Franz Suchomel

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Franz Josef Suchomel (born December 3, 1907 in Krumau , Austria-Hungary , † December 18, 1979 in Altötting ) was a German SS-Unterscharführer and was involved in Aktion T4 and Aktion Reinhardt in the Treblinka extermination camp . Suchomel was sentenced to six years in prison by the Düsseldorf Regional Court on September 3, 1965 in the Treblinka trials for his crimes committed in the Treblinka extermination camp .

Life

Suchomel learned the tailoring trade after completing school and then worked in his father's tailoring business. He took over his parents' business in 1936. In the late 1920s and again briefly in autumn 1938, he was a member of the Czech army. Suchomel, a practicing Catholic, became a member of the SdP (Sudeten German Party) in 1938 . After the incorporation of the Sudetenland into the German Reich as a result of the Munich Agreement , he became a member of the NSKK . During the Second World War he took part in the western campaign as a member of the Wehrmacht . Then he worked again in his tailoring business.

From March 1941 he worked as a photographer in the T4 headquarters in Berlin and the Nazi killing center Hadamar , where he took photographs of the euthanasia victims before they were killed.

In August 1942 he was transferred to the Treblinka extermination camp , where he worked as SS-Unterscharführer until October 1943. There he was responsible for handling the incoming transports as well as the confiscation and registration of the valuables of the Jewish victims. Suchomel is said to have successfully saved a Jew from gassing . He urged Jewish women on their way to the gas chambers with the following sentence:

"Little women, quick, quick, quick, the water is getting cold."

He was then briefly deployed to the Sobibor extermination camp in October 1943 . After the 'Aktion Reinhardt' ended, Suchomel was transferred to the Adriatic Coastal Operation Zone in Trieste in November 1943, as was the majority of the 'Aktion Reinhardt' staff . Here he was a member of the ' Sonderabteilung Einsatz R ', which served the extermination of Jews, the confiscation of Jewish property and the fight against partisans . In the course of the approaching end of the war, the units of the 'Sonderabteilung Einsatz R' withdrew from northern Italy at the end of April 1945; Suchomel fell into American captivity. In August 1945 he was released from captivity.

From 1949 Suchomel worked as a master tailor in Altötting and was a member of five amateur orchestras and the Catholic church choir.

In an interview secretly filmed for the documentary Shoah by director Claude Lanzmann at the Hotel Post in Braunau am Inn , Suchomel provides information about the criminal events in Treblinka. During the interview he also intoned the Treblinka song, which new members of the so-called working Jews had to learn immediately:

“We only know the commandant's word
and only obedience and duty
We want to keep doing
until the little luck beckons us once. Hurray. "

Furthermore, he described Treblinka in this conversation as "a primitive, but well-functioning assembly line of death."

Verdict in the Treblinka trials

As part of the investigation into the crimes in the Treblinka extermination camp, Suchomel was targeted by the investigative authorities and was arrested on July 11, 1963. The Treblinka trial against ten defendants took place from October 12, 1964 to September 3, 1965 before the Düsseldorf Regional Court . The subject matter of the proceedings comprised the gassing of at least 700,000 predominantly Jewish people as well as the fatal abuse, shooting, killing and hanging of individual prisoners and also the mangling by Barry , the service dog of the camp commandant Kurt Franz . Suchomel was sentenced to six years in prison for aiding and abetting community murder or aiding and abetting murder. Suchomel was released on December 20, 1967 and died on December 18, 1979.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Samuel Willenberg: Treblinka camp. Revolt. Escape. Warsaw Uprising. Note 9, p. 217. Unrast-Verlag , Münster 2009, ISBN 978-3-89771-820-3
  2. ^ A b Henry Friedländer: The Origins of Nazi Genocide - From Euthanasia to the final Solution , Chapel Hill 1995, p. 240
  3. ↑ a b c Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich: Who was what before and after 1945. , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 615
  4. ↑ a b Treblinka Trial
  5. ↑ Suchomel's address to women whom he drove into the gas chamber, quoted in: Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich: Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 615
  6. ↑ a b Short biography of Franz Suchomel
  7. ↑ Excerpt from the interview with Lanzmann .
personal data
SURNAME Suchomel, Franz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS-Unterscharführer and involved in Aktion T4 and Aktion Reinhardt in the Treblinka extermination camp
DATE OF BIRTH December 3, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Krumau , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH 18th December 1979
Place of death Altötting