Michael Redwitz
Michael Redwitz (born August 14, 1900 in Bayreuth , † May 29, 1946 in Landsberg am Lech ) was a German SS-Hauptsturmführer and protective custody camp leader in several concentration camps . He was sentenced to death on December 13, 1945 .
Life
Redwitz, a trained businessman, was married and had at least four children. He served as a career officer in the Wehrmacht from 1934 to 1938 . Already in September 1925 Redwitz joined the NSDAP ( membership number 17.607) and was again admitted to the party under the same membership number in 1930. A member of the SS since 1938 (SS no. 327.349), he was promoted to SS-Hauptsturmführer until 1941 .
From mid-December 1938, Redwitz worked in the Mauthausen concentration camp , where he headed the post office from 1940. Subsequently, from the beginning of February 1941, he was head of the protective custody camp in Gusen . At the beginning of April 1942, Redwitz was transferred to the Ravensbrück concentration camp as adjutant and protective custody camp leader ; then on November 20, 1942 in the Dachau concentration camp . Here he succeeded Egon Zill as First Protective Custody Camp Leader and was thus directly subordinate to the camp commandant; the other protective custody camp leaders were subordinate to him. As the First Protective Custody Camp Leader, Redwitz was responsible for the "running" of the camp, its internal order and the daily routine with the roll calls and thus for the prison conditions. This included monitoring the execution of all camp penalties , such as corporal punishment , in order to ensure that they were carried out “correctly”. Redwitz was in Dachau until mid-March 1944 and then worked in Buchenwald concentration camp for another 5 months . From August 1944 he was deployed as a soldier in the Waffen SS on the Western Front.
After the end of the war, Redwitz and 39 other members of the Dachau camp personnel were charged on November 15, 1945 in a US military court in the main Dachau trial during the Dachau trials . He was accused of having occupied one of the most important positions in the camp hierarchy and of having been responsible for the execution of all prisoner sentences between 1942 and 1944 in the Dachau concentration camp . Interrogated as a witness on his own behalf, Redwitz admitted that he had been present at a total of forty executions.
On December 13, 1945, the court found all of the war crimes defendants guilty and sentenced 36, including Redwitz, to hanging out . In the judgment, the monitoring of the execution of the camp penalties and the beating of prisoners, including with a whip, were taken into account as individual excesses at Redwitz. The sentence was in prison for war criminals Landsberg by hanging enforced.
literature
- Holger Lessing: The first Dachau trial (1945/46). Nomos, Baden-Baden 1993, ISBN 3-7890-2933-5 .
- Ernst Klee : The personal lexicon for the Third Reich: Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005. ISBN 3-596-16048-0
- Silke Schäfer: On the self-image of women in the concentration camp. The Ravensbrück camp. Berlin 2002 (Dissertation TU Berlin), urn : nbn: de: kobv: 83-opus-4303 , doi : 10.14279 / depositonce-528 .
- Case No. 000-50-2 (US vs. Martin Gottfried Weiss et al.) Tried 13 Dec. 45 in tight. Language (PDF file; 40.9 MB)
Web links
- Original document Dachau main process (PDF file; 29.4 MB)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945, Verlagsgruppe Weltbild GmbH, licensed edition, Augsburg, 2008, p. 484
- ↑ Lessing, Prozess , p. 323.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Redwitz, Michael |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German SS member and protective custody camp leader in several concentration camps |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 14, 1900 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Bayreuth |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 29, 1946 |
| Place of death | Landsberg am Lech |