Franz Lucas (doctor)

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Franz Bernhard Lucas (born September 15, 1911 in Osnabrück ; † December 7, 1994 in Elmshorn ) was a German concentration camp doctor.

Life

Franz Lucas was the son of a butcher. After attending school in Osnabrück and Meppen, he passed his Abitur in Meppen in 1933. He studied philology for four semesters in Münster , completed his medical studies in Rostock and in 1942 in Gdansk, where he received his Dr. med. PhD.

From June 1933 to September 1934 he was a member of the SA , from May 1, 1937 in the NSDAP and since November 15, 1937 in the SS (SS no. 350.030), most recently from 1943 in the rank of SS-Obersturmführer . In 1942, Lucas received a two-month training course as part of a leader candidate course at the SS medical academy of the Waffen SS in Graz.

Then he was a military doctor in Nuremberg and Belgrade. Because of " defeatist statements" Lucas had to serve in a probation unit at short notice . In a letter dated September 27, 1943, he was appointed to the main command office - office group D - medical services of the Waffen SS Berlin on October 1, 1943 . On December 15, 1943, he was transferred to Office D III for sanitation and warehouse hygiene at the WVHA in Oranienburg , headed by Enno Lolling .

From mid-December 1943 to late summer 1944, Lucas worked as a camp doctor in Auschwitz I (military doctor) and in Auschwitz-Birkenau ( gypsy camp , Theresienstadt family camp ). This was followed by further short-term assignments in Mauthausen concentration camp in 1944, Stutthof concentration camp in 1944, Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1944 and Sachsenhausen concentration camp in January 1945, where he left in March 1945 and went into hiding in Berlin with a letter of recommendation from a female Norwegian prisoner from the Ravensbrück concentration camp . Before the Battle of Berlin , Lucas fled west in April 1945.

His colleague in Ravensbrück Percy Treite testified about him during the first Ravensbrück trial : “Dr. Lucas was not under my responsibility, he took part in selections for the gas chamber and in shootings. After disagreements with Dr. Trommer he went to Sachsenhausen and was sent through all camps in Germany as punishment. "

Treite cited the reason for these differences of opinion that he and Lucas had refused to issue death certificates for deceased prisoners from the Uckermark concentration camp , whom they had never inspected. In addition, he - Treite - was present at the first shootings, after which he refused to participate and Lucas had to take over his work; But even Lucas refused after a few days.

Immediately after the end of the war, Lucas escaped denazification proceedings and immediately got a job at the Elmshorn City Hospital, first as an assistant doctor, then as a senior physician and finally as head physician in the gynecological department. After the allegations against him became known, he lost his job in 1963 and worked in a private practice.

Auschwitz trial

During the trial in the 1st Auschwitz Trial from 1963–1965, which Lucas spent in pre -trial detention, he initially denied having carried out selections ; He also denied having given the signal to use Zyklon B in the gassing chambers and supervising the murder. Witness statements contradicted this representation.

On the 137th day of the trial, one of the defendants testified for the first time as a witness against a co-defendant in a concentration camp trial. Former SS Rottenführer Stefan Baretzki : “I wasn't blind when Dr. Lucas selected on the ramp. ... Five thousand men, he put them on the gas in half an hour, and today he wants to stand up as a savior. "

With the process progressing increasingly unfavorably, Lucas now admitted to having been involved in four selections, but to have acted against his convictions and on orders.

On August 20, 1965, the jury court in Frankfurt am Main sentenced him to imprisonment of three years and three months for complicity in joint murder in four cases of at least 1,000 people during at least four selections. Lucas was released from custody on March 26, 1968. In the appeal judgment before the Federal Court of Justice of February 20, 1969, a new trial was ordered. The question of the “compulsion on the ramp” at Auschwitz had to be reconsidered because of the positive character image of Lucas presented in the process. On October 8, 1970, he was acquitted. This played a role in the fact that many inmates spoke positively about Lucas throughout, while the statements that led to his conviction were based on hearsay.

Lucas was "involved in the extermination of people", but acted "not with the perpetrator - but only with the will to help", it was said, citing the so-called putative emergency according to § 52 StGB . He could therefore “not be accused of guilt in the criminal sense”.

From 1970 to September 30, 1983 he worked in his own private practice again and died on December 7, 1994.

literature

  • Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich: Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 .
  • 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 .
  • Hermann Langbein : People in Auschwitz. Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main 1980, ISBN 3-548-33014-2 .
  • Silke Schäfer: On the self-image of women in the concentration camp. The Ravensbrück camp. Berlin 2002, DOI: 10.14279 / depositonce-528 (dissertation, Technical University Berlin, 2002).
  • Andrew Wisely: War against "Internal Enemies": Dr. Franz Lucas's Sterilization of Sinti and Roma in Ravensbrück Men's Camp in January 1945 . In: Central European History, Vol. 52, Issue 4, December 2019, pp. 650–671 ( https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008938919000852 ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ernst Klee: Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices and victims and what became of them. A dictionary of persons , Frankfurt am Main 2013, p. 263
  2. ↑ Quoted from Silke Schäfer: On the self-image of women in the concentration camp. The Ravensbrück camp. Berlin 2002, p. 135
  3. ↑ Silke Schäfer: On the self-image of women in the concentration camp. The Ravensbrück camp. Berlin 2002, p. 135
personal data
SURNAME Lucas, Franz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lucas, Franz Bernhard (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German concentration camp doctor
DATE OF BIRTH September 15, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Osnabrück
DATE OF DEATH 7th December 1994
Place of death Elmshorn