Hans Bothmann

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Hans Bothmann

Hans Bothmann (born November 11, 1911 in Lohe-Rickelshof ( Dithmarschen ); † April 4, 1946 in Heide (Holstein) ) was the second SS commandant of the Kulmhof / Chelmno extermination camp and of a so-called SS special command in the village of Chelmno nad Nerem (Kulmhof ) in what was then the district of Warthbrücken during the German occupation of Poland from 1939 to 1945 . Bothmann was responsible, among many others, for the murder of over 10,000 Jews from the German Reich, Vienna, Prague and Luxembourg in May 1942.

Life

In 1932 he joined the Hitler Youth . From 1933 he was an SS member (membership number 117.630) and a member of the NSDAP (membership number 3.601.334).

Bothmann was a member of the state police office Posen ( Poznan ) with the rank of Kriminalkommissar and SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer .

In March / April 1942, Bothmann replaced Kriminalkommissar Herbert Lange from the same department as head of the "SS-Sonderkommando Kulmhof" or "SS-Sonderkommandos X" in the extermination camp.

Bothmann's time in Chelmno until the end of March 1943 included the phase of the most intense murderous activity.

After a special leave of absence in April 1943, all 85 members of the "SS-Sonderkommando X" came, apparently at their own request under their commander Bothmann, to the 7th SS Volunteer Mountain Division "Prinz Eugen" . You were used in Yugoslavia in the fight against partisans (see Yugoslav People's Liberation Army ) as field gendarmerie, with the unit suffered considerable losses.

In mid-February 1944, the " Reichsführer SS " Heinrich Himmler and Reich Governor Arthur Greiser agreed that the Litzmannstadt ghetto ( Łódź ) should be "reduced in terms of personnel" and that "only as many Jews as they absolutely had to be preserved in the interests of the armaments industry" , to keep. At the same time it was stipulated: "The reduction will be carried out by the special command of SS-Hauptsturmführer Bothmann, who had already been active in the Gau earlier." put".

In April 1944 Bothmann returned to Chelmno with some of his men from the SS division “Prinz Eugen”. The already decided "reduction" by the SS special command did not begin until mid-June 1944. Between June 23 and July 14, 1944 7,176 Jewish men, women and children were transported in ten rail transports from Litzmannstadt to the reopened Kulmhof extermination camp and there murdered the gas truck .

When Soviet troops had taken Litzmannstadt, Bothmann and his men shot the last surviving Jewish workers on the night of January 17-18, 1945, who had been doing clearing work to remove all traces since the end of the transports to Chelmno and Auschwitz from the end of August 1944 were concerned with the destruction. Bothmann's command moved west, was finally disbanded and distributed to various police stations. In February 1945, Detective Inspector Bothmann became head of the Flensburg border police department . At the end of the war , a number of other Nazi perpetrators fled to Flensburg via the so-called Rattenlinie Nord . Bothmann got into British custody after the end of the war and committed suicide by hanging on April 4, 1946 in Heide (Holstein) .

literature

  • Adalbert Rückerl (ed.): Nazi extermination camps in the mirror of German criminal trials. Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Chelmno. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1977, ISBN 3-423-02904-8 .
  • Eugen Kogon , Hermann Langbein , Adalbert Rückerl (ed.): National Socialist mass killings by poison gas. A documentation , S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1983, ISBN 3-10-040402-5 .
  • Lucjan Dobroszycki (ed.): The Chronicle of Lódz Ghetto 1941–1944 , Yale University Press, New Haven / London 1984, ISBN 0-300-03208-0 .
  • The First to be Destroyed: The Jewish Community of Kleczew and the Beginning of the Final Solution , A. Glowacka-Penczynska, T. Kawski, W. Medykowski T. Horev (Ed.), Academic Studies Press, Boston, 2015. ISBN 978 -1-61811-284-2 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ingo Loose: The extermination camp Kulmhof am Ner (Chelmno nad Nerem) 1941–1945. In Beate Meyer (ed.) With the assistance of Esther Yen: German Jews in Ghettos and Camps (1941–1945). Łódź. Chelmno. Minsk. Riga. Auschwitz. Theresienstadt. State Center for Political Education, Hamburg 2017, ISBN 978-3-946246-07-7 . P. 60.
  2. ^ 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, p. 67.
  3. ↑ Wolf Oschlies: The German "Ghetto Litzmannstadt" in the Polish town of Lódz at shoa.de
  4. ↑ 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.
  5. ↑ Flensburger Tageblatt : The final resting place: perpetrators and victims lie on the "Peace Hill" , from: May 19, 2015; Retrieved on: June 29, 2017
personal data
SURNAME Bothmann, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German commander of the Chelmno extermination camp
DATE OF BIRTH November 11, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Lohe-Rickelshof
DATE OF DEATH April 4, 1946
Place of death pagan