Johann Baptist Eichelsdörfer

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Eichelsdörfer in American custody. Photo from 1945.

Johann Baptist Eichelsdörfer (born on January 20, 1890 ; executed on May 29, 1946 in Landsberg am Lech ), as captain of the Wehrmacht, was the last camp leader of the Kaufering IV subcamp of the Dachau concentration camp , which was located near Hurlach .

biography

Eichelsdörfer, married and father of three children, worked in a factory until he began his military career.

During the First World War he was employed as a sergeant in the 5th Infantry Regiment "Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig von Hessen" of the Bavarian Army . After the end of the war, Eichelsdörfer continued to be a member of the military and left the Reichswehr in 1924 with the rank of lieutenant .

During the Second World War , Eichelsdörfer was drafted into the Wehrmacht in November 1940 and transferred as a lieutenant to a training unit for heavy haulage in Bamberg . After deployments in France, Poland and the Soviet Union, he was treated in a hospital for rheumatism from August 1943. After a short stay in Oranienburg , possibly during the inspection of the concentration camps , he was sent from the Dachau concentration camp to a prisoner-of-war camp in Augsburg-Pfersee on July 15, 1944 for training for camp service . At the end of August 1944, Eichelsdörfer was transferred to the Kauferinger subsidiary camps of the Dachau concentration camp, where he became camp manager of camp number 8 in October 1944 and then camp number 7.

When Eichelsdörfer took over camp number 4 on January 12, 1945, it had been designated as a “sick camp”. In fact, it was only a collection camp for prisoners who had become exhausted, sick and unable to work due to poor living and working conditions. However, there was no adequate medical care there. Instead, there were even doctors who misused the inmates for medical experiments. According to American sources, a total of 4,000 people perished in this concentration camp.

The Dachau concentration camp was liberated by American troops on April 29, 1945. Kaufering IV was reached by the 12th Armored Division on April 27, 1945, soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division joined in on April 28, 1945. In this camp, too, they found hundreds of dead who had been killed by epidemics, shot or killed by burning down the barracks, as the army doctor Dr. Charles P. Larson noted. There were other prisoners in the freight cars of a train who had simply been allowed to perish in them. There were only about twelve survivors left in the camp who had been able to hide.

Colonel Edward F. Seiller of Louisville , Kentucky , responsible for the military administration of the 12th Division, ordered about 250 citizens, especially public officials, of the surrounding villages to be forced to bury the victims at gunpoint. Eichelsdörfer's photo was taken at the instigation of Seiller, who asked Eichelsdörfer to stand among the dead in his camp for this photo. The spectators of this scene were allowed to abuse Eichelsdörfer.

Louis P. Lochner , a foreign correspondent for the Associated Press and later awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his reports on Germany, was in the camp that day looking for a conversation with Eichelsdörfer. He said that he had no idea what was going on inside the camp because he had not entered the camp. In view of the fact that typhus was rampant in the camp , this astonishing statement by the camp manager is not completely absurd; but the numerous deaths - often dozens daily - could hardly have escaped his attention.

In the main Dachau trial, which took place as part of the Dachau trials , Eichelsdorfer was indicted on November 15, 1945 along with 39 other people from the Dachau concentration camp (Case No. 000-50-2: US vs. Martin Gottfried Weiss et al.) . The defendants hardly had any insight, they all pleaded “not guilty” .

Eichelsdörfer was defended by Captain Dalwin Niles, who argued that his client had been transferred to the management of the camp by the Wehrmacht after an illness without having had any influence on it. As a sick old man, he did not have the strength to run the camp properly. Surviving prisoners, however, testified that Eichelsdörfer also mistreated prisoners themselves and, for example, beat them to the point of unconsciousness.

On December 13, 1945 Eichelsdörfer was as a war criminal convicted and on May 29, 1946 at 14:14 by train in prison for war criminals Landsberg executed . A total of 28 of the 36 death sentences passed in the Dachau main trial were carried out by the executioner John C. Woods , and the other eight death sentences were commuted to prison terms.

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personal data
SURNAME Eichelsdörfer, Johann Baptist
BRIEF DESCRIPTION last camp manager of the concentration camp Schwabmünchen / Kaufering IV
DATE OF BIRTH January 20, 1890
DATE OF DEATH May 29, 1946
Place of death Landsberg am Lech