Irmfried Eberl

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Irmfried Eberl (1930s)

Irmfried Eberl (born September 8, 1910 in Bregenz , Vorarlberg , † February 16, 1948 in Ulm ) was a German-Austrian doctor and from 1940 to 1942 the medical director of the Brandenburg and Bernburg killing centers as part of the T4 campaign and then first in the summer of 1942 Head of the Treblinka extermination camp as part of Aktion Reinhardt .

Life

Childhood in Bregenz and studies in Innsbruck

Eberl's parents had converted from Catholicism to Protestantism because of their German national sentiments , as the Catholic Church seemed to them to be too "obedient to Rome". The National Socialist attitude of his father, engineer Franz Eberl, led to his dismissal from the Austrian civil service as a trade inspector for Vorarlberg.

From 1928 on, Eberl studied medicine at the University of Innsbruck . On December 8, 1931, he joined the NSDAP ( membership number 687,095). He was also a member of the beating fraternity Germania Innsbruck , which belonged to the " White Circle ".

Doctor in Austria and Germany

In February 1935 he received his doctorate as Dr. med. and worked as an assistant doctor in the Rudolf Foundation Hospital in Vienna and at the Grimmenstein Lung Sanatorium . His NSDAP membership prevented permanent employment in Austria, so he went to Germany in 1936. In his curriculum vitae of November 4, 1934, he reported about his time as a student in Innsbruck:

“From the summer semester of 1932 until the dissolution of the German student body in Innsbruck in May 1933, I was head of the office for physical exercise on behalf of the National Socialist German Student Union (NSDStB). In January 1933 I was elected as a representative of the NSDStB in the Innsbruck Student Chamber at the Asta election. I also belonged to Motorsturm I and then to SA Storm 14. For this reason the Austrian government refused to hire me as a doctor. "

After brief employment at the German Hygiene Institute in Dresden, in the Public Welfare Office in the Gau Magdeburg-Anhalt in Dessau , in the Lungenheilstätte Sanatorium Birkenhaag in Berlin-Lichtenrade and at the Rescue Office of the City of Berlin, Eberl switched to the Main Health Office in Berlin as a scientific member, where he found a longer occupation.

In 1937 or 1938 he married Ruth Rehm (1907–1944) from Ulm, who worked as a department head in the women's office of the German Labor Front (DAF) and as a district administrator for the DAF foreign organization of the NSDAP.

Head of the killing centers in Brandenburg and Bernburg

In January 1940, he and other T4 doctors took part in the first "trial gassing" of sick people in the Brandenburg sanatorium . On February 1, 1940, Eberl got an official job with the "non-profit foundation for institutional care" (a cover company of the T4 organization) and began his service as head of the Nazi killing center in Brandenburg . There he carried out all gassings himself, if present. The pocket calendar he has survived shows that he gassed sick Jewish people for the first time on July 10th.

In November 1940, after the Brandenburg asylum was dissolved in October 1940, he took over as head of the newly established Bernburg Nazi killing center and moved there with the staff of the Brandenburg asylum.

Commandant in the Treblinka extermination camp

As part of the " Organization Todt ", Eberl was deployed on the Eastern Front in January 1942 for the care and transport of the wounded to hospitals at the rear.

Following this assignment, he worked for Aktion Reinhardt . As he announced in a letter, he was in the completed but not yet opened Sobibor extermination camp on April 24, 1942 , apparently to take part in the "test gassing" taking place at the same time as the camp manager planned for Treblinka. Since June 1942 at the latest, he was staying with the SS and Police Leader in Warsaw to deal with the material requirements for the new Treblinka extermination camp . At the end of the month he wrote to his wife:

“The last few days have been a great hunt, all the more as the construction work is nearing its end and we have the deadline, 1.7. can not hold, but only want to exceed as little as possible. […] In the course of this week I will finally move to T. My address there is: SS-Untersturmführer Dr. Eberl, Treblinka b / Malkinia, SS-Sonderkommando. "

The liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto began on July 22, 1942 . The following day the first Jewish victims from Warsaw arrived in Treblinka. A week later Eberl wrote to his wife:

“I know that I haven't written a little lately, but I couldn't change this, because the last few weeks in Warsaw were accompanied by a rush that was unimaginable, and here in Treblinka a pace has set in that is downright breathtaking. If I had four parts and 100 hours a day, that would probably not be enough. "

- Irmfried Eberl : Letter of July 30, 1942 to his wife Ruth

At the end of August 1942, the killing machinery in Treblinka collapsed. Thousands of corpses lay around the entire camp area, the camp personnel could no longer keep up with burial in mass graves. His superiors Odilo Globocnik (charged with carrying out the Reinhardt campaign in the Generalgouvernement ) and Christian Wirth (inspector of the extermination camps) made Eberl responsible for the conditions prevailing in the camp. A service suspension followed, and the camp manager Franz Stangl , who was summoned from Sobibor, took over his post .

Eberl was then back on duty in Bernburg . Unknown is his work on the resolution of this institution in late July is busy 1943. Documentary approval from 1 June 1944, the People's Mittelstelle for purchase of foreign currency and a mission on behalf of the national government in Slovakia in July 1944. The invitation to the armed forces took place on 31 January 1944.

After 1945

After the war , Eberl settled down as a doctor in the Swabian town of Blaubeuren , where he was initially able to practice undisturbed and then married for the second time in 1946. In the summer of 1947, the Stuttgart public prosecutor's office was made aware by the American military authorities of a doctor who was resident in Blaubeuren by the name of the former head of the “euthanasia” facility in Bernburg . An interrogation of Eberl by American and German authorities did not provide any clarification. After contacting the public prosecutor's office in the Soviet-occupied Bernburg, they asked for Eberl to be arrested on December 30, 1947. He was placed in custody for the American military government on January 8, 1948 . However, a clarification of his identity was not possible.

During the interrogation of a sister working in the Grafeneck “euthanasia” facility by the Tübingen State Criminal Police Office on February 9, 1948, she recognized Eberl on a photograph presented to her.

When Eberl was approached on February 15, 1948 by a fellow prisoner about the 1946 book " Der SS-Staat " by Eugen Kogon and the doctor of the same name mentioned therein, Eberl probably decided to commit suicide , which he committed the next day, February 16 Executed in 1948 by hanging in his prison cell in Ulm. At this point in time, the investigating authorities still had no knowledge of the dead remand prisoner's true identity.

literature

  • Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume I Politicians, Part 1: A – E. Heidelberg 1996, p. 230 f.
  • Michael Grabher: Irmfried Eberl. “Euthanasia” doctor and commandant of Treblinka. Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 3-631-54855-9 .
  • Frank Hirschinger: Approved for extermination. Böhlau, Cologne 2001, p. 144 ( online ; on the so-called Eastern deployment, the liquidation of German soldiers).
  • Ute Hofmann: "Cause of death: angina" Forced sterilization and "euthanasia" in the state sanatorium and nursing home in Bernburg, Magdeburg 1996
  • Ute Hofmann, Dietmar Schulze: "... will be moved to another institution today". National Socialist forced sterilization and "euthanasia" in the state sanatorium and nursing home in Bernburg . Dessau 1997; stgs.sachsen-anhalt.de (PDF; 1.1 MB)
  • Ernst Klee : "What they did - what they became" . Frankfurt am Main 1986, ISBN 3-596-24364-5 .
  • Dietmar Schulze: "Euthanasia" in Bernburg. The state sanatorium and nursing home in Bernburg / Anhaltische Nervenklinik in the time of National Socialism. Verlag Die Blaue Eule, Essen 1999, ISBN 3-89206-954-9 (short biography of Irmfried Eberls, pp. 155–157)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Ernst Klee: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 , p. 123 f.
  2. ^ Proceedings of the Ulm Public Prosecutor's Office against Eberl, Az .: 4 Js 9849/47, Eberl file II / 611
  3. ↑ Patricia Heberer: A Continuity of Killing Operations. T4 perpetrators and the "Aktion Reinhard" [sic]. In: Bogdan Musial (Ed.): "Aktion Reinhardt" - The genocide of the Jews in the Generalgouvernement 1940-1944 . Osnabrück 2004, p. 298.
  4. ↑ Astrid Ley: The beginning of the Nazi murder in Brandenburg on the Havel. On the significance of the “Brandenburg trial killing” for the 'Action T4'. In: Zeitschrift für Geschichtsforschung , 58, 2010, p. 326 f.
  5. ↑ Eugen Kogon: The SS State. The system of the German concentration camps. Kindler, Munich 1974, ISBN 3-463-00585-9 , p. 256.
  6. ↑ Biographies of the perpetrators: Imfried Eberl and Heinrich Bunke ( memento from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) at the website of the Landesinstitut Lehrerfortbildung Sachsen-Anhalt
  7. ↑ online presence deathcamps.org Bernburg Nazi Killing Facility
  8. ↑ on the real tasks of the T4 employees in the allegedly humane eastern deployment of the Todt organization, see the explanations by Pauline Kneissler and literature Frank Hirschinger : released for extermination
  9. ↑ Holocaust Historical Society via Dr. Irmfried Eberl. Retrieved November 13, 2019 .
  10. ↑ Eberl to his wife, June 29, 1942, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Wiesbaden, Department 631a, No. 1631, sheet 147.
  11. ↑ The sources speak. The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945. Retrieved October 1, 2019 .
  12. ^ Statement by Josef Oberhauser (1915–1979) on the replacement of Irmfried Eberl as warehouse manager from Treblinka, Sobibor trial, Regional Court Frankfurt am Main 1975, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Wiesbaden, Dept. 461, No. 41128. Retrieved on October 1, 2019 .
  13. ↑ War crimes / concentration camp commandant Stangl . In: Der Spiegel . No. 28 , 1967 ( online ).
  14. ^ Rainer Thiemann: Science as a crime. In: Berliner Disabled Newspaper. Retrieved October 1, 2019 .
  15. ↑ Hannes Liebrandt: I deny you the right to judge me! The suicide of the National Socialist elite in 1944/45. Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh 2017, ISBN 978-3-506-78696-8 , p. 272 ​​ff.
personal data
SURNAME Eberl, Irmfried
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Austrian doctor and member of the NSDAP
BIRTH DATE September 8, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Bregenz
DATE OF DEATH February 16, 1948
PLACE OF DEATH Ulm