Heinrich Gley

Heinrich Gley (born February 16, 1901 Rödlin in Mecklenburg; † October 7, 1985 ) was involved as SS-Oberscharführer in " Aktion T4 " and " Aktion Reinhardt ".

Life

Heinrich Gley, son of a farm laborer with at least four siblings, worked in the agricultural sector until 1919 after attending elementary school for eight years. He then became a member of the Reichswehr , which he left in 1924 with the rank of private . He then did various odd jobs , became a nurse in the Mecklenburg-Strelitz'sche state insane asylum Domjüch near Neustrelitz , where he acted as a nurse from 1938. He joined the NSDAP in 1932 and the SS in 1934 . Gley, SS-Unterscharführer since 1937 , also acted as a local group head of the National Socialist People's Welfare . During the annexation of Austria to the German Reich in March 1938, Gley was briefly called up and then returned to his place of work in the rank of non-commissioned officer. From August 1939 he was called to a motor vehicle procurement commission, but Gley had to give up this activity after a few months due to illness.

Action T4

At the beginning of January 1940 Gley was transferred to "Aktion T4" and initially worked there in the Grafeneck euthanasia facility . He was then transferred to the euthanasia facility at Schloss Sonnenstein , where he held the position of senior nurse until January 1942. In the winter of 1941/42, another mission followed with other “clinic staff” at the Todt Organization on the Eastern Front in the context of transporting the wounded. During this time he was promoted to SS Oberscharführer .

Action Reinhardt

After "Aktion T4" was officially ended, he was transferred to the Trawniki forced labor camp in 1942 , where he, like other members of the Sonnenstein staff, under the direction of Ernst Schemmel , received brief military training from police officers. After being transferred to "Aktion Reinhardt", Gley was sent to the Belzec extermination camp in August 1942 . There he supervised the arriving transports of Jews at the ramp, the barracks to be undressed and the gassing process, and he was in charge of work details. Gley is said to have personally shot at least three disabled or sick Jews in Belzec. After the gassings in Belzec ended in December 1942, camp commandant Gottlieb Hering and Gley monitored the cremation of the bodies from the mass graves . More than 400,000 corpses were cremated on three to four pyre, which were in permanent operation from November 1942 to March 1943. On March 1, 1943, Gley accidentally shot and killed his colleague Fritz Jirmann during an argument with imprisoned Trawniki men in the bunker.

Poniatowa labor camp

In the spring of 1943, Gley became the command leader of the Poniatowa labor camp , where Jewish prisoners were interned. As in Belzec, he was subordinate to the camp commandant Gottlieb Hering , with whom he spoke on two terms and referred to himself as his “right hand”. With Gley, other members of the Belzec camp staff came to Poniatowa. The atrocities in this camp reached their climax in the harvest festival in early November 1943, during which at least 14,000 prisoners were shot in this camp. After this "action" the camp was closed and Hering and Gley again monitored the cremation of the dead inmates.

Adriatic Coastal Operation Zone

After the "Aktion Reinhardt" ended, Gley was transferred to the Adriatic Coastal Operation Zone in Trieste in December 1943, as had most of the "Aktion Reinhardt" staff before . 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 . Until July 1944 he was a member of the special department Einsatz R and then returned to Berlin for a short time due to illness. From September 1, 1944 until the end of the war he acted as an instructor for the Waffen SS in Prague.

After the end of the war

After the end of the war, he was taken prisoner by the Americans in Pilsen on May 10, 1945, and was released on December 29, 1947. He then worked as a bricklayer in Westphalia until 1958 and had to give up this job due to illness. In Bielefeld, Gley was sentenced to 100 days in prison because of his membership of the SS , probably in the context of denazification , which, however, had already been compensated for by internment. Gley was arrested in the early 1960s as part of the investigation into the Belzec crimes. In the Belzec trial , Gley and seven other defendants were tried before the Munich Regional Court from August 1963. Because of the putative emergency in January 1964 he was put out of prosecution and therefore no trial was opened against him. Also because of his participation in "Aktion T4" there was no trial. Gley died in October 1985.

literature

• Information material from Bildungswerk Stanislaw Hantz eV: Belzec , Reader - based on a previously unpublished manuscript by the historian and director of the Belzec memorial, Robert Kuwalek.
• Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich: Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .

Web links

• Photo by Heinrich Gley