Hermann Pister

Hermann Pister in April 1947

Hermann Franz Josef Pister (born February 21, 1885 in Lübeck ; † September 28, 1948 in Landsberg am Lech ) was a German SS-Oberführer , member of the SS-Totenkopfverband and camp commandant of the SS special camp in Hinzert and the Buchenwald concentration camp .

Life

Hermann Pister, who grew up in Switzerland , was hired as a cabin boy in the Imperial Navy after completing high school and stayed there until 1910. After completing his military service, he was initially unemployed, then attended a commercial school and from 1912 worked as a policeman in Bruchsal . Pister, who took part in the First World War as Vice Sergeant in the Navy , trained in the “automobile trade” after the end of the war. As a result, he became a seller and finally took over the management of a car salon. Pister became a member of the NSDAP in 1932 and, since he only paid his membership fees irregularly, again in 1934. In the early 1930s, he also served as a Gau speaker . In addition, he joined the SS in 1932 (membership number: 29.892) and also the engine squadron of the 32nd SS standard, which he took over as head in 1932 and subsequently also led other engine squadrons. His career in this regard continued rapidly, as in the mid-1930s he rose first to the position of “Advisor for the engine standards of the Upper Section South” and finally in 1939 to the main department head of the “Reichsleitung der Motorized SS-Units” in Berlin. Heinrich Himmler , who became aware of Pister during a motorsport parade, put him in charge of his motor vehicle in 1939. Pister rose to SS-Oberführer in the SS in 1945 .

Organization Todt

From October 1939 he served in the assurance staffs of the Organization Todt (OT) as "top managers of education camps for Western Wall workers of the Organization Todt" and was responsible for the organization and supervision of the "disciplinary treatment" of the work on the West Wall or Reichsautobahnen offenders forced obligor . After the western campaign in 1940, only the Hinzert SS special camp that he had founded remained , which was placed under the inspection of the concentration camps from July 1941 and continued to be managed by Pister.

Commander in Buchenwald concentration camp

After the commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp, Karl Otto Koch , was arrested for the first time in late autumn 1941 on charges of corruption and the removal of witnesses to his crimes, Pister succeeded Koch in this post in December 1941. Koch was later sentenced to death through the investigative work of SS judge Konrad Morgen . Pister, whose military-style “educational concept” in Hinzert had convinced Himmler, seemed in his opinion to be the right man for this position. Pister brought his adjutant Hans-Theodor Schmidt with him from Hinzert , and as a result, a large part of the Buchenwald management staff who were involved in the corruption affair surrounding Koch were replaced. Pister was seen as authoritarian and controlling. Nevertheless, the brutality and arbitrariness practiced by Koch are said to have decreased under him. However, under Pister the first pseudo-medical experiments on prisoners took place. With the steady increase in the number of prisoners from 1942 onwards, the supply situation and living conditions in the camp deteriorated dramatically and the death rate rose considerably until 1945. As the end of the war was approaching, Pister had the Buchenwald concentration camp evacuated in April 1945 and, in particular, had Jewish prisoners sent on death marches . About 38,000 prisoners were sent from the main camp and Buchenwald sub-camps to Dachau , Flossenbürg and Theresienstadt , of whom 12,000 to 15,000 died. The camp elder, Hans Eiden , was able to convince Pister at the beginning of April 1945, by pointing out his duty of care, especially towards German prisoners, to hand over the camp to the prisoners. On April 13, two days after Pister and the leading camp personnel left Buchenwald, the US Army finally reached the main camp, in which around 21,000 prisoners had remained. On April 15 or 16, 1945, Pister and other concentration camp commanders as well as Rudolf Höß and Richard Glücks took part in a final meeting in Oranienburg , where he was informed of Himmler's order to evacuate prisoners from the Flossenbürg, Dachau and Mauthausen concentration camps to Tyrol. At least in Dachau, where Pister stayed from April 18, 1945, Pister was able to implement part of this "evacuation plan" in cooperation with Eduard Weiter .

After the end of the war

After the end of the war, Pister was arrested by American troops near Munich on June 13, 1945 and charged with an American military tribunal as part of the Dachau trials for his war crimes committed in the Buchenwald concentration camp . From April 11 to August 14, 1947, the main Buchenwald trial against 31 members of the Buchenwald camp took place on the former site of the Dachau concentration camp (United States of America v. Josias Prince zu Waldeck et al.). Pister, who gave detailed information about his work as commandant in Buchenwald, tried to differentiate himself from his predecessor Koch in the process by stating that he had ensured better conditions in the camp. On August 14, 1947, Pister was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging . Before the execution of the sentence, Pister died on September 28, 1948 of a heart attack in the Landsberg War Crimes Prison .

literature

• Harry Stein, Buchenwald Memorial (ed.): Buchenwald Concentration Camp 1937–1945. Accompanying volume for the permanent historical exhibition. Wallstein, Göttingen 1999, ISBN 3-89244-222-3 .
• Karin Orth : The system of the National Socialist concentration camps. Pendo Verlag, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-85-842-450-1
• Karin Orth: The concentration camp SS . dtv, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-423-34085-1
• Ernst Klee : The personal lexicon for the Third Reich: Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005. ISBN 3-596-16048-0

Web links

• Original process documents United States of America v. Josias Prince zu Waldeck et al. (Case No. 000-50-9) (PDF file; 33.04 MB)