Hans Loritz

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Hans Loritz (1932/1933)

Hans Loritz (born December 21, 1895 in Augsburg , † January 31, 1946 in Neumünster ) was a German SS leader and commander of several concentration camps of the National Socialist German Reich .

Life

Youth, World War I and Family

Loritz, son of an Augsburg police officers graduated after elementary school trained as bakers . On the subsequent wanderings he worked in Innsbruck , Vienna , Budapest and Berlin .

When the First World War began in autumn 1914 , Loritz volunteered at the 3rd Kgl. Bay. Infantry Regiment ( Augsburg ). In 1917 he was promoted to NCO . He was wounded several times during his war effort. Loritz reported to the air force in 1917 , where he was used as an air gunner. In July 1918 he was shot down over France . He became a French prisoner of war , from which he was only released in February 1920.

Back in Augsburg, Loritz, like his father, worked for the Augsburg police, at times in the motorcycle department, which he regarded as an elite unit . He was dismissed in 1927 because of various misconduct. He then worked as a cashier at the municipal gas works.

The family relationships were confusing: Loritz married for the first time in 1922 and had a son. The marriage was divorced again in 1935. He married a second time in 1936, and in the same year he had a son from another woman.

Career in National Socialism

Loritz was considered an " old fighter " of the National Socialist movement. In 1930 he joined the NSDAP ( membership number 298.668) and the SS (SS number 4.165). He took over SS-Sturm 1 / II / 29 and expanded it into a Sturmbann . From April to December 1933 he was in command of the 29th SS Standard Swabia as a border special commissioner on the southern Bavarian border .

After the National Socialists came to power , the city of Augsburg gave him leave to work in the SS as a civil servant, which secured his pension entitlements . Due to a dispute with an SA leader, Loritz was transferred to Dachau , where he headed the SS relief organization , which comprised 1,400 Austrian SS members. During this time he met his sponsor Theodor Eicke , commandant of the Dachau concentration camp , who, as head of the inspection of the concentration camps, was supposed to reorganize and centralize the concentration camp system. At the beginning of 1934 Loritz asked the Reichsführer SS , Heinrich Himmler , in a personal letter to transfer him to a "concentration camp from Herr Oberführer Eicke", which was initially rejected.

Commandant in concentration camps

In July 1934, Loritz was commander of the date of the SA -run concentration camp Esterwegen , now the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps was assumed. He tightened the camp rules, personally interrogated inmates and ordered torture. In 1935 he was promoted to SS-Oberführer, which would remain his highest rank. After the closure of the Esterwegen concentration camp, Loritz became camp commandant and SS site leader in Dachau in April 1936, which meant a great deal of power. There, too, he urged his subordinates to be "tough" towards the prisoners and anchored brutal punishments such as " hanging on stakes " in the camp rules.

His tendency towards self-enrichment and corruption caused him trouble with the SS administration office in Dachau. Among other things, he had inmates build a “game park” without a permit, and he used his own inmate detachment to build his private villa in St. Gilgen on Lake Wolfgang . In July 1939, Loritz was transferred to Graz as SS section leader against his will , and he immediately tried to return to the concentration camp. With success: in December 1939 he initially took over provisional leadership in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp , and in March 1940 he became a regular camp commandant. Here, too, he contributed to the escalation of Nazi terror and participated in mass murders . Loritz intervened in the selection of incapacitated prisoners who were murdered in the Pirna-Sonnenstein killing center in June 1941 and in the same year organized the shooting of at least 10,000 Soviet prisoners of war in a "shot in the neck ".

In Sachsenhausen, Loritz expanded his self-enrichment: in prison workshops, which were referred to as "Loritz works", he used entire commands for private purposes. Investigations against him were initiated in 1942 for allegations of corruption . Although this was officially discontinued as inconclusive, Loritz lost his position as a concentration camp commandant.

SS service in Norway and suicide in custody

At the beginning of September 1942 Loritz was transferred to Norway , where he was assigned as an inspector to the " Higher SS and Police Leader North". As a “specialist in this field” he was responsible for all Norwegian camps in the area of ​​responsibility of the SS. In the prisons for Yugoslav partisans, almost two thirds of the prisoners died of the brutal conditions by March 1943. After the dissolution of the SS camp system, Loritz organized the protection of Norwegian factories against acts of sabotage.

Before the end of the war, Loritz fled to Sweden in April 1945 with false papers . After his arrest , he was transferred to Germany , where he was interned by the British occupying forces and finally identified. Because of the murder of the Soviet prisoners of war, he was threatened with transfer to the Soviet Union. British internment Gadeland in Neumünster he committed on 31 January 1946 suicide .

Loritz SS ranks
date rank
November 15, 1931 SS-Untersturmführer
April 11, 1932 SS-Hauptsturmführer
August 23, 1932 SS-Sturmbannführer
July 15, 1933 SS-Obersturmbannführer
March 22, 1934 SS standard leader
September 15, 1935 SS-Oberführer

literature

  • Dirk Riedel: Vigilante and mass murderer in the service of the "Volksgemeinschaft": The concentration camp commandant Hans Loritz . Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-940938-63-3 .
  • Ernst Klee : The Personal Lexicon for the Third Reich: Who Was What Before and After 1945 . Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 .
  • Karin Orth: The concentration camp SS . dtv, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-423-34085-1 .
  • Dirk Riedel: The "wildlife park" in the Dachau concentration camp and the St. Gilgen satellite camp. Forced labor on the construction site of the concentration camp commandant Loritz. In: Distel, Benz (Ed.): Dachauer Hefte . 16, 2000.
  • Dirk Riedel: The SS inspection z. b. V. in Norway. National Socialist perpetrators in the prison camps for Yugoslav partisans. In: Timm C. Richter (Ed.): War and crime. Situation and intention: case studies. Munich 2006, ISBN 3-89975-080-2 .
  • Tom Segev : The Soldiers of Evil. On the history of the concentration camp commanders . Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1995, ISBN 3-499-18826-0 .
  • Günther Kimmel: The Dachau Concentration Camp. A study of Nazi violent crimes. In: Martin Broszat , Elke Fröhlich (Ed.): Bavaria in the Nazi era. Volume II. Munich 1979.
  • Johannes Tuchel : Concentration camps: organizational history and function of the inspection of the concentration camps 1934–1938. (= Writings of the Federal Archives, Volume 39). H. Boldt, 1991, ISBN 3-7646-1902-3 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Johannes Tuchel: Concentration camps: organizational history and function of the inspection of the concentration camps 1934–1938. 1991, p. 383.
  2. ↑ Dirk Riedel: Vigilante and mass murderer .... Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-940938-63-3 , p. 52.
  3. ↑ Dirk Riedel: Vigilante and mass murderer .... Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-940938-63-3 , p. 88.
  4. ↑ Dirk Riedel: Vigilante and mass murderer .... Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-940938-63-3 , p. 351.
  5. ↑ Dirk Riedel: Vigilante and mass murderer .... Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-940938-63-3 , p. 312.
personal data
SURNAME Loritz, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS leader, camp commandant of several concentration camps
DATE OF BIRTH December 21, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH augsburg
DATE OF DEATH January 31, 1946
Place of death Neumunster