Josef Schillinger

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Josef Schillinger (born January 21, 1908 in Oberrimsingen ; † October 23, 1943 in Auschwitz ) was a German SS Oberscharführer in the Auschwitz concentration camp .

Life

Schillinger, a Böttcher by trade , had been a member of the SS since the beginning of September 1939 (SS No. 47,468). After the establishment of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp , Schillinger was employed there as a report leader in the men's camp. From the end of October 1942, Schillinger was command leader of the Chełmek external command at Auschwitz for several weeks . There, concentration camp prisoners had to dig a pond under inhumane working conditions to serve as a water reservoir. Most recently, Schillinger worked as head chef and report manager in the men's camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

On October 23, 1943, a transport from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp with 1,800 Jewish prisoners, so-called exchange Jews , arrived at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp; they had been assured that they would leave for Switzerland. Under the supervision of Rapportführer Schillinger, SS men escorted the people who had arrived from the ramp to Crematorium II . There, the unsuspecting inmates were asked in the undressing room to undress for a subsequent “disinfection”. A young Jew - a dancer named Franciszka Mann - saw through the deception and refused to take off her clothes. According to the detailed report from Filip Müller , member of the prisoner special command in Birkenau, she stole the pistol from SS-Oberscharführer Walter Quakernack and fired three times; the first shot hit Schillinger, a second shot missed Quakernack and the third injured SS-Oberscharführer Wilhelm Emmerich . The other women in the undressing room also defended themselves against their impending murder. The riot was put down by the use of machine guns, and the surviving women were then gassed . There are different representations of the process.

Schillinger died of serious gunshot wounds on the way to the hospital. His body was transferred to Oberrimsingen and buried with expressions of military honor.

Post-mortem statements and research on Schillinger

Tadeusz Borowski , an Auschwitz survivor who committed suicide in July 1951 , wrote of Schillinger: "The blow of his hand was as powerful as a club, he smashed a jaw while playing, and where he struck blood flowed." His name was often in the same breath with those Auschwitz murderers "who boasted that they personally killed tens of thousands of people with their fists, clubs or weapons."

In the criminal trial against Adolf Eichmann in 1961, the witness Aharob Beilin testified that Schillinger had committed the worst atrocities in Birkenau. The details were not discussed, but only briefly described the uprising at Crematorium 4, which led to Schillinger's death.

In an interview recorded around 2016, Auschwitz survivor Leon Henry Schwarzbaum describes the nature and circumstances of Schillinger's death. According to this, Schillinger was shot by a young Auschwitz inmate with her own revolver, which even triggered "joy" among his (SS) comrades, "because he was a brutal man." (, there min. 25).

The hobby historian Andreas Meckel successfully campaigned for the mayor of Breisach in 2003 to have Schillinger's tombstone removed from the Ehrenfeld in Oberrimsingen. Meckel had found out about the location of Schillinger's grave and did not want to accept the fact that a perpetrator of the Holocaust was commemorated with a tombstone, while millions of victims of the Holocaust were denied this personal memory. In addition, Schillinger's name was removed from the local war memorial. Schillinger's circumstances of death are documented, they stand for the resistance of the victims to their imminent murder.

literature

  • Christiane Walesch-Schneller: German Josef Schillinger. "Shot in the stomach while performing the service" - A just punishment. In: Wolfgang Proske (Ed.): Perpetrators - Helpers - Free Riders. Nazi victims from southern Baden. (= Perpetrator - helper - free rider. Volume 6). 1st edition. Kugelberg, Gerstetten 2017, ISBN 978-3-945893-06-7 , pp. 281-300.
  • Wacław Długoborski , Franciszek Piper (eds.): Auschwitz 1940–1945. Studies on the history of the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp. Verlag Staatliches Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau, Oswiecim 1999, 5 volumes: I. Construction and structure of the camp. II. The prisoners - living conditions, work and death. III. Destruction. IV. Resistance. V. Epilog., ISBN 83-85047-76-X .
  • 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 .
  • Hermann Langbein : People in Auschwitz . Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main / Berlin / Vienna 1980; ISBN 3-548-33014-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Aleksander Lasik: The organizational structure of KL Auschwitz. In: Aleksander Lasik, Franciszek Piper, Piotr Setkiewicz, Irena Strzelecka: Auschwitz 1940-1945. Studies on the history of the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp. , Volume I: Construction and structure of the camp , Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum , Oświęcim 1999, p. 237.
  2. ^ Andrea Rudorff: Chełmek . In: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 5: Hinzert, Auschwitz, Neuengamme. CH Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-52965-8 , p. 209.
  3. ↑ State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau (ed.): Auschwitz in the eyes of the SS. Oswiecim 1998, p. 241
  4. ↑ Filip Müller: special treatment. Three years in the gas chambers and crematoria at Auschwitz. Munich 1979, pp. 129-141.
  5. ↑ An exemplary case: Wilhelm Emmerich ( Memento of the original from December 7, 2015 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. at www.landesarchiv-bw.de @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.landesarchiv-bw.de
  6. ↑ a b c Sylvia Pabst: End of a period of honor - Josef Schillinger was involved in the Holocaust in Auschwitz, in his home town of Oberrimsingen he had a grave of honor for a long time ( memento of the original from August 11, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Badische Zeitung from Thursday, October 23, 2003 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.juedisches-leben-in-breisach.de
  7. ↑ a b Andreas Kilian: The "Sonderkommando Uprising" in Auschwitz-Birkenau "
  8. ↑ Franziska Mann: Resistance at the door of death on http://www.auschwitz.info
  9. ↑ Tadeusz Borowski about Josef Schillinger after the end of the war, quoted in: Waltraut Schwab: “ A thousand kilometers to Auschwitz ”, in: the daily newspaper of January 23, 2010
  10. ↑ Video at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (English / Israeli)
  11. ↑ Fact Check: Franceska Mann at snopes.com (English). March 9, 2017. Retrieved March 23, 2017
  12. ↑ Interview with Leon Harry Schwarzbaum. In: youtube. Retrieved October 8, 2020 .
  13. ↑ Waltraut Schwab: " A thousand kilometers to Auschwitz ", in: the daily newspaper of January 23, 2010
personal data
SURNAME Schillinger, Josef
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS Oberscharführer in Auschwitz concentration camp
DATE OF BIRTH January 21, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Oberrimsingen
DATE OF DEATH October 23, 1943
Place of death Auschwitz