Gustav Sorge

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Gustav Hermann Sorge (born April 24, 1911 in Roniken , Posen Province ; † October 8, 1978 in Bonn ) was a German SS-Hauptscharführer and war criminal.

Youth, Black Reichswehr and NSDAP

As the son of a farm laborer, he learned the trade of blacksmith. After completing his training, he was released into unemployment. He gained his first political experience as a member of the Black Reichswehr . He was influenced by his uncle Hermann Weber, who was also a member of the Black Reichswehr. In 1931 he joined the NSDAP and SS . During violent clashes with opponents of the NSDAP in the Osnabrück area , he earned the nickname "Iron Gustav". On May 2, 1933, he took part in the occupation of the Osnabrück trade union center.

Activity in concentration camps

From the beginning of October 1934 he was a member with the rank of SS-Unterscharfuhrer in the guards of the Esterwegen concentration camp . He received further training as part of the SS from April 1936 onwards at the Ordensburg Vogelsang and the driving school of the security police in Charlottenburg . In September 1936 he was transferred to the SS administrative main office as a business leader for the field of clothing management.

He took an active part in the occupation of Austria in March 1938. He was then sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in June 1938 as a block leader. Due to his brutal engagement with the prisoners, he was soon promoted to deputy of the report leader and the labor dispatcher. In this position he committed numerous murders and ill-treatment of prisoners and Soviet soldiers. In September 1939 he was promoted to SS Oberscharführer. The prisoner Leon Szalet describes Gustav Sorge's outbursts of anger during the roll call in his report No peace to the wicked :

“He used to rush in to us with a hoarse war cry, an insane glimmer in his eyes, and while the drool ran through his frayed mouth, poke blindly in all directions with his poles. The beating went on until the murder weapons were scattered in splinters and pieces on the floor. Then the climax of his wild orgy was reached u. he danced away calmly as if nothing unusual had happened. "

From October 1941 he was already serving as a report and labor service leader in personal union. From the end of June 1942 to the end of October 1942 he worked as a camp leader in the Lichterfelde subcamp in Berlin-Lichterfelde of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. After his replacement as camp leader, Sorge was deployed to the central labor deployment in Oranienburg from November 1942.

At the beginning of 1943 he briefly organized work in the newly established Herzogenbusch concentration camp. After his return to Oranienburg, he received a three-month prison sentence in the course of investigations into abuses in concentration camps. In the summer of 1943 Sorge was transferred to Latvia to the Higher SS and Police Leader Ostland and was briefly active against partisans . From December 1943 he acted as camp manager of the Riga-Spilve labor camp, a satellite camp of the Riga-Kaiserwald concentration camp , and of the Ostland army vehicle park in Riga. From the end of January 1944 he was employed as camp manager of the Dondangen labor camp . He later also managed the evacuation of the camp as the Eastern Front was approaching and organized the transport of prisoners to the Stutthof concentration camp . From November 1944 he was deployed again in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp and set up the SS railway construction brigade 12 of prisoners. This was used for repair work after bomb attacks. After being injured by an air raid, various hospital stays followed until he was arrested in a hospital in Regensburg on April 28, 1945 by the US Army .

After the end of the war

After staying in internment camps, he managed to escape in the late summer of 1945. After he found his family again in Osnabrück, he moved with them to Flamersheim and worked in agriculture. Sorge was arrested by the British military police on March 24, 1946 and then handed over to the Soviet military police.

In the Sachsenhausen Trial , which ran from October 23 to November 1, 1947, he was charged with having committed crimes under Control Council Act No. 10 . Sorge was charged with other suspects, August Höhn , Kurt Eccarius , Wilhelm Schubert and Fritz Ficker , of killing more than 18,000 Soviet prisoners of war in Sachsenhausen concentration camp in autumn 1941.

Furthermore, Sorge admitted that he was involved in the shooting of 25 prisoners between December 1941 and May 1942. Sorge admitted that he had beaten prisoners severely for the most trivial reasons:

“I personally beat prisoners every day, using not only hands and feet, but also sticks, boards, any heavy object. I gave out blows for whatever reason and for no reason: for coughing and for speaking in the limb, for not looking sufficiently cheerful, for picking up a stub by the way, for smoking during work hours or simply because the face of the Prisoner seemed too serious. "

The indictment stated that Sorge had admitted to the alleged crimes. Also in the preliminary investigation and during the trial, Sorge admitted all allegations. The defense attorney of Sorge, the attorney NP Below, argued that Sorges had only worked in Sachsenhausen concentration camp until June 1942 and had never returned to the prison camp. Sorge would have committed these crimes through the wrong example of his superiors and the Reich administration. In the judgment of October 30, 1947, Sorge was sentenced to life imprisonment with the obligation to do forced labor.

Imprisonment in the Vorkuta penal camp and sentenced in Bonn

He was sent to the Vorkuta Forced Labor Camp . In the course of the release of German prisoners of war, he was released to the Federal Republic of Germany as a non-amnesty on January 14, 1956. Another arrest followed on February 7, 1956. In the trial before the jury court in Bonn from October 13, 1958 to February 6, 1959, he was accused of personally committed murder of 67 prisoners. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, including for the murder of Leon Sternbach . In 1978 Sorge died in custody.

literature

Web links

Commons : Gustav Sorge  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans-Dieter Arntz : Difference between SS honor guard and “Junkerism” on the NS Ordensburg Vogelsang - the mass murderer Gustav Sorge. In: hans-dieter-arntz.de. November 22, 2007, accessed May 1, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Barrack 38. 237 days in the “Jewish blocks” of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp . Edited, commented on and with an afterword by Winfried Meyer, foreword by Paul Spiegel . As volume 3 of the series ÜberLebenszeugnisse ed. by the Brandenburg Memorials Foundation , Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-938690-11-6
  3. ^ Holdings of the estate of Professor Hermann Schlingensiepen. 7 NL 016. Archive of Ev. Church in the Rhineland, accessed on November 19, 2016 (reference to the conviction of Gustav Sorge).
personal data
SURNAME Worry, Gustav
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sorge, Gustav Hermann (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS-Hauptscharführer and war criminal
DATE OF BIRTH April 24, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Roniken , Silesia
DATE OF DEATH October 8, 1978
Place of death Bonn