Gustav Münzberger

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Gustav Münzberger (born August 18, 1903 in Weißkirchlitz , Bohemia ; † March 23, 1977 ) was SS-Unterscharführer and was involved in " Aktion T4 " and " Aktion Reinhardt " in the Treblinka extermination camp .

Life

Münzberger, born in Weißkirchlitz in the Sudetenland , learned the carpentry trade after a regular school career and worked as a carpenter in his father's company until 1923. He then worked for a few months in the paper mill in Weißkirchlitz and then completed medical training for his military service, which he performed for 18 months in a railway regiment in Pardubice . In autumn 1925 at the latest, he returned to his job at the paper mill in Weißkirchlitz. Münzberger took over his father's company in 1931 and worked there until August 1940. In 1938 he joined the SS (SS No. 321.758) and in 1940 the NSDAP .

Action T4 and Action Reinhardt

From August 1940 he was employed as part of the T4 campaign at Sonnenstein Castle in Pirna , where he initially worked as a carpenter and later as a cook. In August 1942 he was transferred to Lublin with 15 other members of the Sonnenstein staff . There, possibly in the Trawniki forced labor camp , the 16 members of the Sonnenstein staff received brief military training from police officers under the direction of Ernst Schemmel . Münzberger, meanwhile an SS Rottenführer , was transferred to the Treblinka extermination camp at the end of September 1942 . At first he was deployed in the lower camp and was involved in the handling of arriving transports of Jews and their forwarding to the gas chamber . Later he was employed in the upper camp ("Totenlager") and drove the naked victims into the gas chambers with a pistol and whip, where he had the children thrown at them. In addition, he was also responsible for supervising the “corpse transport command”. He is said to have consumed a lot of alcohol during these activities. Münzberger, promoted to Unterscharführer on June 21, 1943, was described by Heinrich Himmler as one of the most deserving men of the "Aktion Reinhardt" because of his actions . During the uprising in Treblinka , Münzberger was on leave from home and was therefore not in the camp.

Adriatic Coastal Operation Zone

After the "Aktion Reinhardt" ended, Münzberger was transferred to the Adriatic Coastal Operation Zone in Trieste at the end of November 1943, as was the majority of the "Aktion Reinhardt" staff . Here he was a member of the " Special Department, Operation 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 and Münzberger returned to Germany.

After the end of the war

After the end of the war, Münzberger worked as a carpenter in Unterammergau . As part of the investigation into the crimes in the Treblinka extermination camp, Münzberger was targeted by the investigative authorities and was arrested on July 13, 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 . During the trial, the defense tried to justify Münzberger's actions:

“If he had insisted on the last possible use of the gas chambers, it was also in the interests of the waiting Jews; because the faster the gassings took place, the shorter the sufferings and fears of the Jews who had not yet been gassed. "

Münzberger was sentenced to 12 years in prison for aiding and abetting community murder or aiding and abetting murder . Because of good conduct, Münzberger was released from prison in July 1970. He then lived with his wife with his son in Unterammergau and died in March 1977.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 , p. 424.
  2. ^ Münzberger's defense according to the judgment (8 IKs 2/64), quoted in: Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich: Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 424
personal data
SURNAME Münzberger, Gustav
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS-Unterscharführer in the Treblinka extermination camp
DATE OF BIRTH August 18, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Weißkirchlitz
DATE OF DEATH March 23, 1977