Heinrich Bischoff (SS member)

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Heinrich Bischoff (born July 16, 1904 in Überruhr ; † October 26, 1964 in Essen ) was a German SS-Unterscharfuhrer and was employed as a block leader in Auschwitz .

Life

Heinrich Bischoff was the son of a miner. In his hometown he attended elementary school and worked as a child at the age of 13 in a colliery and from 1920 as a miner in underground mining . He married in 1929. He joined the NSDAP and SA in 1931. After two years of unemployment, he found employment again as a miner, gardener and stoker in 1933.

After the beginning of the Second World War , he was drafted into the Wehrmacht in 1940 . Soon after, after the intervention of his employer, the Knappschaftskrankenhaus Essen-Steele, he was made indispensable and continued to work there as a stoker.

In July 1942 he was drafted into the SS Death's Head Associations and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp for service . Initially, he was employed by the guards in the main camp of Auschwitz and in the Golleschau satellite camp . From April 1943 he was block leader in the Golleschau subcamp and from early summer 1943 in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp . From autumn 1943 he was block leader in the Eintrachthütte subcamp and from the end of 1944 in the Jawischowitz subcamp . As a block leader, Bischoff was considered particularly brutal by the inmates and was therefore called the "executioner of Jawischowitz" by the inmates in the Jawischowitz subcamp.

After the "evacuation" of the Auschwitz camp, in January 1945 he accompanied a death march of concentration camp prisoners to the Groß-Rosen concentration camp . He was then transferred to the front and took part in the Battle of Wroclaw . While retreating westward, he was taken prisoner by the Americans in May 1945, from which he was released after a few months.

From the beginning of August 1945 he lived again in Essen, where he again worked as a miner in Steele . After a serious accident at work in 1948, he only did light physical work until he was disabled.

As part of the investigation into the first Auschwitz trial in Frankfurt , investigations were also initiated against Bischoff. On July 21, 1959, he was arrested and held in custody until November 27, 1959; seriously ill, he was given exemption from prison. Bischoff was one of the defendants in the first Frankfurt Auschwitz trial.

Auschwitz survivor Bodek said the following to Bischoff in the course of the trial: “Bischoff was characterized by particular cruelty. I clearly remember that one morning the bishop on duty found a prisoner hiding under the bed while looking through the barracks. He hadn't gone to work outside the camp because of exhaustion. Bischoff hit the guy pulled out from under the bed with a big stick. Since, as he said himself, he could not stand noise, he grabbed the prisoner by the neck and pushed his head into the oven, which was in the barracks. He ordered the prisoners to hold him and beat the prisoner until he died. "

Bischoff himself described his relationship with the prisoners as follows: “I know that a lot of mess happened in Auschwitz. However, I did not participate. I am of the opinion that I was not unpopular with the prisoners, even popular. "

Due to illness, Bischoff left the proceedings on March 13, 1964. Soon afterwards he died in Essen.

literature

  • Ernst Klee : Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices, victims and what became of them. A dictionary of persons . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2013, ISBN 978-3-10-039333-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ernst Klee: Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices and victims and what became of them. A dictionary of persons , Frankfurt am Main 2013, p. 48
  2. Andrea Rudorff: Jawischowitz (Jawiszowice). In: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 5: Hinzert, Auschwitz, Neuengamme. CH Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-52965-8 , p. 262.
  3. ^ Ernst Klee: Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices and victims and what became of them. A dictionary of persons , Frankfurt am Main 2013, p. 49
  4. Quoted in Ernst Klee: Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices and victims and what became of them. A dictionary of persons , Frankfurt am Main 2013, p. 48
  5. Quoted in Ernst Klee: Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices and victims and what became of them. An encyclopedia of persons , Frankfurt am Main 2013, p. 48f.