Karl Buck

Karl Buck as camp commandant in his car

Karl Gustav Wilhelm Buck (born November 17, 1894 in Stuttgart , † June 11, 1977 in Rudersberg ) was a German SS-Hauptsturmführer and camp commandant. From 1933 to 1940 Buck was successively in command of the Württemberg camps in Heuberg , Oberer Kuhberg and protective custody camps Welzheim , and from 1940 of the Schirmeck-Vorbruck security camp in Alsace .

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Life until 1933

Karl Buck began an apprenticeship as a mechanic in Esslingen in 1910. After completing his apprenticeship, he entered the military in 1913 and began his career as an officer. In the First World War 1914 to 1918 front operations followed: on the Russian, Serbian, Italian and the Western Front. In 1917 Buck was promoted to lieutenant. For his work in the war he was awarded the Iron Cross, First Class . In 1919 he was released as a first lieutenant and began studying at the Esslingen engineering school. In 1920 he then took up a position as an engineer in a cement factory. In the same year he married and shortly afterwards his daughter was born. In 1921 and from 1924 to 1929 there were longer professional stays abroad in Portugal and Chile . He lost his left leg in an accident at work in Chile in 1930; then he returned to Germany.

After his accident, Buck was initially unemployed. In March 1931 he joined the NSDAP (got the number 759.070) and became a member of the SA . In January 1932 he also became district leader of the NSDAP in Welzheim . Professionally, he began working for the Gestapo . After Hitler's appointment as Chancellor, he was able to switch to the Stuttgart Gestapo ( protective custody department ) thanks to his contacts . Later he also took over the management of this department. From the SA he switched to the SS , where he had the number 490.187.

Activity as a commander

From April to November 1933 Buck was the commandant of the Heuberg camp. This had to be closed again in November 1933 because the Wehrmacht needed new training areas on the Heuberg military training area. Karl Buck was responsible for preparing the Oberer Kuhberg camp near Ulm. Prisoners from the Heuberg camp were also called in to carry out the work. Then Buck was its commandant until the Oberer Kuhberg camp was closed in July 1935. As head of the protective custody department, he was obliged to find a site for a new camp and to set it up. For this purpose he found the site of the former district court and district court prison in Welzheim, and after the camp was set up, he also took over its management. He remained in command of the Welzheim camp until July 17, 1940, when he was appointed commandant of the Schirmeck-Vorbruck security camp in Alsace; he held this position until its dissolution in late summer 1944. He was probably the only camp commandant in the Nazi regime who held this position during the entire Nazi era. Shortly before its end, on July 20, 1944, he received the rank of SS-Hauptsturmführer .

Heuberg camp

The Heuberg camp was set up by the National Socialists as one of their first concentration camps in Germany on March 20, 1933. Since April 28, 1933, it was under the independent department of the Württemberg Political Police and thus the Württemberg Ministry of the Interior. Buck was initially deputy camp commandant. In mid-April he took over the management from Max Kaufmann . Numerous prisoner reports show that this change led to a tightening of prison conditions.

Ill- treatment and torture were part of everyday life in the camp under the camp leadership of Karl Buck . In the so-called " beating cell" the prisoners were beaten to unconsciousness with wooden sticks and belts and kicked with police boots. Torture occurred in the courtyard; the prisoners were threatened with death by shooting. However, since the death of the prisoners on the Heuberg was not an explicit goal, the abuse was usually stopped before it resulted in death. Only the murder of the communist of Jewish origin Simon Leibowitsch could be proven ; however, there are indications of further deaths in the camp. The inmates were humiliated and degraded by doing pointless work. For example, they had to scrape out the fly dirt on the corridor windows with newspaper or clean the stairs upside down, whereupon dirty water was poured over them again.

After the end of the war

After the war ended, Buck was arrested in 1945. Both the French and the English were investigating him; it was pushed back and forth for a long time. He was sentenced to death twice by the French and once by the English for murder and aiding and abetting murder in the Schirmeck camp . However, he was later pardoned and the death penalty commuted to life imprisonment . In the course of the Franco-German reconciliation through the release of the prisoners of war , he was released in September 1955 and extradited to Germany. Seven proceedings were initiated against him there - three at the Stuttgart public prosecutor, three at the Ulm public prosecutor and one at the Hechingen public prosecutor . All were hired and Buck was officially removed from prosecution on August 27, 1957 on the grounds:

"Because Buck's established crimes were either statute-barred or had already been tried by Allied courts." (V AR 34/57)

Buck's failure to convict resulted in part from an Allied Act - anyone convicted by an English, French or American court could not be tried again for the same offense in a German court. Another reason, no doubt, was that Buck had friends who made sure that all trials against him failed; the files of the German public prosecutor's offices were destroyed despite their archival value.

From his release until his death, Buck lived in Rudersberg , just under 15 km from Welzheim. There he was "very well regarded" and raised chickens.

literature

• Myrah Adams and Rudolf Renz (Red.): Württembergisches Schutzhaftlager Ulm - an early concentration camp under National Socialism (1933–1935) , Oberschulamt Tübingen, Tübingen 2004, ISBN 3-9805396-6-0 ( [1] PDF, 4.7 MB) .
• Anita Awosusi and Andreas Pflock: Sinti and Roma in the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp. Suggestions for a memorial visit. History - Tour - Biographies - Information , Documentation and Cultural Center of German Sinti and Roma , Heidelberg 2006, ISBN 978-3-929446-19-7 .
• Markus Kienle: The Heuberg concentration camp near Stetten on the cold market , Klemm & Oelschläger, Ulm 1998, ISBN 3-932577-10-8 .
• Markus Kienle: Heuberg. In: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 2: Early camp, Dachau, Emsland camp. CH Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-52962-3 , pp. 126-128.
• State Center for Civic Education Baden-Württemberg (ed.): Memorials - places of learning about National Socialist terror . In: Politics & teaching - magazine for the practice of political education. Vol. 34, No. 8, 2008, ISSN  0344-3531 ( [2] PDF, 2.0 MB).
• Graham Wilson: The Welzheim Concentration Camp. A documentation , 1980. In: Gerd Keller; Graham Wilson: Welzheim concentration camp . Two documentaries about the concentration camp with an afterword by Alfred Hausser, Welzheim after 1988.

Web links

• Oberer Kuhberg concentration camp with a photo of Buck
• University of West England: Trial of Karl Buck and ten other War Criminals , British Military Court, Wuppertal, 6. – 10. May 1946.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ And take us straight to the Third Reich . Warning against the law. Archived from the original on September 27, 2007. Retrieved December 5, 2008.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Andreas Pflock: Security camp Schirmeck-Vorbruck: A first overview of the history of events and reception . Online memorial forum. 2006. Retrieved December 5, 2008.
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Graham Wilson: The Welzheim concentration camp. A documentation. 1980.
4. ↑ Institutional responsibility and guards 2. Archived from the original on October 21, 2014 ; accessed on October 21, 2014 . 
5. ↑ ^{a b c} Markus Kienle: Heuberg. In: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel, Angelika Königseder: The place of terror. History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 2. Early Camp. Dachau. Emsland camp. CH Beck, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-406-52962-3 , pp. 126-128.