SS-Unterscharfuhrer for use in the context of " Aktion Reinhardt " and there commissioned by SS-Hauptsturmführer Richard Thomalla to improve the construction of the Treblinka extermination camp . So he directed the construction of barracks , fences and other storage facilities by Ukrainian and Polish craftsmen. The gassings in Treblinka began with the arrival of the first camp commandant Irmfried Eberl in July 1942 and the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto . Lambert was not involved in this. His tasks there are described in the judgment of the Düsseldorf Regional Court of September 3, 1965 (Az .: 8 I Ks 2/64) as follows:

“The defendant Lambert did not belong to the regular German crew of the Treblinka extermination camp. As the 'flying master builder' of the T4 office, he was deployed wherever construction work had to be carried out in the context of 'euthanasia' and the extermination of the Jews, including the construction of gas chambers. In Treblinka the accused had a very free position as a construction specialist. He did not need to take part in the rest of the camp operations, in particular in the actual handling of transports. A large part of the storage facilities was built or rebuilt under his leadership according to plans already available. During his first stay in the camp, with the help of Ukrainians , Jewish prisoners from the neighboring labor camp and free Polish craftsmen, he built various barracks, the camp fence and other fences within the camp as well as the ammunition bunker. During his second stay in Treblinka he built the large new gas chamber in particular, the foundations of which, however, were already about 70 cm high when he arrived. Ukrainians and Jewish prisoners from the extermination camp helped him with this. During his third stay in Treblinka, he mainly carried out repairs and renovations on existing buildings. These findings are based on the defendant's admission and the statements made by his nine co-defendants. The suspicion that Lambert was involved in the structural planning and the design of the large gas chamber in Treblinka was not confirmed in the main hearing, as it cannot be ruled out that the Lublin offices in connection with the Central Construction Management of the SS in Warsaw Planning for the three extermination camps Belzec, Treblinka and Sobibor alone. Nor have there been sufficient grounds for suspicion that Lambert mistreated or killed members of the building command, which was subordinate to him during his three-time stay in Treblinka. The witness Gol, questioned without oath. has claimed that Lambert killed several Jewish engineers, including the civil engineer Lubelczyk. However, this witness is not reliable and credible. "

Due to an illness in July 1942, Lambert was able to spend several weeks in his home town of Schildow. After his recovery he was sent to Hartheim to set up a film chamber there. He then had to structurally overhaul the T4 rest home on the Attersee again.

In August 1942 he returned to Treblinka , where he took over the management of the construction of a larger gas chamber that had already begun and where he contributed his specialist knowledge. In September or October 1942 he was sent to the Sobibor extermination camp with the same assignment . Finally, he was also involved in setting up the Dorohucza labor camps near Lublin and Poniatowo near Opole . Then he was ordered back to Berlin and used for construction work in Bernburg .

In the spring of 1943 he carried out conversions and repairs again in the Treblinka extermination camp, the T4 convalescent home and in the NS killing center in Hartheim . After all, Lambert was still involved in the relocation of the T4 service from Berlin to Gut Steineck near Schönfließ in the Königsberg district in Neumark .

In northern Italy

After a Christmas holiday of several weeks in his hometown in 1943, he was transferred to Trieste at the beginning of 1944, like most of the personnel of Aktion Reinhardt , to work as a police sergeant for road safety in the Adriatic Coastal Operation Zone between Trieste and Fiume . In the spring of 1944 he had also converted a drying oven from the former rice mill into a crematorium in the Italian camp of San Sabba , which was put into operation on April 4, 1944.

From his marriage on June 3, 1944 with a nurse in Hartheim , whom he had met at a “ colorful evening ” in Mauthausen concentration camp , two daughters were born.

Capture and sentencing

On May 15, 1945, Lambert was captured by the British and extradited to the Americans , who took him to a camp in Aalen , Württemberg . After Waiblingen released, he first moved to Schwaikheim and then settled in Stuttgart. There he started his own business as a tiler .

During the denazification in Schwaikheim , Lambert was classified as a follower. With the judgment of the Düsseldorf Regional Court on September 3, 1965 (Az .: I Ks 2/64), he was sentenced to four years in prison in the so-called Treblinka trial for aiding and abetting the collective murder of at least 300,000 people . In the Sobibor trial , the district court of Hagen sentenced him to three years in prison on December 20, 1966 for joint complicity in the murder of at least 57,000 people (Az .: 11 Ks 1/64).

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Düsseldorf Regional Court, judgment of September 3, 1965 Az .: 8 I Ks 2/64 ( Treblinka trial)
  2. ↑ Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Wiesbaden, Department 63, 1a / 877, Ks 1/69, testimony Erwin Lambert September 15, 1965, quoted from Brigitte Kepplinger "Die Tötungsanstalt Hartheim 1940–1945" , page 5, see web link
  3. ^ Risiera di San Sabba - La Risiera. In: risierasansabba.it. Retrieved March 5, 2020 (Italian).
personal data
SURNAME Lambert, Erwin
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lambert, Erwin Hermann (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German master mason and NSDAP member
DATE OF BIRTH December 7, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Schildow
DATE OF DEATH October 15, 1976
Place of death Stuttgart