Joachim Caesar

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Joachim Heinrich Ferdinand Caesar (born May 30, 1901 in Boppard , † January 25, 1974 in Kiel ) was a German agricultural scientist , SS leader and head of the agricultural operations of the Auschwitz concentration camp .

Early years

After completing his school career, Caesar completed a degree in agronomy at the agricultural college in Bonn-Poppelsdorf and the University of Halle . During his studies Caesar became a member of the Young German Order . Caesars Promotion Dr. sc. nat. took place in Halle in 1927 with the dissertation : Investigations into the influence of the driving force of the seeds and the distribution of the plants on trial areas on the yield and trial errors - a contribution to the technique of variety trials . After completing his studies, Caesar worked for the next five years as an experimental ring manager and teacher at the agricultural school in Bad Oldesloe and then briefly on an Upper Silesian estate.

Political activity

Caesar joined the SA in early September 1931 . At the beginning of September 1931 he became a member of the NSDAP (membership number 626.589) and in June 1933 he switched from the SA to the SS (SS number 74.704). In the General SS he rose to SS-Oberführer at the end of January 1939 . He was also a member of the Lebensborn .

In 1932 Caesar became NSDAP local group leader in Bad Oldesloe and Gauredner for the NSDAP Gau Schleswig-Holstein. After the " seizure of power ", he initially acted as mayor in Bramfeld / Holstein , which in 1937 became part of Hamburg with the Greater Hamburg Act .

From 1934 Caesar was initially employed as a race advisor at SS-Oberabschnitt Nord and as a main training supervisor at SS Section XV and in 1937 became a race advisor for the Northwest. In 1937 Caesar became head of the training office in the Race and Settlement Main Office (RuSHA) , which was subordinated to the SS main office in early September 1938 . Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler finally criticized Caesar's excessive "intellectualism" in the context of this activity and wanted to release him from this position. The head of the RuSHA Walther Darré felt ignored in these considerations and was outraged that Himmler had repeatedly questioned his personnel decisions. Himmler finally granted a resignation from Darré in February 1938, and Caesar remained in his position. In January 1939, Caesar, responsible for the SS-Leithefte and the “racial-political” instruction, complained about the reluctance of the SS men to take part in the training: “The men gradually became noticeable when it came to these subjects, and so the training came about extended to the basics of the National Socialist ideology . ”From October 1939 he was“ Inspector for ideological training ”in this function.

From May to October 1940 Caesar was drafted into military service with the Waffen SS and during this period was represented by his deputy Karl-Heinz Bürger as head of the training office. In March 1941 Caesar took part in the opening of the Institute for Research into the Jewish Question by Alfred Rosenberg in Frankfurt. From the beginning of August 1941 Caesar worked in the supplementary office of the Waffen SS . With the Waffen-SS, Caesar reached the rank of SS-Obersturmbannführer as a “specialist leader” on January 30, 1944 .

Plant research station in Auschwitz concentration camp

In mid-February 1942, he was also appointed representative for special agricultural tasks in the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office (SS-WVHA) and head of the breeding group . Caesar, who had been in Auschwitz concentration camp since February 1942 , also became head of the agricultural operations in Auschwitz concentration camp from March 12, 1942 . In the Rajsko sub-camp in Auschwitz, Caesar was not only responsible for agriculture and cattle breeding, but also for the plant research station ( Koksaghyz cultivation for rubber production ) until the camp was evacuated in January 1945. In these functions, Caesar was not under the camp commandantur in Auschwitz , but Heinrich Vogel , who was in the SS WVHA headed the WV (Agriculture, Forestry and Fish Management) office. Caesar was one of the highest-ranking SS leaders in Auschwitz.

As the strategic raw material rubber was scarce due to the war, rubber research was given top priority. Heinrich Himmler was appointed by Adolf Hitler in July 1943 as "Special Representative for Vegetable Rubber". During his second and last visit to Auschwitz from July 17 to 18, 1942, Himmler showed great interest in the plant research station. In addition to the complex production of synthetic rubber , the production of rubber from Russian dandelion ( Taraxacum bicorne) should also be researched. After the SS had captured the plant's seeds in the Soviet Union in 1942 , experiments were carried out on a farm and sub-camp of the Auschwitz concentration camp under the direction of Caesar. At least eleven prisoners (biologists) and 25 auxiliaries worked in the “plant breeding command”. In the course of the war, however, the “Plant Breeding Command” is said to have been continuously increased in personnel. According to Susanne Heim , over 150 female prisoners who had been transferred from the Ravensbrück concentration camp were still working there at the beginning of 1945 , and Russian scientists were also interned there.

During the typhus epidemic that was rampant in the Auschwitz concentration camp in autumn 1942, Caesar's wife also died on October 10, 1942, and he himself also fell ill with typhus. Probably because of this situation, he managed to move the inmates of the plant research station from the Birkenau women's camp to the staff building of the Auschwitz concentration camp. In the Rajsko sub-camp itself, these prisoners were only accommodated in two prisoner accommodations from June 1943, with much better living and supply conditions than in the main camp or Birkenau . As a result of this relocation, as Caesar noted in a report in January 1944, “a way of disciplining the commando [...] consists in the fact that, if there is indiscipline, it is possible to relocate to the far more difficult living conditions of the main camp at any time. “Caesar remarried in December 1943 after the death of his wife. His second wife and assistant Ruth (née Weinmann) was a qualified chemist. She had a female inmate in Rajsko write her doctoral thesis. Caesar lived with his family in Auschwitz. In the family with three children, two women inmates classified as Bible Students were employed as domestic helpers.

After the dissolution of the Auschwitz concentration camp, Caesar closed his office. The plant breeding station and the Russian scientists were moved to Büschdorf and the female prisoners of the plant breeding command were moved to the Ravensbrück concentration camp.

After the end of the war

In April 1945 Caesar was arrested by members of the US Army and was then interned until January 1949. During his internment in 1946 in Nuremberg , he wrote a pamphlet entitled “The large agricultural enterprise. Construction and management ”. In a denazification process Caesar was charged in January 1949 as soon as less-loaded denazified . Caesar was not prosecuted after the end of the war. His release from US internment took place after no criminal proceedings had been initiated against him in Poland either. Various authors and contemporary witnesses have repeatedly emphasized the relatively humane living and working conditions in the facilities and laboratories he directed in Auschwitz. For the characterization of Caesar, the assessments of Auschwitz survivors differ. While Maria Ossowski, for example, described him as a “guardian angel” and “savior”, according to Stanislawa S. he only viewed the prisoners as work material. Many of the surviving women attested that Caesar treated them considerately. An important role in the rescue of concentration camp prisoners in particular Jewish origin played Caesars Secretary Anni Binder (Czechoslovakian Slovakian and Catholic Christian, later Dr. Anna Urbanova) that is mentioned in various publications, including Arno Lustigers book rescue resistance and Arieh tree Ingers The righteous among the Nations , which in Yad Vashem excellent righteous among the Nations lists that in world war II rescued Jews. Miss Dr. Urbanova later described her boss at the time, Caesar, as a staunch Nazi and a typical “gentleman” , but who never became violent towards prisoners and more often protected them and Jewish prisoners from being attacked by other SS men . According to the Caesar, members of the Auschwitz camp SS subordinate to Gerhard Hess, Caesar also “ fully approved the crimes in Auschwitz and did nothing about it”.

Caesar ran a laundry in Konstanz from 1951 and died in Kiel in January 1974. In the early 1970s, Caesar still wrote his memoirs , but they have not yet been published .

Joachim Caesar was interviewed as a witness in two important criminal trials of the post-war period:

  • June 28, 1947: Nuremberg Military Trial (NMT) No. 4th : USA vs. Oswald Pohl et al. (Trial via the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office), defense witness (3639–3652).
  • March 5, 1964: Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial: 23rd day of the trial, questioning as a witness.

The questioning of the witness Caesar in the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial was dramatically processed by Peter Weiss in his oratorio “ The Investigation ”, especially in the section “Song from the end of Lili Tofler”, where Caesar appears as “Witness 1”. As a prisoner, Lili Tofler had worked for Caesar in the Rajsko laboratory, her fate was, among other things, the subject of Caesar's interrogation. Hermann Langbein uses the spelling Lilly Toffler. Auschwitz survivor Josef Gabis reported to the jury that he had seen Toffler's body in the courtyard of Block 11 in the main camp of Auschwitz. Toffler was shot because of a love letter that was found on her and addressed to him. Shortly afterwards he is said to have found out that Wilhelm Boger had shot his girlfriend.

On August 25, 1944, US reconnaissance planes took photos of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp . On them, within sight of the gas chambers and crematoria, a strange baroque garden can be seen, which has the shape of a “cosmic garden”. Apparently it was created by Caesar's command on the initiative of Anni Binder. It was recreated in Hamburg in 2000 by an American artist, Ronald Jones, in Julius-Kobler-Weg in Hamburg and called "Caesar's Cosmic Garden" .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Susanne Heim: Calories, rubber, careers. Plant breeding and agricultural research at Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes 1933-1945 Göttingen 2003, p. 177f
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich: Who was what before and after 1945. , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 89.
  3. ↑ See entry in the catalog of the German National Library
  4. ↑ a b c Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum (ed.): Auschwitz in the eyes of the SS. Oswiecim 1998, p. 223.
  5. ^ Jan Erik Schulte : Forced Labor and Destruction: The Economic Empire of the SS. Oswald Pohl and the SS Economic Administration Main Office 1933-1945. Paderborn 2001, p. 464.
  6. ^ Hans-Christian Harten: Himmler's teacher. The ideological training in the SS 1933–1945 , Paderborn 2014, p. 69.
  7. ^ Peter Longerich : Heinrich Himmler. Biography. Siedler, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-88680-859-5 , p. 430.
  8. ↑ Heinz Höhne : The Order under the Skull - The History of the SS , Weltbild, Augsburg 1998, ISBN 3-89350-549-0 , p. 146.
  9. ^ Hans-Christian Harten: Himmler's teacher. The ideological training in the SS 1933–1945 , Paderborn 2014, p. 118.
  10. ↑ Aleksander Lasik: The organizational structure of KL Auschwitz , in: Wacław Długoborski, Franciszek Piper (ed.): Auschwitz 1940-1945. Studies on the history of the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp. , Oswiecim 1999, Volume 1: Structure and Structure of the Camp , p. 315.
  11. ^ Norbert Frei (ed.): Location and command office orders of the Auschwitz concentration camp 1940-1945 , Munich 2000, ISBN 978-3-598-24030-0 . P. 414.
  12. ↑ Susanne Heim: Calories, Rubber, Careers. Plant breeding and agricultural research at Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes 1933-1945 Göttingen 2003, p. 177.
  13. ↑ a b c Susanne Heim: Calories, rubber, careers. Plant breeding and agricultural research at Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes 1933-1945 Göttingen 2003, p. 190.
  14. ^ A b c Bernhard Strebel, Jens Christian Wagner: "History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in National Socialism": Forced labor for research institutions of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society 1939–1945 , Berlin 2003, p. 58ff.
  15. ↑ Quoted from: Thomas Wieland: The political tasks of German plant breeding - Nazi ideology and the research work of academic plant breeders . In: Susanne Heim (Ed.) Autarky and Eastern Expansion. Plant breeding and agricultural research during National Socialism (= History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in National Socialism, Vol. 2). Edited by Susanne Heim, Wallstein Verlag Göttingen 2002, p. 51.
  16. ↑ Susanne Heim: Calories, Rubber, Careers. Plant breeding and agricultural research at Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes 1933-1945 Göttingen 2003, p. 182.
  17. ^ Danuta Czech: Calendar of events in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp 1939–1945 , Hamburg 1989, p. 495.
  18. ↑ Thomas Wieland: The political tasks of German plant breeding - Nazi ideology and the research work of academic plant breeders . In: Susanne Heim (Ed.) Autarky and Eastern Expansion. Plant breeding and agricultural research during National Socialism (= History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in National Socialism, Vol. 2). Edited by Susanne Heim, Wallstein Verlag Göttingen 2002, p. 54.
  19. ↑ a b Susanne Heim: Calories, Rubber, Careers. Plant breeding and agricultural research at Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes 1933-1945 Göttingen 2003, p. 262.
  20. ↑ Józef Garlinski, 1975, Fighting Auschwitz: Friedman, London, p. 207: "Several prisoners, especially women, remember a certain high-ranking officer of the SS as a decent, upright man. This was Lt. Col. Dr. Joachim Caesar […]. Everyone working on his plants and in his laboratories got better clothing, better food and the benefit of his personal intervention in cases where the camp command or the Political Department wished to punish a prisoner. The women especially, among whom were many University graduates, some Jewish, he treated as fellow workers. "
  21. ↑ Arno Lustiger, Rescue Resistance , Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3835309906
  22. ↑ Arieh tree Inger: The Righteous Among the Nations , 1996, Gefen Books, ISBN 978-9653080331
  23. ↑ Lore Shelley: Auschwitz - the Nazi civilization: twenty-three women prisoners' accounts: Auschwitz camp administration and SS enterprises and workshops , University Press of America, 1992, ISBN 9780819184719 , statement Urbanova p. 51.
  24. ↑ Susanne Heim: Calories, Rubber, Careers. Plant breeding and agricultural research at Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes 1933-1945 Göttingen 2003, p. 191.
  25. ↑ Introduction to NMT Case 4 - USA v. Pohl et al. ( Memento of the original from July 9, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) 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. on www. nuremberg.law.harvard.edu. The minutes were published online by the Munich Institute for Contemporary History ( interrogation minutes of Joachim Caesar in the context of the Nuremberg Trials (PDF; 6.5 MB)).  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / nuremberg.law.harvard.edu
  26. ↑ First Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial - Register of Witnesses and Experts (pdf) , p. 12. The tape record of Caesar's interrogation was published online by the Fritz Bauer Institute in Frankfurt in October 2013 ( Search: "Caesar" Frankfurter Auschwitz Trial: Verehmungsprotokoll Dr. Joachim Caesar (audio tape recording, HHStAW Section 461 - Public Prosecutor's Office at the LG Frankfurt am Main. Date of recording: March 5, 1964) ).
  27. ↑ The characters of the witnesses in "The investigation always summarize several real witnesses. The" witness 1 "in the drama was a ministerial conductor in the post-war Federal Republic, Caesar never held such an office.
  28. ^ Hermann Langbein: People in Auschwitz. Frankfurt am Main, Berlin Vienna, 1980, p. 554.
  29. ↑ Cosmic Garden information board at www.bildarchiv-hamburg.de
  30. ↑ The real art in this case is the adaptation to the local conditions (PDF; 98 kB). In: Christoph Tannert (Ed.): Catalog for the sculpture Biennale Münsterland , Steinfurt district, 2001.
  31. ↑ About Caesar and the murder of Lilly Toffler (sic) p. 157f., See in the report of the eyewitness Raya Kagan: Das Standesamt Auschwitz. Pp. 145 - 158 - 6th edition, with a foreword to the edition history by Katharina Stengel: Series 1520. Federal Agency for Civic Education BpB, Bonn 2014 ISBN 9783838905204 , pp. 145 - 159; Caesar p. 158.
personal data
SURNAME Caesar, Joachim
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Caesar, Joachim Heinrich Ferdinand (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German agronomist, SS leader and head of agricultural operations in Auschwitz
DATE OF BIRTH May 30, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Boppard
DATE OF DEATH January 25, 1974
Place of death Kiel