Josef Heiden

Josef Heiden (born April 25, 1907 in Viehofen near St. Pölten , † March 7, 1949 in Innsbruck ) was a prisoner functionary in the Dachau concentration camp at the time of National Socialism .

Heiden came from St. Pölten in Austria and had been imprisoned in Dachau as a political prisoner since May 1938 because he was originally a staunch Schuschnigg supporter. In December 1941 he was released from the Dachau concentration camp because of his “merits” and joined the Waffen SS himself .

Time in Dachau

Heiden was a Revierkapo in the infirmary . The SS doctors , supporters of the SS race theory , for example, carried out series of medical experiments. Crimes such as killing prisoners with injections were largely left to Heiden-style prisoner functionaries or the SGD (non-commissioned officers of the SS medical service). The individual departments of the infirmary were headed by head nurses. Heiden had the authority to appoint these head orderlies. SS doctors only treated isolated cases that they found interesting. The rest of the work was done by inmate attendants, most of whom had never had anything to do with the sick.

Heiden ruled the infirmary. He demanded more honors from fellow prisoners than SS doctors expected. When he entered the room, the nurse had to shout "Attention" and report. The sick had to lie in "careful position" in very well-made beds, otherwise he would hit them in the face with his fist or prescribe a "zero diet". Like the SS doctors, Heiden tried to learn surgical interventions; for example, he performed appendectomy operations several times on healthy inmates. In the outpatient department of the infirmary, he operated on prisoners on a wounded finger that could have healed without an amputation. This happened several times, in the presence of the nurses and other patients.

After the end of the war, Heinrich Stöhr described the following sequence of events as a witness in the Dachau trial : inmates from the military hospital, called simulators, first beat Heiden very hard and trampled them. He then took them to the makeshift shower room between Block 1 and Block B. Here, the person was placed in a woolen blanket under the cold shower for 3-4 hours and suffered fever and chills to the point of death. Corpse bearers later carried the people out. The SS medical officer Anton Endres often assisted Heiden in the bathroom.

At the same place Heiden murdered patients whom he had selected as seriously ill by means of phenol injections. He also killed healthy prisoners on the orders of the Gestapo or the camp administration. As an executioner, Heiden carried out executions on the gallows; an SS doctor then confirmed the death. The subsequent Revierkapo Zimmermann testified in court after the end of the war that Heiden's function as executioner was an open secret in the infirmary.

A preselection was made among the patients in the infirmary. Another sorting of incapacitated inmates from the work blocks was carried out at roll call square , with these inmates walking naked past a group of camp doctors. Heiden selected prisoners with a wave of the hand: those with visible physical ailments, emaciated or gray-haired prisoners as well as those who wore bandages or who found it difficult to walk. Clerks noted the prisoner numbers. The separated were later presented to the "experts" for selection and some were transported to Mauthausen.

The then inmate Stanislav Zámečník described how he met Heiden for the first time in February 1941 during the admission procedure in the camp:

“The behavior of a functionary from the ranks of the prisoners depressed us much more than the brutality of the SS. […] The porter brought a man in a real Hercules figure in a white coat. He asked a question, then blushed with anger and punched the person dragged along by his fellow inmates in the face with all his might. When he fell to the floor, the man in the white smock began to kick the body lying on the floor, completely beside himself, and scream something about simulators. It was horrible to see a dying man beaten to death. It was with horror that I noticed that the murdering sadist was not an SS man, because his legs, which he used to hand out the kicks, were in striped prisoner pants. This was my first encounter with the Revierkapo Josef Heiden, the lord of the life and death of the sick in Dachau, a perverse person who, under the patronage of the SS, was able to publicly satisfy his perverse urges. "

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Death register of the Innsbruck registry office No. 333/1949.
2. ↑ Digitalisat the Dachau Hätftlings personal map Josef Heiden
3. ^ Stanislav Zámečník (Ed. Comité International de Dachau): That was Dachau. Luxembourg 2002, p. 160.
4. ↑ Among other things to the inmate Zdenek Meloun, who reported to the station at the end of February 1941 with a faked headache. Source: Stanislav Zámečník (Ed. Comité International de Dachau): That was Dachau. Luxembourg 2002, p. 161.
5. ^ Statement by H. Stöhr, Process Dachau, Minutes p. 341, Dachau Archive.
6. ↑ The Polish prisoner Roman Fuglewicz specifically cites the case of the judge Tadeusz Korolko from Lublin, who was murdered in this way on August 4, 1941. Roman Fuglewicz: Jak zapisano mnie na transport inwalidow, printed by Musiol, p. 336.
7. ^ Stanislav Zámečník (Ed. Comité International de Dachau): That was Dachau. Luxembourg 2002, p. 138.
8. ↑ Hermann Langbein witnessed a similar incident three months later during the admission procedure in front of the infirmary. Hermann Langbein: The stronger ones. A report , Vienna 1949, p. 41.

literature

• Stanislav Zámečník (Ed. Comité International de Dachau): That was Dachau. Luxembourg 2002. ISBN 2-87996-948-4 .