Eugen Walter Büttner

Eugen Walter Büttner (born September 8, 1907 in Kahla ; † March 6, 1975 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was camp manager of various subcamps of the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp .

Life

After school, Büttner learned the profession of porcelain turner and worked as such until 1928. After a few years of traveling , he came to Freiburg in 1932, where he initially worked for what was then Breisgaumilch (today Black Forest Milk ). After getting married in 1933, he worked as an electricity reader. After fleeing back to Kahla in Thuringia with the family , a fourth daughter was born. After his release from Soviet custody in 1956, Büttner moved back to Freiburg via Erfurt, where he was able to work again as an electricity reader.

Career in the Third Reich

The NSDAP stepped Büttner in 1931 and in July 1933 in Dachau the SS at. As an SS guard in the spring of 1941, he became leader of the external quarry command at Natzweiler concentration camp. In the summer of 1944 he became the commandant of the Thil- Longwy sub-camp , and in September 1944, as SS-Oberscharführer, the camp leader of the Kochendorf sub- camp , where he led the death march to the Dachau concentration camp that began on March 30, 1945 . From April 26, 1945 he also took part in the evacuation march from Dachau to Tegernsee (see death marches of concentration camp prisoners ), where he was taken prisoner by the Americans.

Prosecution

After the war Büttner was listed as a war criminal for wanted.

The Americans, however, probably accidentally released Büttner at the end of 1945 from the arrest a few days after the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp with other concentration camp prisoners; he took the opportunity to flee to the Soviet occupation zone . There he was arrested in 1949 and sentenced by a Soviet military tribunal to life-long forced labor for suspected involvement in the execution of eight Soviet soldiers , which he took up in the Bautzen prison and in the Brandenburg prison .

While he was sentenced to death in absentia by a French military tribunal in 1954 , the Soviets granted him amnesty in 1956.

In Germany, a criminal complaint was filed against Büttner in 1962, but the investigation into the so-called “Büttner, Eugen and Others case” proceeded only slowly. A new preliminary investigation was initiated in 1968 and closed in 1970 without opening a trial.

The Spruchkammer in Berlin had classified him as a follower .

swell

• Klaus Riexinger: An empty seat in the dock . In: Der Sonntag (Badische Zeitung) , Freiburg, December 8, 2013, p. 3. Readable for four weeks: der-sonntag.de
• Klaus Riexinger, Detlef Ernst: Destruction through work - armaments in the mine. The history of the Kochendorf concentration camp - external command of the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp. Silberburg-Verlag , Tübingen 2003, ISBN 3-87407-556-7 .