Heinrich Matthes

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Heinrich Arthur Matthes (born January 11, 1902 in Wermsdorf , † December 16, 1978 in JVA Bochum ) was a German SS-Unterscharfuhrer and convicted war criminal in the Treblinka trial. He was a tailor and nurse by profession . As a member of the SS special command in the Treblinka extermination camp , Matthes was sentenced to life imprisonment in the Treblinka trials .

Before 1942

Matthes' father was a head nurse. After graduating from primary school, Matthes learned the tailoring trade and then worked in this trade as a journeyman . He married in 1929 and later had a daughter.

In 1924 he worked in the nursing service of the Sonnenstein asylum, a later "euthanasia" institution , at Pirna and completed training as a nurse and educator. He then began working in the asylum in Arnsdorf near Dresden , which was later a stopover for the Sonnenstein asylum under the National Socialists in Action T4 . Then he was in an institution in Bräunsdorf in Saxony before he returned to Arnsdorf as a nurse.

Matthes was drafted into the Wehrmacht at the beginning of the war , was in the Polish and French campaigns and was dismissed with the rank of corporal in September 1941. In the winter of 1941/1942 he served as a paramedic in a unit of the Todt Organization , was deployed to Minsk and returned to Berlin in February or March 1942 , where he worked in hospital nursing.

Treblinka extermination camp

In 1937, Matthes applied for membership in the NSDAP . Whether he would become a member is not certain. He joined the SA in 1934 in the service of an SA storm man . At the end of August 1942 he was posted to Lublin , appointed SS-Scharführer and sent to the Treblinka extermination camp to take up duty. He fell ill with typhus at the end of December 1942 and returned to Treblinka on Pentecost 1943.

Matthes was responsible for the living conditions, the food, the pace of work, the morning and evening roll calls of the prisoners in the extermination camp. He hit the inmates with a leather whip or had the inmates beaten by the kapos . “ If he liked, he could not only beat or beat the unfortunate people, but also kill them or have them killed, for example if they were no longer able to work or if there was any other reason for such a measure. “Matthes participated in the killing of numerous Jews who were shot directly in the mortuary pits, and he also took part in the mass killings on a large scale and monitored the gas chambers, gave the command to close the gas chamber doors and, after the gassing, also gave the order to open the outer flaps and to remove the corpses.

After the last transports of Jews and gassing operations in Treblinka on August 21, 1943, which took place after the prisoners' revolt , he was transferred to the Sobibor extermination camp in September 1943 .

After 1943

At Christmas 1943, Matthes was posted to Trieste to the " Special Department Operation R ", where he fought against partisans and was used for guard duty and for building positions. American soldiers arrested him after the war, but he was released from captivity in 1945. He then worked on the elimination of damage to property as a result of the war and as a company paramedic. He then found a job as a nurse in Ansbach , in Andernach, and before his arrest was employed as a departmental head nurse in Bayreuth .

judgment

Matthes was convicted of the collective murder of at least 100,000 people and the murder of at least eight people by the Düsseldorf Regional Court. The court was unable to prove that Matthes had murdered Jews who were transported to Treblinka to be killed. He was convicted of individual killings by Jewish slave laborers because this could be proven to him in detail in four cases.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Düsseldorf Regional Court: Treblinka trial judgment of September 3, 1965, 8 I Ks 2/64 ( Memento of the original from March 21, 2014 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed September 30, 2009 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.holocaust-history.org
personal data
SURNAME Matthes, Heinrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Matthes, Heinrich Arthur (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS-Unterscharfuhrer and convicted war criminal in the Treblinka trial
DATE OF BIRTH January 11, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Wermsdorf
DATE OF DEATH December 16, 1978
Place of death Bochum