Hermann Kleemann

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Hermann Christoph Kleemann (* 26. September 1915 in Westerdorf; † 12. November 1977 ) was a German oberscharführer in Auschwitz , the camp leader in the satellite camps Bismarckhütte and Janinagrube was and death marches accompanied.

Life

Kleemann was the son of an employee of the Reichsbahn and a trained butcher. According to his own information, he was deployed in Auschwitz from 1941, first in Block 11 with the camp arrest and then as a commando in the main camp of Auschwitz. From the summer of 1943 he was the report leader in the Eintrachthütte subcamp of the Auschwitz concentration camp . On September 15, 1943 he was awarded the War Merit Cross II. Class with Swords .

From March 1944 he took over the camp management in the Janinagrube subcamp of Auschwitz, where most of the prisoners without protective clothing had to mine coal under the most difficult working conditions. The death rate among inmates in this camp was very high. Kleemann was very much feared by the prisoners, as he severely abused prisoners, organized exhausting sports exercises and did not take any injuries to prisoners into account during target practice. He was nicknamed Revolverking by the prisoners .

In September 1944 he became camp leader in the newly established Bismarckhütte satellite camp of Auschwitz, which he directed until the camp was evacuated in January 1945 due to the war. In the Bismarckhütte satellite camp, the prisoners were used to produce guns. Kleemann lived with his wife and children in a separate part of the camp.

In the course of the evacuation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, Kleemann led a death march of concentration camp inmates from the camp to the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp on January 18, 1945. Kleemann then took over the camp management in the Woffleben subcamp , where prisoners had to do forced labor in the tunnel. In the course of the evacuation of the camp on April 4, 1945, Kleemann accompanied a death march of concentration camp prisoners to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp .

After the end of the war, the Itzehoe District Court initiated proceedings against Kleemann for killings on the death march . However, he was acquitted in 1951. During an interrogation in 1961, he stated that he was a miner. Due to a lack of suspicion, preliminary proceedings against Kleemann relating to the crime complex of crimes in the subcamps Eintrachthütte (lacking suspicion), Bismarckhütte (lacking suspicion) and Janinagrube (incapacity to stand trial in 1977) were discontinued in the 1970s.

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 .
  • Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (ed.): 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 .
  • Judgment of the Itzehoe Regional Court of April 28, 1951 of the trial against Hermann Kleeman, among others . Printed in Christiaan F. Rüter / Dick W. de Mildt (ed.): Justice and Nazi crimes. Collection of (West) German criminal judgments for National Socialist homicides in 49 volumes, Volume 8, Lfde Numbers 260–298, Amsterdam 1972.
  • Martin Clemens Winter: "Service on the occasion of a prisoner transport": Police and evacuation transports from concentration camps using the example of Brunsbüttel. In the police, persecution and society under National Socialism. Volume 15 of the series Contributions to the History of National Socialist Persecution in Northern Germany . Temmen, Bremen 2013, ISBN 978-3-8378-4045-2 . Pp. 40-49.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Full name from Aleksander Lasik: The organizational structure of KL Auschwitz. In: Aleksander Lasik, Franciszek Piper, Piotr Setkiewicz, Irena Strzelecka: Auschwitz 1940-1945. Studies on the history of the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp. , Volume I: Construction and structure of the camp , Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum , Oświęcim 1999, p. 399
  2. ↑ Life data according to Ernst Klee: Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices and victims and what became of them. An encyclopedia of persons , Frankfurt am Main 2013, p. 216f.
  3. ↑ a b c d Ernst Klee: Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices and victims and what became of them. An encyclopedia of persons , Frankfurt am Main 2013, p. 216f.
  4. ↑ Andrea Rudorff: Janinagrube . In: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror. History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps . Vol. 5: Hinzert, Auschwitz, Neuengamme , p. 257
  5. ↑ Andrea Rudorff: Bismarckhütte . In: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror. History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps . Vol. 5: Hinzert, Auschwitz, Neuengamme , p. 184
  6. ↑ Andrea Rudorff: Bismarckhütte . In: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror. History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps . Vol. 5: Hinzert, Auschwitz, Neuengamme , p. 185
  7. ^ Martin Clemens Winter: "Service on the occasion of a prisoner transport": Police and evacuation transports from concentration camps using the example of Brunsbüttel. In the police, persecution and society under National Socialism. Volume 15 of the series Contributions to the History of National Socialist Persecution in Northern Germany . Temmen, Bremen 2013, ISBN 978-3-8378-4045-2 . P. 46f.
  8. ↑ Andrea Rudorff: Eintrachthütte Janinagrube and Bismarkhütte . In: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror. History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps . Vol. 5: Hinzert, Auschwitz, Neuengamme , pp. 185, 216, 257
personal data
SURNAME Kleemann, Hermann
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kleemann, Hermann Christoph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS Oberscharführer in Auschwitz concentration camp
DATE OF BIRTH September 26, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Westerdorf
DATE OF DEATH November 12, 1977