Josef Oberhauser (SS member)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Josef "Sepp" Kaspar Oberhauser (born September 20, 1915 in Munich ; † November 22, 1979 ibid) was a member of the SS-Totenkopfverband and deployed in " Aktion T4 " and " Aktion Reinhardt ".

Youth and education

Oberhauser was born the son of the master builder Melchior Oberhauser and grew up in his parents' household. After finishing elementary school , he found employment in his uncle's farm in Markt Schwaben .

SS skull bandages

In 1934 he enlisted in the Reichswehr for 18 months and was called up to the 19th Infantry Regiment in Munich. Subsequently, he was recruited by the SS guards and came in November 1935 to SS guard association III "Saxony", which was renamed in April 1937 as part of a reorganization in SS-Totenkopfstandarte II "Brandenburg" and in Oranienburg with the main camp Sachsenhausen was stationed. When he was accepted into the SS (SS no. 288.121), he also became a member of the NSDAP . Promoted to SS Rottenführer in 1936 , he was SS Unterscharführer two years later .

attack on Poland

During the attack on Poland , Oberhauser took part as a member of the " Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler " in the 8th Army, with the rank of SS-Oberscharführer .

Action T4

After the end of the attack on Poland he did not come back to the II. SS-Totenkopfstandarte "Brandenburg", but was assigned in November 1939 to the "Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft für Heil- und Pflegeenstalten", one of several cover organizations of the Fuehrer's Chancellery that worked with the Implementation of " Operation T4 ", the killing of the mentally ill and disabled, was commissioned. In the so-called killing centers in Grafeneck , Brandenburg and Bernburg he was involved in the gassing of the selected victims as a "burner" or "corpse burner": Oberhauser was responsible for the cremation of the corpses in the crematorium ovens specially installed for this purpose .

Action Reinhardt

After the "T4" setting in August 1941 Oberhauser was in November 1941 to the staff of the " SS and Police Leader for the Lublin District", SS brigade leader Odilo Globocnik , commanded to here as part of " Operation Reinhardt " in the destruction of Jewish population of the Generalgouvernement to be used. In the judgment of the Regional Court Munich I of January 21, 1965 (Az .: 110 Ks 3/64), his activities are described as follows:

“The defendant Oberhauser - at that time SS-Oberscharführer - was a member of the staff of the SS and Police Leader in Lublin from November to Christmas 1941. He was then assigned to the camp commandant of Belzec ( Christian Wirth ) for service, who appointed him as a liaison to the staff of the SS and Police Leader and, unlike the other subordinates, did not assign him a fixed area of ​​responsibility within the camp, but instead assigned him to his held at personal disposal. As a result, Oberhauser was often seen in the camp accompanied by Wirth, without having undertaken any recognizable activity of his own or exercising independent authority.

Oberhauser was only occasionally used in carrying out the mass killings, the illegality of which he had fully recognized. On the orders of the camp commandant Wirth, from mid-March to August 1, 1942, in at least five cases, he received the rail transports arriving at the Belzec camp, each comprising at least 150 people, at the camp gate. He supervised the unloading of the transports and made sure that the train attendants did not enter the storage area and were kept on standby outside the camp in order to be able to reinforce the outer chain of guards in the event of an uprising or a desperate attempt to break out of the doomed people . All Jews who arrived with these transports were killed in the manner already described.

When the extensive expansion of the Belzec camp was started in the spring of 1942 in order to increase the extermination capacity, it was the task of the defendant to procure the necessary building materials, in particular for the construction of the larger gasification plant. Vehicles and the necessary people were available to him to carry out this task. In his work he was aware of the fact that the work carried out with his cooperation was intended to create the conditions for a considerable increase in the number of exterminations. On August 1, 1942, Wirth moved into his new office in Lublin as inspector of the three extermination camps Belzec, Treblinka and Sobibor and managed to get Oberhauser, whom he valued as a conscientious subordinate, was also transferred there. There, the staff of SS and Police Leader Globocnik gave the defendant the authority over the Ukrainian guards deployed in Lublin, who had to guard important objects. In addition, he was still available to Wirth, during whose inspection trips to the extermination camps he had to act as escort. "

- Belzec trial - judgment: LG Munich I of January 21, 1965, 110 Ks 3/64. IV. The Defendant's Duties in Belzec and Lublin.

Because of his services to the successful implementation of "Aktion Reinhardt", Oberhauser was promoted from SS-Hauptscharführer to SS-Untersturmführer and thus to the rank of officer with effect from April 20, 1943 . Before that, Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler had personally convinced himself on February 12, 1943 during a visit to the extermination camp in the Lublin area of ​​the "unique achievement of the men involved" and spoke out in favor of their promotion.

"Fight against partisans"

After the "Aktion Reinhardt" was completed, Oberhauser was transferred to Northern Italy with Globocnik and Wirth and deployed in the special division Operation R for " fighting partisans " and "deporting and exterminating Jews". On January 30, 1945 he was appointed SS-Obersturmführer . Oberhauser was in command of the Risiera di San Sabba concentration camp until it was dissolved at the end of April 1945. After that, he and his unit left for Austria , where in May 1945 he was taken prisoner by the British in Bad Gastein .

After the war and convictions

After his release from captivity, Oberhauser worked as a forest and sawmill worker in Bevensen in 1947/48. On April 13, 1948, he was arrested on the occasion of a stay in the Eastern Zone and on September 24, 1948 by a 5th criminal chamber of the Magdeburg Regional Court, formed by order 201 of the Soviet military administration , for crimes against Control Council Act No. 10 due to his membership of the SS as one criminal organization and its involvement in the killing of "euthanasia" victims in Grafeneck, Brandenburg and Bernburg was sentenced to a prison sentence of 15 years with denial of civil rights to ten years. At the same time he was classified as the main offender according to Directive 38, Article II, numbers 7 and 8. After eight years, Oberhauser was released from prison on April 28, 1956 under an amnesty .

Back in his hometown of Munich, Oberhauser worked as a casual worker and as a bar waiter until he was sentenced to four years and six months in prison on January 21, 1965 by the Munich Regional Court I in the Belzec trial for aiding and abetting collective murder in 300,000 cases and for five other crimes Aiding and abetting community murder was convicted in 150 cases each (Ref .: 110 Ks 3/64, see web link).

After he had served half of his sentence (taking into account his pre-trial detention), he was released in 1966 and worked again as a bar waiter in Munich (as such he appears in a short scene in Claude Lanzmann's film Shoah ). In April 1976, he was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment for war crimes committed in Italy . Since the Italian judiciary waived an extradition request (which had no legal basis), he did not have to face this sentence. Oberhauser died on November 22, 1979 in Munich.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ SS no. Oberhausers on SS seniority list at http://www.dws-xip.pl/
  2. ↑ http://www.holocaust-history.org/german-trials/belzec- Judgment.shtml
  3. ↑ DVD 2: Scene in the Franziskaner Poststüberl in Munich: the landlord refuses the interview (min 4.31)
personal data
SURNAME Oberhauser, Josef
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Oberhauser, Josef Kaspar (full name); Oberhauser, Sepp (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS man, member of the SS Totenkopfverband
DATE OF BIRTH September 20, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH November 22, 1979
Place of death Munich