Paul Otto Radomski

Paul Otto Radomski

Paul Otto Radomski (also Radomsky ; born September 21, 1902 ; † March 14, 1945 not far from Székesfehérvár in Hungary ) was a German National Socialist , SS-Sturmbannführer and camp commandant of several concentration camps .

Career start

Radomski was a so-called old fighter of the NSDAP ( membership number 96.942) and an early companion of the later RSHA leader Reinhard Heydrich at the 28th SS standard in Hamburg . His SS membership number was 2,235. In his SS personnel file he is portrayed as "primitive, [...] one of the old thugs" from the fighting time .

Time as camp commandant

When the Syrez concentration camp north of Kiev was established , Radomski became its camp commandant in 1942. It was a satellite camp of Sachsenhausen concentration camp . Until the liberation of the camp and the Ukrainian capital by the Red Army on November 6, 1943, he was conspicuous in this function with his extraordinary brutality. Under his rule even the smallest offenses were severely punished. According to statements by Ukrainian witnesses, on February 24, 1943, he gave the order for a mass execution in which three former Dynamo Kiev football players who had taken part in the Kiev death game six months earlier were shot.

On November 28, 1943, he replaced the camp commandant of the Chaidari concentration camp , Rudi Tepte . He and his Greek adjutants had previously been arrested by the Gestapo . Malnutrition, forced labor, and torture were common in the Chaidari Camp . 1,800 people had been murdered by the time it was replaced. Of these, 300 died as a result of torture in Chaidari or in the Gestapo headquarters in Athens . Radomski personally carried out the first ever execution in the camp. A Jewish prisoner was shot for breaking out of arrest. The shooting was carried out not only to warn the other inmates, but also to break their morals and highlight the ever-present threat to their lives.

In February 1944, Radomski was deposed as camp commandant after threatening to shoot his adjutant while drunk . Radomski was then sentenced to a six-month prison term and demoted to SS-Obersturmführer. He officially lost his post as camp commandant in the Chaidari concentration camp on April 15, 1944. Radomski succeeded SS leader Karl Fischer as camp commandant on February 27, 1944.

Radomski was decades after the war as lost . But in 2005 the Hamburg public prosecutor's office informed the Ukrainian authorities, who were investigating crimes in the Syrez concentration camp, that he had perished on March 14, 1945 near Székesfehérvár in Hungary.

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1. ^ Mark Mazower : Inside Hitler's Greece: The Experience of Occupation, 1941-44 . New Haven 1995, p. 227 ff .
2. ↑ Hagen Fleischer : In the cross shadow of the powers, Greece 1941-1944 . Frankfurt am Main 1986, p. 548 .
3. ↑ Markwart Herzog : The true story of the "death game" ( The true story of the "death game" )
4. ↑ ^{a b} Volodymyr Prystajko: Tschi buw "mattsch smerti"? Documenty swidtschat. Kyiv 2006, p. 101.
5. ↑ Manolis Glezos (ed.): Black Book of the Occupation . Athens 2006, p. 92 .
6. ^ Haidari (ed.): The first execution at Haidari . ( History of Chaidari ). History of Chaidari ( Memento of the original from October 8, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
7. ↑ Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (ed.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 9: Labor education camps, ghettos, youth protection camps, police detention camps, special camps, gypsy camps, forced labor camps. CH Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-57238-8 , p. 566f.