Friedrich Lorent

Friedrich Wilhelm Siegmund Robert Lorent (* March 22, 1905 in Bremen ; † April 16, 1988 ) was in the National Socialist German Reich as chief economic manager of the T4 central office, one of the people responsible for the National Socialist "euthanasia" program .

Life

Friedrich Lorent's father was the owner of a coffee shipping company. He joined his father's business after breaking off an agricultural apprenticeship.

On December 1, 1930, Lorent joined the NSDAP ( membership number 383,656). Two years later, on October 1, 1932, he became a member of the SA . In January 1934 Lorent moved from his father's company as a full-time administrative manager to the staff of SA-Obergruppenführer Viktor Lutze in Hanover . After the so-called Röhmputsch, he was the new chief of staff of the SA and in August 1934 as "Reichsleiter of the SA" personally subordinated to Hitler. Lutze later brought Lorent to Berlin , where he became treasurer for the Supreme SA leadership . Here he met Viktor Brack from the Fuehrer's office .

After the start of the war, Lorent worked for a trust company in German-occupied Poland and collected amounts from the exploitation of Jewish and Polish property . Brack made him move to the central office T4 at the turn of 1941/42. This organization with various bogus companies was created to carry out the National Socialist “euthanasia” program (“ Aktion T4 ” in post-war parlance ). Behind the central office T4 was the Fuehrer's office, which, however, like the Reich Ministry of the Interior, which was also involved, did not want to be connected externally with the homicide program.

At the beginning of 1942, Lorent visited all the current gassing facilities of Aktion T4 and witnessed a prisoner gassing in the NS killing facility in Hartheim . In the central office, he was appointed head of the main economic department and thus as successor to Fritz Schmiedel. The tasks of this department included the finances and auditing, the wages of the T4 staff, the procurement including the gas and drugs such as morphine and luminal for killing the sick in the second phase of the "euthanasia" program, the recycling of jewelry and the gold of the victims' teeth. The administration of the casino and rest home for the T4 members on the Attersee in Austria was also the responsibility of the main economic department.

Since after the end of the first phase of Operation T4 in August 1941, a large part of the staff became vacant and were therefore used in the context of Aktion Reinhard in the extermination of Polish Jews , Lorent's duties also included collecting the victims' valuables such as Jewelry, foreign exchange, gold and especially dental gold. This was processed in the Forensic Institute of the Reich Security Main Office and then sold to Degussa . In a statement after the war, Lorent said:

“I was anxious to get the dental gold as quickly as possible to be fused to Dr. Widmann forward. No matter how well it was washed, it struck me as disgusting ”.

This accumulated money enabled Lorent to provide himself with 1.2 million Reichsmarks and also his superior Brack with a not inconsiderable amount and to flee Berlin shortly before the end of the war. Lorent donated an amount of 16,040.80 Reichsmarks to the district administrator of the Wesermarsch district “to look after political prisoners in need ”. He offered financial support to a former employee and openly admitted that he had taken the money and jewelry from the central office T4.

Although he had already been questioned by the CIC as one of those responsible for Operation T4, he was not interned. Rather, he was able to register under the name "Robert Lorent" in Nordenham / Blexen and live there as a representative from then on.

With an arrest warrant of September 27, 1965, he was finally taken into custody, from which he was released on February 11, 1966 in return for a security deposit of DM 60,000 , only to be arrested again on March 18, 1966. Released from custody again on December 29, 1966, the trial against him began on August 20, 1969 before the jury court I of the Frankfurt am Main regional court . On May 25, 1970 Lorent was sentenced to seven years imprisonment for complicity in the murder of 4,300 concentration camp inmates. His appeal was rejected by the Federal Court of Justice on July 22, 1971. After serving two-thirds of his term, he was released.

literature

• Ernst Klee : "Euthanasia" in the Nazi state . 11th edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-596-24326-2 .
• Ernst Klee: What they did - what they became. Doctors, lawyers and others involved in the murder of the sick or Jews . 12th edition. Fischer-TB, Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-596-24364-5 .
• Ernst Klee: Friedrich Lorent Entry in ders .: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Updated edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 , pp. 379f.
• Henry Friedlander : The Road to Nazi Genocide. From euthanasia to the final solution. Berlin-Verlag, Berlin 1997. ISBN 3-8270-0265-6 .

Remarks

1. ↑ Lorent's statement of October 25, 1965, General Public Prosecutor's Office Frankfurt Az .: Js 7/63, quoted from Klee “What they did - was they became” p. 76.
2. ^ Ks 1/69