Ludwig Woerl

Ludwig Wörl (born February 28, 1906 in Munich ; † August 27, 1967 there ) was a German resistance fighter against National Socialism and a prisoner officer in the Dachau and Auschwitz concentration camps .

Life

Ludwig Wörl was politically independent, a carpenter's assistant and an anti-fascist . In 1934 he took part in a leaflet campaign aimed at informing Munich citizens about the inhumane conditions in the Dachau concentration camp (“This is how Dachau”). Wörl was then denounced, arrested by the Gestapo on May 5, 1934 and shortly thereafter sent to the Dachau concentration camp. Despite being mistreated, Wörl did not make a confession during the interrogation and spent nine months mostly in dark custody in the camp's own detention building. After being released from the detention center, he headed the camp joinery. After Wörl was forced out of this position due to the intrigues of criminal inmates, he came to the inmate infirmary as a nurse. Wörl already had previous experience in nursing, as he had belonged to a medical column of the Red Cross before the National Socialists came to power . The X-ray station in the prisoner infirmary was under his control. Wörl continued his education with medical literature and instructed prisoners working in the HKB in nursing science . Among other things, he was able to treat Kurt Schumacher, who was seriously ill with heart disease, with stolen medication. In the meantime he was also transferred to the Flossenbürg concentration camp .

On August 19, 1942, 17 prisoner attendants and clerks, including Wörl and Hermann Langbein , were transferred from Dachau to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where he was given the prisoner number 60,363. When the transport with Wörl from Dachau arrived in Auschwitz, a typhus epidemic was rampant there . As the first camp elder at the HKB in Auschwitz-Monowitz, Wörl played a key role in establishing medical care for sick prisoners there. However, he was not a doctor, which, despite his great commitment, had a negative effect on the treatment of patients and the operation of the prisoner infirmary. Wörl forged selection lists , hid prisoners and saved Jewish doctors from gassing by using them in the prisoner infirmary. In March 1943 he became a camp elder of the HKB in the main camp of Auschwitz .

At the end of August 1943, Wörl and Langbein were locked in the bunker in Block 11 for three months because he had not followed the instructions of the camp doctors. The Polish physician Władysław Alexander Dering succeeded Wörl as camp elder in the HKB of the main camp . After Arthur Liebehenschel became camp commandant of the Auschwitz main camp, he appointed Wörl as the camp's elder. Due to intrigues, Wörl was replaced as camp elder. In the summer of 1944, Wörl became camp elder in the Günthergrube satellite camp in Auschwitz. There, too, he stood up for his fellow inmates. In the course of the "evacuation" of the Auschwitz concentration camp, Wörl helped fellow prisoners to escape on the death marches . He himself was "evacuated" to the Mauthausen concentration camp and liberated by members of the US Army in the Ebensee subcamp in Mauthausen at the beginning of May 1945 .

Wörl returned to Munich, where he again lived under the simplest of circumstances. According to Langbein, Wörl was bitter after his return to Munich and, for fear of being "hosed", should not have sought medical treatment despite the illness. His marriage had been divorced in 1940. Due to illness he was 70% unable to work and could no longer work in his profession. As a businessman, he ran a magazine kiosk in Munich. Wörl maintained contact with Auschwitz survivors and, as a former prisoner functionary, was very well informed about what was happening in the camp. He made himself available as a witness for Nazi trials or helped find witnesses. From 1955 he was in contact with Langbein, who was Secretary General of the IAK at the time . From spring 1958 at the latest, Wörl headed the Bavarian regional group of the German Auschwitz Committee. Despite his critical stance towards the IAK, Wörl began working with the organization in 1958. At his instigation, a list of former members of the camp SS was compiled, which later became the basis for a card index compiled by Langbein. Wörl became chairman of the Organization of Former Auschwitz Prisoners in Germany and kept the memory of the victims of the concentration camps in the German population alive. As a witness he testified in the first Auschwitz trial in Frankfurt :

“The witness Ludwig Wörl made it clear that the life of a child in Auschwitz was also irrelevant. Before the Frankfurt jury, he reported that he had seen the defendant Kaduk drive several children to the gas chambers with a pistol. After this testimony, a trial observer reported, Wörl suddenly jumped up from his witness chair, turned in the direction of the dock and called: Where is Kaduk? You stab them in the back with the gun, so, so. The witness showed how Kaduk drove the children to their death at the time. Thereupon, the observer further reports, Kaduk jumped up and yelled at Wörl with wild words - although he could not be understood. Only when the chief judge called Hofmeyer sit down! Don't yell at the witness! and police had pushed the defendant Kaduk back into his chair, the situation would have calmed down again. "

Bruno Baum writes about Wörl in his book Resistance in Auschwitz :

“... as the camp elder of the hospital ... contributed a lot to improving the atmosphere, ie a number of criminal bandits were removed from their positions. The terrible sanitary conditions could now also be changed. Later, as the camp elder of the main camp ... he also fought vigorously against the professional criminals ... Finally, he was replaced as camp elder and transferred to a sentence ... "

Hermann Langbein judges Wörl as follows:

"The SS had made him Führer, and he didn't have the strength to withstand all the temptations the Führer principle offered to those who were singled out from the crowd."

After his death in 1967 Wörl was buried in the Munich forest cemetery.

Honors

On March 19, 1963, Wörl was named Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem . In 1966 he received the Leo Baeck Prize . In 1995 the Ludwig-Wörl-Weg was named after him in Munich.

literature

• Daniel Fraenkel, Jakob Borut: Lexicon of the Righteous Among the Nations: Germans and Austrians , Volume 1. Wallstein, Göttingen 2005, ISBN 978-3-89244900-3 .
• Hermann Langbein: People in Auschwitz. Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main 1980, ISBN 3-548-33014-2 .
• Freiburg circular, number 61/64, July 1965 (pdf; 8.4 MB)
• Bruno Baum: Resistance in Auschwitz. Congress, Berlin 1957/1962.
• Ernst Klee : Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices and victims and what became of them. A dictionary of persons. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2013, ISBN 978-3-10-039333-3 .
• Katharina Stengel: Hermann Langbein. An Auschwitz survivor in the postwar memory-political conflicts. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main / New York 2012, ISBN 978-3-593-39788-7 .

Web links

• Ludwig Wörl on the Yad Vashem website

Individual evidence

1. ^ Precise date and place of birth according to Ernst Klee: Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices and victims and what became of them. Ein Personenlexikon , Frankfurt am Main 2013, p. 441 and precise date and place of death according to Oberbayerisches Archiv , Volume 104, 1979, p. 249
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Freiburger Rundbrief, number 61/64, July 1965, p. 94f.
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Ernst Klee: Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices and victims and what became of them. A dictionary of persons. Frankfurt am Main 2013, p. 441.
4. ^ Stanislav Zámečník : (Ed. Comité International de Dachau): That was Dachau. Luxemburg 2002, ISBN 2-87996-948-4 , p. 170.
5. ↑ ^{a b} Bernd C. Wagner: IG Auschwitz. Forced labor and extermination of prisoners from the Monowitz camp 1941–1945. Munich 2000, p. 164f.
6. ^ Hermann Langbein: People in Auschwitz. Frankfurt am Main / Berlin / Vienna 1980, pp. 253ff.
7. ↑ Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (ed.): 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. 245.
8. ^ Hermann Langbein: People in Auschwitz. Frankfurt am Main / Berlin / Vienna 1980, p. 545.
9. ↑ Katharina Stengel: Hermann Langbein. An Auschwitz survivor in the postwar memory-political conflicts. Frankfurt am Main / New York 2012, p. 333.
10. ↑ Katharina Stengel: Hermann Langbein. An Auschwitz survivor in the postwar memory-political conflicts. Frankfurt am Main / New York 2012, p. 333ff.
11. ^ ^{A b} Daniel Fraenkel, Jakob Borut: Lexicon of the Righteous Among the Nations: Germans and Austrians , Volume 1. Göttingen 2005, p. 289f.
12. ↑ Ludwig Wörl during a testimony during the first Frankfurt Auschwitz trial. Quoted from: Federal Agency for Civic Education - Right-Wing Extremism .
13. ↑ meant: in the camp
14. ↑ p. 67, only in the new edition 1962. The first edition from 1949 mentions Wörl with only one word. What is editorially interesting for Baum's changes is that he has removed extensive passages about Hermann Langbein in this section (Langbein disappears by name from the whole book, is now only called "the writer") and instead inserted this section about Wörl. Langbein had meanwhile become a critic of the Soviet Union.
15. ↑ Hermann Langbein about Ludwig Wörl. Quoted from: Ernst Klee: Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices and victims and what became of them. A dictionary of persons. Frankfurt am Main 2013, p. 441.
16. ↑ Grab - Ludwig Wörl ( Memento of the original from May 8, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
17. ↑ Central Council of Jews in Germany - winner of the Leo Baeck Prize since 1957