Josef Windeck

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Josef Joachim Windeck called Jupp (* 11. October 1903 in Rheydt , † July 1977 in Mönchengladbach ) was a German construction worker who because of his work as a prisoner functionary for murder in the third Frankfurt Auschwitz trial to life imprisonment plus 15 years in prison was sentenced.

Life

Windeck was the son of a bricklayer and had 17 siblings. He grew up in poor conditions. After attending school in Mönchengladbach, he became a construction worker like his father. In 1936 he was accused of calling on his colleagues to strike on a construction site and was arrested as a result. As a political prisoner he came to the Esterwegen concentration camp , from where he was then transferred by the SS to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp . He was released in the summer of 1937, but sentenced the following October to two and a half years in prison for theft . His 23 previous convictions for property crimes and his resistance during arrest aggravated the sentence. After this sentence had expired, he was transferred to the Düsseldorf police prison in March 1940, from where he was again transferred to Sachsenhausen and finally on August 29, 1940 as an " anti-social prisoner" with a black triangle with 99 other prisoners to the Auschwitz concentration camp .

Function prisoner in Auschwitz

In the Auschwitz concentration camp, Josef Windeck received prisoner no. 3,221. He was first used as a Kapo in the main camp of Auschwitz . From April 1941 to spring 1942 he was employed almost continuously as a Kapo by work details in the construction of the IG Farben Buna plant . After that, Windeck was Kapo at the main camp again. He and 600 prisoners were transferred to Auschwitz III Monowitz on October 28, 1942 . There he became the first camp elder . On December 4, 1942, Windeck slew the inmate Fritz Löhner-Beda . Windeck, who was dressed in riding boots, breeches and a dark jacket, used a dog whip to abuse prisoners. He enriched himself with the property of newly admitted prisoners, from which the report leader Josef Remmele , who protected him, also benefited. Among other things, Windeck dipped "two Jewish prisoners with one hand on their necks" into a water-filled herring barrel in April 1943, whereupon he drowned one and kicked the second to death. Windeck attracted attention because of his extremely brutal treatment of the prisoners under him. Political prisoners managed to convict him of corruption in 1943: after Remmeles had been transferred, the Political Department informed that Windeck wanted to send his wife a necklace. As a result, Windeck was locked in the camp prison ( Block 11 ) for two weeks and then assigned to the penal company in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp . After a few weeks he returned to the position of kapo in the men's camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. From late summer 1944 until the end of December 1944 he was imprisoned in the Ohrdruf forced labor camp . When he was relocated from Ohrdruf to Auschwitz, he managed to escape. Windeck was arrested again in 1945 and assigned to an infantry unit as a soldier in the Wehrmacht , where he remained until the end of the war. At the end of the war he was taken prisoner by the Soviets and sentenced there in 1949 to 25 years in a labor camp.

Trial and sentencing

Windeck returned to Germany in October 1955, where he lived undisturbed until his arrest in 1963. After a year of pre-trial detention , he was given exemption for the time being out of consideration for his poor health. In August 1966, the Frankfurt am Main public prosecutor brought charges against Windeck for the murder of fellow inmates in 117 cases. In June 1968 he was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Frankfurt am Main regional court in the 3rd Frankfurt Auschwitz trial “for murder in 2 cases, and for attempted murder in 3 cases, including pre-trial detention and forced labor in Russia, a total sentence of 15 years in prison sentenced". The aforementioned writer and hit writer Löhner-Beda did not fall into these five selected cases. Bernhard Bonitz , who was co-accused in the same proceedings and accused of murder in 82 cases, was sentenced to life imprisonment for the proven murder of a fellow inmate. Both were also deprived of their civil rights .

The Auschwitz survivor and prison inmate, Ludwig Wörl , testified to Windeck as follows: “I myself observed that in the summer or autumn of 1942 he beat seriously ill inmates in the inmate infirmary, who were to be brought before the camp doctor, with an ox pizzle. Some of his victims died on the spot ”.

After a year in prison, Windeck was released in June 1969 for health reasons. He died in Mönchengladbach in July 1977.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Ernst Klee: Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices and victims and what became of them. A dictionary of persons , Frankfurt am Main 2013, p. 437f.
  2. ↑ a b Bernd C. Wagner: IG Auschwitz. Forced labor and extermination of prisoners from the Monowitz camp 1941–1945. , Munich 2000, p. 117
  3. ↑ Günther Schwarberg : Yours is my whole heart. The story of Fritz Löhner-Beda, who wrote the most beautiful songs in the world, and why Hitler had him murdered , Göttingen 2000, pages 167 and 169
  4. ↑ a b Bernd C. Wagner: IG Auschwitz. Forced labor and extermination of prisoners from the Monowitz camp 1941–1945. , Munich 2000, pp. 117f.
  5. ↑ Bernd C. Wagner: IG Auschwitz. Forced labor and extermination of prisoners from the Monowitz camp 1941–1945. , Munich 2000, p. 121
  6. ↑ Günther Schwarberg: Yours is my whole heart. The story of Fritz Löhner-Beda, who wrote the most beautiful songs in the world, and why Hitler had him murdered , Göttingen 2000, pp. 200–210
  7. ^ Contemporary history: Lifelong for Nazi murderers . In: Frankfurter Rundschau of June 14, 2008
  8. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento from October 22, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ↑ Quoted in Ernst Klee: Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices and victims and what became of them. A dictionary of persons , Frankfurt am Main 2013, p. 437
personal data
SURNAME Windeck, Josef
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Windeck, Josef Joachim (full name); Windeck, Jupp (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German prisoner functionary in concentration camp and convicted murderer
DATE OF BIRTH October 11, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Rheydt
DATE OF DEATH July 1977
Place of death Mönchengladbach