Herbert Scherpe
Herbert Scherpe (born May 20, 1907 in Gleiwitz , † December 23, 1997 in Mannheim ) was SS-Oberscharführer and was employed as a medical officer in Auschwitz concentration camp .
Life
Scherpe was born in 1907 as the son of an electrical engineer. He attended elementary school in Gliwice and then completed training in the butcher's trade. He then worked as an unskilled worker in his father's company and in other companies. He became a member of the NSDAP and the SS in 1931 . From 1936 until the beginning of the war, Scherpe was employed by an SS guard, whose task it was to protect military installations. From 1939 he was a member of the SS-Totenkopfverband and received brief military training in Dachau. Through the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office, he completed training as a medic in Oranienburg.
Auschwitz
From the summer of 1940 he was employed in the Auschwitz concentration camp, after training in the on-site doctor department (Dept. V) as an "SS medical officer" (in the role of a nurse), initially as a medic in the SS precinct. From the beginning of 1942 Scherpe was employed in the prisoner infirmary of the main camp of Auschwitz , from April 1943 to March 1944 in the prisoner infirmary of the Golleschau sub- camp and from April 1944 in the prisoner infirmary of the Blechhammer sub-camp as a medical officer. His work as a medical service also included the selection of exhausted prisoners and their killing with phenol injections.
After Scherpe had killed children and adolescents by injections on February 23, 1943 and March 1, 1943, according to testimony from Hermann Langbein, he declared himself unable to continue doing such activities on children and was exempted from doing so.
In the course of the evacuation of the Auschwitz camp, he accompanied a column of prisoners on the death march to the Groß-Rosen concentration camp . After his capture, Scherpe was interned in an internment camp in Schleswig-Holstein because he was a member of the SS and released in July 1945. Until his pre-trial detention in August 1961, he worked as a porter in a machine factory in Mannheim. In the first Auschwitz trial before the jury court in Frankfurt am Main , Scherpe was sentenced to four and a half years in prison and loss of civil rights to four years for "joint aiding and abetting in joint murder" . Because of his pre-trial detention, Scherpe was released on August 19, 1965 after the verdict was pronounced.
literature
- Hermann Langbein : People in Auschwitz. Ullstein-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, Berlin Vienna 1980, ISBN 3-54833014-2 .
- Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum (ed.): Auschwitz in the eyes of the SS. Oswiecim 1998, ISBN 83-85047-35-2 .
Web links
- Short portrait of Herbert Scherpe at www.auschwitz-prozess-frankfurt.de
- Short biography on www.auschwitz-prozess-frankfurt.de
Individual evidence
- ^ Danuta Czech: Calendar of the events in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp 1939-1945 . Reinbek near Hamburg 1989, ISBN 3-498-00884-6 , pp. 422 and 426.
- ^ Ernst Klee: Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices, victims and what became of them. Lexicon of persons. Frankfurt / M. 2013, ISBN 978-3-10-039333-3 , p. 351.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Scherpe, Herbert |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German SS medical rank in Auschwitz concentration camp |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 20, 1907 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Gliwice |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 23, 1997 |
| Place of death | Mannheim |