Johann Klier

Johann Klier (born July 15, 1901 in Stadtsteinach ; † February 18, 1955 in Frankfurt am Main ) was involved as SS-Unterscharführer in the " Aktion T4 " and the " Aktion Reinhardt ".

Life

Klier completed an apprenticeship as a baker and became a master baker in 1931. From 1933 he was a member of the NSDAP and SA . From 1934 to 1940 he was employed in the Heddernheim copper works. After the outbreak of the Second World War , he was obliged to work in the Nazi killing center in Hartheim in 1940 as part of "Aktion T4" , where he maintained the heating system. Afterwards, Klier was transferred to the Sobibor extermination camp in August 1942 as part of the “ Aktion Reinhardt ” project , where he ran the bakery and was responsible for the shoes of the Jewish victims in the sorting barracks. Klier was not present in the camp during the Sobibor uprising . After the "Aktion Reinhardt" ended, Klier was transferred to the Adriatic Coastal Operation Zone in Trieste at the end of 1943, as was the majority of the "Aktion Reinhardt" staff . Here he was a member of the " Special Department, Operation R ", which served the "extermination of Jews", the confiscation of Jewish property and the fight against partisans . On May 5, 1945 he was taken prisoner in Italy, from which he was released in mid-June 1945. He was then interned again from December 1945 to February 1949.

On the basis of a statement by Josef Hirtreiter , who was arrested as early as 1946 as a result of the investigation into the killing of disabled people in the Hadamar “euthanasia” facility and sentenced to life imprisonment in the first Treblinka trial in 1951 , the Frankfurt public prosecutor's office investigated Klier and Hubert Gomerski , who was also was deployed in Sobibor. The trial before the Frankfurt am Main regional court included participation in mass killings by selecting the inmates of arriving rail transports, as well as the mistreatment and shooting of Jews. The proceedings ended on August 25, 1950 with the pronouncement of the verdict. While Klier was acquitted, Gomerski received life imprisonment for murder on an indefinite number of cases .

Klier, who was described by Sobibor survivors as one of the relatively human SS men, died in February 1955.

literature

• Information material from Bildungswerk Stanislaw Hantz eV: Schöne Zeiten - Material collection on the extermination camps of Aktion Reinhardt Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka , Reader

Web links

• Short biography of Johann Klier
• Sobibor trial (Frankfurt) - judgment: LG Frankfurt am Main of 25 August 1950, 52 Ks 3/50 on www.holocaust-history.org

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Short biography of Johann Klier
2. ^ Kerstin Freudiger: The legal processing of Nazi crimes , Tübingen 2002, p. 38
3. ↑ Justice and Nazi crimes ( Memento of the original from October 21, 2008 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.