Josef Hirtreiter

Josef Hirtreiter , called Sepp Hirtreiter , (born February 1, 1909 in Bruchsal ; † November 27, 1978 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German SS squad leader and was involved in Aktion T4 and Aktion Reinhardt in the Treblinka extermination camp . Because of his crimes committed in the Treblinka extermination camp, Hirtreiter was sentenced to life imprisonment on March 3, 1951 in the first Treblinka trial .

Life

Hirtreiter broke off an apprenticeship as a locksmith after completing his school career. He then worked as an unskilled worker, construction worker and bricklayer. In August 1932, Hirtreiter became a member of the SA and NSDAP . From October 1940 he was posted to the Nazi euthanasia center in Hadamar , where, according to his later statements, he performed work in the office and the kitchen. In the summer of 1942 he was briefly drafted into the Wehrmacht , but was transferred back to Hadamar after just four weeks. He was ordered to Lublin by the Berlin headquarters of Aktion T4 . From there he was transferred to the Treblinka extermination camp, where he was deployed until October 1943. Hirtreiter's job in Treblinka included monitoring the undressing of the Jewish victims. After the undressing process, he was also involved in their gassing by driving the Jews through the hose into the gas chamber.

After the end of Aktion Reinhardt , at the end of October 1943, Hirtreiter, like most of the personnel of Aktion Reinhardt , was transferred to the Adriatic Coastal Operation Zone in Trieste . Here he was a member of the special department Einsatz R , which served the extermination of Jews , the confiscation of Jewish property and the fight against partisans .

After the end of the Second World War he was arrested after police investigations on July 2, 1946 for the crime complex euthanasia crimes in Hadamar. Although Hirtreiter could not be proven to have committed any crimes in relation to his activities in the Hadamar killing center, during the interrogation he admitted after a few days that he had worked in a camp called Malkinia . From September 1946 he was imprisoned in the Darmstadt internment camp . After investigations, Malkinia was identified as the Treblinka extermination camp and Hirtreiter was charged with his crimes there before the jury court in Frankfurt am Main. The subject matter of the proceedings comprised his participation in the mass killing of Jews as well as the shooting of Jewish prisoners and the killing of small children. On March 3, 1951, Hirtreiter was sentenced to life imprisonment for his crimes committed in Treblinka.

“The court regards it as proven that Hirtreiter killed at least ten people, including small children, on their own initiative. In addition, the jury found Hirtreiter's involvement in the gassing of people during his assignment in Treblinka. Although it could not be proven to him that he was directly involved in the killing process in the death zone, what he did in connection with the undressing of the victims was one of the causes of their killing. Hirtreiter wanted to kill the Jews themselves and therefore acted as accomplices and not just as assistants. This results from the fact that his overall behavior in Treblinka only allows the conclusion that he is following the ideology that led to the establishment of Treblinka, i. H. the view that Jews adopted their inferior enemies of the people, whose extermination was inevitable, and that the killing of the Jews was right. In doing so, Hirtreiter realized features of murder under Section 211 of the Criminal Code both on the occasion of his participation in the mass killings and in his individual acts. First of all, the court regards the murder characteristic of “other low motives” as given, since the extermination of people solely out of ideological expediency and knowing their innocence should be classified as particularly despicable. In addition, Hirtreiter also acted cruelly and insidiously, especially since he helped deceive the victims in Treblinka about their fate by monitoring their undressing himself. "

Hirtreiter served his imprisonment in the Butzbach correctional facility . Hirtreiter was released from prison in 1977 due to illness. Hirtreiter last lived in a retirement home in Frankfurt am Main .

literature

• Kerstin Freudiger: The legal processing of Nazi crimes . Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2002. ISBN 3-1614-7687-5 .
• Dick de Mildt: In the Name of the people: Perpetrators of Genocide in the Post-War Prosecution in West-Germany - The 'Euthanasia' an 'Aktion Reinhard' Trial Cases . Kluwer law International, Netherlands 1996, ISBN 90-411-0185-3 .
• Peter Sandner: Administration of the Murder of the Sick - The Nassau District Association under National Socialism , Psychosozial-Verlag, Gießen 2003, ISBN 978-3-89806-320-3 (pdf; 1.1 MB)
• LG Frankfurt am Main, March 3, 1951 . In: Justice and Nazi crimes . Collection of German criminal convictions for Nazi homicides 1945–1966, Vol. VIII, edited by Adelheid L. Rüter-Ehlermann, HH Fuchs, CF Rüter . Amsterdam: University Press, 1972, No. 270, pp. 259–280 Participation in the mass killing of Jews by the accused monitoring their undressing and driving them through the 'hose' to the gas chamber. He mistreated and shot several Jewish prisoners - some in the 'military hospital' - and killed several small children who had been left behind by their relatives on the orders of the guards at Treblinka train station

Web links

• Treblinka trial
• Short biography of Hirtreiter on www.deathcamps.org

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Short biography of Hirtreiter on www.deathcamps.org
2. ↑ ^{a b} Justice and Nazi crimes - Josef Hirtreiter's proceedings ( Memento of the original from October 22, 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. 
3. ^ Adalbert Rückerl: Nazi trials in front of the court , Heidelberg 1982
4. ↑ [1]
5. ↑ From the judgment of the Frankfurt jury court Quoted in: Christian Hofmann: The first proceedings and the first Treblinka trial (criminal case against Josef Hirtreiter) on www.zukunft-brauch-erinnerung.de
6. ↑ Winfried Schunk - www.bfbag.de - Butzbach Chronicle 20th Century: " JVA-Butzbach Historisches - Memories of the prison service in the Butzbach JVA in the fifties  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. "