Kurt Knittel

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Kurt Adolf Karl Knittel (born September 23, 1910 in Karlsruhe ; † January 27, 1998 ibid) was a German SS-Oberscharführer and department head in Auschwitz concentration camp and, after the Second World War, government school councilor at the high school authority in Karlsruhe.

Life

Knittel, who grew up in Baden, was trained as a primary school teacher. In 1933 he joined the SS and became a trainer at SS-Sturm 9/32 in Schwetzingen .

From 1939 Knittel was a member of the Waffen SS and was then deployed in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp . By mid-September 1942 at the latest, Knittel was transferred to Auschwitz. In Auschwitz, Knittel was with the supervision as Department VI. entrusted to the concentration camp guards. He organized training evenings in the “Comradeship Home of the Waffen SS”.

At first, the troop support was housed on the premises of the SS farm buildings, and then later in January 1942 it was transferred to the headquarters of the concentration camp. In May 1942, Knittel had his wife Annemarie, who was the group leader of the Nazi women's association, join him .

In addition to ideological training evenings, Knittel organized B. with the theme “The Retribution”, also “Cultural Evenings” with guest performances by theaters, actors and musicians, with Schwänke such as “Disturbed Wedding Night” being performed. On Monday, February 15, 1943, for example, an evening with the motto “Goethe - serious and cheerful” took place, to which SS-Hauptsturmführer Robert Mulka officially invited.

Although the systematic mass murder in the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp was carried out as a secret undertaking, it could not be kept secret, not least because everyone could smell the stench of the corpses burned in the crematoria , as Knittel confirmed.

With his ideological training courses and cultural performances, Knittel contributed to maintaining the brutality of the concentration camp personnel. Because of his theatrical appearance at the events, he was referred to by the SS guards as "Troop Jesus". Because of his actions in Auschwitz, Knittel was promoted to SS-Oberscharführer in 1943 and received the War Merit Cross, Second Class with Swords , on January 30, 1944 .

After the failed assassination attempt on July 20, 1944, on July 25, Knittel gave the lecture “National Socialism in its Position on German and European Spiritual Life”, to which all SS leaders at the Auschwitz site were ordered. But just a month later, the effects of the approaching Eastern Front were felt. The location order of August 18, 1944 also announced the restriction of “cultural life”.

Now Knittel should record all SS men who acted as actors, musicians, artists, etc. Ä. Let use. The duty roster reported that Knittel was giving the lecture The Reich in Danger at the end of 1944 . The gassings in the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp stopped on November 2, 1944.

After the evacuation of the Auschwitz concentration camp in January 1945, Knittel headed Department VI (welfare and training) in the Mittelbau concentration camp .

After the end of the war

Release from internment (1948)

Knittel was captured by the US in August 1945 and was interned in Ludwigsburg and Kornwestheim until April 1948. Knittel's Karlsruhe family doctor Robert Schwank issued him a clean bill of health in 1946 , in which he testified that Knittel could not have participated in any terrorist activities when he was assessed, and that he was friends with a Jewish classmate. In December 1948, Knittel found a job as a dramaturge for a traveling theater in Villingen . A year later he worked as a middle school teacher again in the school service. The high school authority in Karlsruhe employed him in 1957 as a consultant for elementary, middle and special schools. Two years later he was promoted to the government school board. Investigations against him by the Frankfurt am Main public prosecutor were closed in 1962. In the Auschwitz trial , his name was mentioned during the interviews with witnesses and was remembered again. The public prosecutor in the Auschwitz trial emphasized the moral guilt of the desk perpetrators , who were once again holding honorable positions in the young Federal Republic of Germany , whereby Knittel was also explicitly mentioned: "Certainly not the most serious, but in its constellation the most monstrous example of this kind for me [...] the former Oberscharführer Knittel. There is hardly a commandant or location order in the court files that does not include his name. It was he […] who made sure that the SS men, insofar as this was still possible, were still incited against their victims. And this man is continuing his beneficial work today by working as a government school councilor in Baden-Württemberg for the education of part of the German youth ”.

In the Federal Republic of Germany, Knittel was able to hold various honorary positions:

  • in the radio advisory board of the school radio at Süddeutscher Rundfunk ,
  • Managing Director of the Karlsruher Volksbühne
  • Head of a youth theater
  • Board member of the Baden University of Music

Fonts

  • Eichendorff's Heidelberg experience , in: Badische Heimat , Heft 1, 1952, p. 6ff.

literature

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. 298f.
  2. ↑ a b The Auschwitz Trial. Tape recordings, minutes, documents . Edited by the Fritz Bauer Institute Frankfurt am Main. Digital Library 2004, ISBN 3-89853-501-0 , pp. 33973/33974 (161st day of the hearing - May 21, 1965).
  3. ↑ Jens-Christian Wagner: Production of death: Das KZ Mittelbau-Dora , Göttingen 2001, p. 652
  4. ^ Robert Schwank: Explanation , at holocaust-history-archive
personal data
SURNAME Knittel, Kurt
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Knittel, Kurt Adolf Karl (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS-Oberscharführer and department head in Auschwitz concentration camp
DATE OF BIRTH September 23, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Karlsruhe
DATE OF DEATH January 27, 1998
Place of death Karlsruhe