Johann Mirbeth

Johann Mirbeth , called Hans Mirbeth (born March 18, 1905 in Munich ; † November 8, 1975 there ) was a German SS Oberscharführer who was a camp leader of satellite camps in Auschwitz and Mittelbau-Dora and who accompanied death marches by concentration camp inmates .

Life

Mirbeth was the son of a foreman. After finishing school, he trained as a carpenter, but had to give up this job due to a foot disease. After he became a member of the NSDAP and SS in 1931 , he worked for the Reichszeugmeisterei of the NSDAP in his hometown. After the beginning of the Second World War he was drafted into the Waffen SS and received military training in Dachau. Due to his foot disease, he was dismissed and classified as unfit for front.

Member of the camp SS in Auschwitz and Mittelbau-Dora concentration camps

In January 1941 he was transferred to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where he was initially assigned to the guard company and then worked as a commando leader. He was also on duty at the ramp when the arriving transports were still arriving on the train track between the main camp of Auschwitz and the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp . On August 20, 1942, he was commended in a commandant office order for discovering and arresting two French prisoners who had fled at the Prokocim train station.

Camp leader in the Golleschau subcamp

From the beginning of April 1943 he was camp leader in the Golleschau subcamp of the Auschwitz concentration camp , where prisoners had to do forced labor under the most difficult conditions in a quarry and a cement factory. After the end of the war, Mirbeth stated in a statement that in Golleschau he had personally carried out the flogging of 25 cane blows to prisoners for stealing potatoes etc. several times. According to Franz Unikower , a survivor of Auschwitz , Mirbeth was a “brutal thug who repeatedly abused prisoners.” Mirbeth selected prisoners who were unable to work, who were transferred to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp . After the end of the war, Mirbeth commented on the hanging of a Hungarian Jew in autumn 1944: "When I was hung, I pulled the stool away myself."

Camp leader in the Althammer subcamp

On October 1, 1944, Mirbeth took over the camp management of the Althammer satellite camp of Auschwitz , where prisoners had to build a thermal power station. On October 4, 1944, he was awarded the War Merit Cross, Second Class with Swords . Under Mirbeth the living conditions of the prisoners deteriorated, as he long inmate appeals went ahead and ordered for the smallest offenses severe penalties. Mirbeth also shot two prisoners there.

After the evacuation of the Auschwitz concentration camp due to the advancing Red Army in January 1945, the majority of the prisoners of the Althammer concentration camp were taken on a death march to Gleiwitz and from there mostly transported to the Mittelbau concentration camp .

Camp leader in the Blankenburg-Oesig subcamp

Mirbeth then took over the camp management in the Blankenburg-Oesig satellite camp of the Mittelbau concentration camp . Before the US Army liberated the Mittelbau concentration camp , Mirbeth led a death march of concentration camp prisoners to Magdeburg on April 6, 1945. There he joined the death march of inmates from the Fürstengrube concentration camp led by Max Schmidt with the column of inmates he led. The prisoners were taken to Lübeck on an Elbe barge and were driven from there to the vicinity of Ahrensbök , where they arrived in mid-April 1945. During and after the death march, many prisoners were killed or shot. The survivors of Mirbeth's convoy of prisoners were accommodated in a barn on Gut Glasau near Sarau.

At the end of April 1945 Mirbeth brought a few prisoners from western countries to Lübeck , where they were disembarked to Sweden by the Swedish Red Cross. Some of the prisoners were taken to the ship Cap Arcona , which was sunk by mistake on May 3, 1945 after attacks by the Royal Air Force .

End of war, post-war period and condemnation

Mirbeth then disguised himself as a civilian from Sarau and went to Hamburg . From May 8, 1945 he worked as a gardener for the family of Prince von Bismarck in Friedrichsruh . In autumn 1945 he settled in the Ruhr area, where he found a job as a miner. As a result of a broken fibula he was released and returned to Munich, where he made his living as a carpenter again.

On November 27, 1953, Mirbeth was sentenced to six years imprisonment by the jury court at the Bremen regional court for homicide in the Golleschau subcamp. He was released early on December 21, 1956. Mirbeth received a disability pension and increased his income by doing auxiliary work in the office of a Munich lawyer. A preliminary investigation initiated against him for crimes in the Althammer satellite camp was closed in 1973 because he was unable to stand trial. His crimes in Blankenburg and during the death marches were not prosecuted.

literature

• Gerhard Hoch : From Auschwitz to Holstein. The Jewish prisoners from Fürstengrube. Hamburg 1990/1998. Review by Christine Weber-Herfort
• Jörg Wollenberg : Searching for traces from Ahrensbök to Auschwitz and back. The other memory and the limits of finding the truth. Jahrbuch für Heimatkunde - Eutin, Eutin 2007 (pp. 257–298) (excerpts online)
• Jörg Wollenberg: Between human trafficking and the final solution. The “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” as reflected in Himmler's secret service negotiations in Holstein after the evacuation of Auschwitz
• Ernst Klee : Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices, victims and what became of them. A dictionary of persons . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2013, ISBN 978-3-10-039333-3 .
• Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (ed.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 7: Niederhagen / Wewelsburg, Lublin-Majdanek, Arbeitsdorf, Herzogenbusch (Vught), Bergen-Belsen, Mittelbau-Dora. CH Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-52967-2 .
• LG Bremen, November 27, 1953 . In: Justice and Nazi crimes . Collection of German criminal judgments for Nazi homicidal crimes 1945–1966, Vol. XI, edited by Adelheid L. Rüter-Ehlermann, HH Fuchs, CF Rüter . Amsterdam: University Press, 1974, No. 379 pp. 497–657 Killing and mistreatment (sometimes resulting in death) of Jewish prisoners in KL Golleschau, during the evacuation of KL Golleschau on the 'death march to Loslau', in KL Obertraubling and during the evacuation march from KL Obertraubling to KL Dachau, mainly through the camp elder and a Kapo

Web links

• Kay Ingwersen: A thorn in your conscience. A village resists memory . In: Die Zeit , issue 8 of February 17, 1989

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Life data according to Ernst Klee: Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices and victims and what became of them. An encyclopedia of persons , Frankfurt am Main 2013, p. 280f
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Ernst Klee: Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices and victims and what became of them. An encyclopedia of persons , Frankfurt am Main 2013, p. 280f.
3. ^ Gerhard Hoch: From Auschwitz to Holstein. The Jewish prisoners from Fürstengrube. Hamburg 1990, p. 95
4. ^ Norbert Frei (ed.): Location and command office orders of the Auschwitz concentration camp 1940-1945 , Munich 2000, ISBN 978-3-598-24030-0 . P. 162
5. ^ Andrea Rudorff: Golleschau . In: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror. History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps . Vol. 5: Hinzert, Auschwitz, Neuengamme , p. 240
6. ^ Danuta Czech : Calendar of events in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp 1939–1945 , Reinbek 1989, pp. 827, 861 and 881.
7. ↑ Quoted in Ernst Klee: Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices and victims and what became of them. Ein Personenlexikon , Frankfurt am Main 2013, p. 281, sheet 16947 on the first Frankfurt Auschwitz trial
8. ↑ Andrea Rudorff: Althammer . In: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror. History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps . Vol. 5: Hinzert, Auschwitz, Neuengamme , p. 177
9. ↑ Andrea Rudorff: Althammer . In: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror. History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps . Vol. 5: Hinzert, Auschwitz, Neuengamme , p. 178
10. ↑ Jens-Christian Wagner: Production of death: Das KZ Mittelbau-Dora , Göttingen 2001, p. 653
11. ^ Jörg Wollenberg: Between human trafficking and the final solution. The “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” as reflected in Himmler's secret service negotiations in Holstein after the evacuation of Auschwitz , p. 13
12. ↑ Andrea Rudorff: Althammer. In: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror. History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps . Vol. 5: Hinzert, Auschwitz, Neuengamme , p. 178