Karl Friedrich Steinberg

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Karl Friedrich (Fritz) Steinberg (born October 22, 1897 in Atzendorf , † November 4, 1950 in Waldheim ) was a German SS sergeant and war criminal . As the director of crematoria in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp , he was deeply involved in the Holocaust .

Life

Steinberg was a bricklayer by trade. He became a member of the NSDAP in 1940 so that, according to his post-war testimony, he could join the police force. Instead he was a member of the Waffen SS from March 1941 and was sent to Auschwitz concentration camp in April of that year. First he was a security guard in the concentration camp and after a short training from July 1941 as a block leader and then temporarily as a commando leader of the penal company . The prisoner command under his supervision consisted of 250 prisoners of various nationalities, including Jews, and had to create the road from the train station to the camp, among other things.

Steinberg was promoted to SS-Unterscharführer in 1943. Until Erich Mußfeldt arrived from the Majdanek concentration camp in May 1944, Steinberg was briefly head of Birkenau crematoria II and III , in which special detachments were also deployed. Hauptscharführer Paul Steinmetz, who was deployed with Steinberg in the Auschwitz concentration camp, later stated that Steinberg was “a close colleague of Moll ” in the course of the gassings . According to Auschwitz survivor Miklós Nyiszli , Steinberg was “intelligent and cruel at the same time”. After the Auschwitz concentration camp was cleared in January 1945 at the latest, he was still deployed in the Ebensee concentration camp , a satellite camp of the Mauthausen concentration camp .

After the end of the Second World War he was in detention. In the Waldheim trials , Steinberg was accused as a war criminal of mistreating prisoners and participating in their shooting. He admitted that he had been mistreated and that he had led eight Polish prisoners in Auschwitz to the so-called sand pit, where they were shot while he was there. Because of this, he was sentenced to death by the VII. Large Criminal Chamber of the Chemnitz Regional Court in Waldheim on June 9, 1950. The judgment was confirmed by the Dresden Higher Regional Court. Steinberg was executed on November 4, 1950 in Waldheim using lethal injection.

Unaware of his execution, the public prosecutor's office at the Frankfurt am Main regional court issued an arrest warrant against Steinberg on April 12, 1960 in the course of the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Ernst Klee: Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices, victims and what became of them. A dictionary of persons , Frankfurt am Main 2013, p. 388
  2. ↑ a b Bernd Withöft: The death sentences of the Waldheim trials , dissertation Vienna 2008, revised 2014, p. 80
  3. ↑ a b Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum (ed.): Auschwitz death books . Volume 1: Reports , Munich 1995, section perpetrator biographies, p. 300
  4. ↑ Andrej Angrick : "Aktion 1005" - Removal of traces of Nazi mass crimes 1942–1945: A "secret Reich matter" in the area of ​​conflict between the turn of the war and propaganda. Wallstein, 2018, two volumes, 1381 pages. ISBN 978-3-8353-3268-3 , Volume 1, p. 993
  5. ↑ Bernd Withöft: The death sentences of the Waldheim trials , dissertation Vienna 2008, revised 2014, p. 80ff.
  6. ^ GDR justice and Nazi crimes
  7. ^ Finding aids in the archive of the Fritz Bauer Institute : criminal case against Burger u. a. 4 Ks 3/63 main files, vol. 1 - vol. 124
personal data
SURNAME Steinberg, Karl Friedrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Steinberg, Fritz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS-Unterscharführer and head of crematoria in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp
DATE OF BIRTH October 22, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Atzendorf
DATE OF DEATH November 4th 1950
Place of death Waldheim