Gerhard Maurer

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Gerhard Maurer at his testimony for the defense at the Nordhausen main trial on November 17, 1947. Next to him is the interpreter Emily Polyn-Cobb

Gerhard Maurer (born December 9, 1907 in Halle (Saale) ; † April 2, 1953 in Krakow ) was a German SS leader and deputy head of Office Group D in the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office (SS-WVHA).

biography

Apprenticeship, joining the party, SS administrator

After attending school, he took up an apprenticeship in a commercial occupation, which he completed from 1923 to 1926 in a food factory. He then worked there as a correspondent, accountant and travel agent .

In December 1930 he became a member of the NSDAP ( membership number 387.103), only to join the SS in August 1931 (SS number 12.129). In April 1944, Maurer was promoted to SS-Standartenführer of the Waffen SS in the SS .

After a nine-month period of unemployment, he took up a job at Handelsbank AG in mid-1932 . When the Nazi regime took power at the end of January 1933 , he briefly joined the publishing house Die brown Front in Halle, which was run by the National Socialists, as deputy publishing director .

In September 1934 he switched to a full-time job with the SS in the administration of the SS Upper Section Middle . In doing so, he took over the administration of the SS training camp in Dachau , files of which the bookkeeping was changed in June 1938 in the Federal Archives.

Career in the WVHA

Oswald Pohl asked him in August 1939 to transfer to the staff of the budget administration and economics at the staff of Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler , whereby Maurer was appointed SS-Sturmbannführer. His deputy was SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl Sommer .

Here he worked closely with Pohl as managing director of SS publishing. Furthermore, he directed the German equipment works belonging to the SS , with which he later took up his main activity of exploiting the labor of the prisoners in the concentration camps .

On October 10, 1941, on behalf of Pohl, he took part in a meeting on the solution of Jewish questions , which was led by Reinhard Heydrich and at which Adolf Eichmann was also present. According to the still existing text of the protocol, the aim was to carry out an order from Adolf Hitler (literally: the Führer wishes ... ) that all Jews, but also Roma and Sinti , were to be deported from Germany by the end of 1941 .

After the SS-WVHA was founded in Oranienburg at the beginning of 1942 with Pohl as head, Pohl appointed Maurer in March 1942 as head of the WVHA official department D II with the task of laboring the prisoners . This was connected with a promotion to SS-Obersturmbannführer. Now Maurer had the task of the coordinated work use of forced labor to organize all prisoners of concentration camps.

Deputy Glücks

In November 1943 he was appointed deputy to SS-Gruppenführer Richard Glücks , who had been the concentration camp inspector since November 15, 1939 . Maurer thus took over the most important position in the area of ​​SS administration of the concentration camps after Himmler, Pohl and Glücks. Maurer carried out this activity with a brief interruption until the end of the war . In the first quarter of 1945 Maurer was the intendant of SS-Obergruppenführer Hans Kammler , who was responsible for the use of the V2 rocket. Maurer's post in Office Group D of the SS-WVHA was taken over by SS-Standartenführer Hans Moser for this period .

In April 1945 the files of Department D II were relocated to Rostock and have not been found since then. The leadership group of the WVHA, with Maurer there, sat down, following the so-called Rattenlinie Nord , in the Flensburg area and received forged identity documents and uniforms of the Navy . The command group was then able to go into hiding with the Navy's discharge papers. Maurer then worked for a farmer on the Schleswig Geest .

After 1945

Maurer was arrested in March 1947 and questioned during the Nuremberg Trials . As a witness for the defense, Maurer testified on November 17, 1947 in the main Nordhausen trial .

Then Maurer was extradited to Poland and sentenced to death in a trial in Warsaw in 1951 . On April 2, 1953, he was executed in Krakow. In particular, the testimony of Mieczysław Pemper led to Maurer's conviction.

In May 1968, a section 50 was inserted into the Criminal Code, which meant that investigative proceedings against 730 “desk perpetrators” of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) , which were already well advanced , were suspended due to the statute of limitations. As part of the punishment of National Socialist crimes , no German court has therefore prosecuted a member of Office Group D in the SS-WVHA for his acts.

literature

  • Johannes Tuchel : The inspection of the concentration camps , Berlin 1994.
  • Tobias Bütow, Franka Bindernagel: A concentration camp in the neighborhood , Cologne 2003.
  • Ernst Klee : The Personal Lexicon for the Third Reich , Frankfurt / Main 2003.
  • Jan Erik Schulte : Forced Labor and Extermination: The Economic Empire of the SS. Oswald Pohl and the SS Economic Administration Main Office 1933-1945. Paderborn 2001, ISBN 3-506-78245-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Jan Erik Schulte: Forced Labor and Destruction: The Economic Empire of the SS. Oswald Pohl and the SS Economic Administration Main Office 1933-1945. Paderborn 2001, p. 389f.
  2. ↑ Gerhard Maurer on www.dws-xip.pl
  3. ↑ Stephan Link: "Rattenlinie Nord". War criminals in Flensburg and the surrounding area in May 1945. In: Gerhard Paul, Broder Schwensen (Hrsg.): Mai '45. End of the war in Flensburg. Flensburg 2015, p. 22 ff.
  4. ^ Die Zeit : Das brown Schleswig-Holstein , from: December 6, 1989; accessed on: March 21, 2019
  5. ^ A b Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 396.
  6. ↑ Johannes Tuchel: Case 4: The trial against Oswald Pohl and others. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär : The allied trials against war criminals and soldiers 1943–1952. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-596-13589-3 , p. 112
  7. ↑ Johannes Tuchel: Case 4: The trial against Oswald Pohl and others. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär : The allied trials against war criminals and soldiers 1943–1952. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-596-13589-3 , p. 118
personal data
SURNAME Mason, Gerhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS standard leader
DATE OF BIRTH December 9, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Halle (Saale)
DATE OF DEATH April 2, 1953
Place of death Krakow