Rolf Günther (SS member)

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Rolf Günther as SS-Hauptsturmführer

Rolf Günther (born January 8, 1913 in Erfurt ; † August 1945 in Ebensee ) was a German SS-Sturmbannführer and from 1941 Adolf Eichmann's deputy in Department IV B 4 (“Emigration and Jewish Affairs”) at the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA).

Career

Günther, son of the businessman Emil Günther and his wife Lydia, had three brothers named Hans , Gerd and Klaus. At the age of 16, Günther joined the SA in 1929 and later also the NSDAP ( membership number 472.421). From 1937 Günther began his work as a criminal assistant candidate with the Gestapo in Erfurt, where he was subsequently responsible for the so-called “ Jewish question ” together with his brother Hans Günther in Department IIb 1 (“Denominations and Sects”) . After 1937 he switched from the SA to the SS (SS no. 290.130) and worked, again with his brother Hans, from July 1938 as a consultant in the newly created “ Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Vienna ”. While his brother Hans rose to head the “Central Office for Jewish Emigration” in Prague (later “Central Office for the Regulation of the Jewish Question”) in July 1939, Rolf Günther became Adolf Eichmann's deputy in Section IV B 4 (“Emigration and Jewish Affairs”) in 1941 Reich Security Main Office (RSHA). In April 1941 Günther was promoted to SS-Sturmbannführer.

Perpetrators of the holocaust

Günther was not only "decisively involved in the establishment of the first central office for Jewish emigration", but was subsequently "involved in all other new institutions of the offices active in the Jewish question". Together with Kurt Gerstein and the hygienist Professor Wilhelm Pfannenstiel , Günther visited the Belzec extermination camp in August 1942 and observed the mass murder of Jewish victims there using exhaust gases . Purpose of the trip was to review the "efficiency" of the killing methods by exhaust fumes or Zyklon B . Günther saw his intention to convert the gasification plants to Zyklon B confirmed by this visit. In October 1942 he was a participant in one of the follow-up conferences of the Wannsee Conference on the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” at the RSHA. From the beginning of 1943, together with Alois Brunner , he organized the deportation of Greek Jews to the Auschwitz concentration camp . In the meantime he worked for the inspector of the Security Police and SD in Vienna in 1943 and in Prague from 1944. Also in 1944 he is said to have participated in the interrogation of the Catholic priest Alfred Delp .

After the end of the war

After the war , Günther was interned; In August 1945 he is said to have committed suicide using poison in the US prisoner of war camp in Ebensee . This was confirmed by an affidavit by Walter Huppenkothen :

“I met him again in the last days of the war in Austria, where we both reported to the Waffen SS . We were captured with the same unit and then put in different American POW camps. When I was transferred to the permanent camp in Ebensee near Gmunden am Traunsee on July 5, 1945 , I met Sturmbannführer Günther again. On August 15, 1945 I was interrogated by the CIC , and the photograph of a man who had committed suicide in the Ebensee camp was presented to me for identification. I identified the body as that of SS-Sturmbannführer Rolf Günther. I had no doubts about the identity. "

Nevertheless, rumors persisted that Günther was supposed to have been in Argentina in the 1960s . He is said to have been localized in Germany and Denmark under the pseudonym Nils Ohlsen . In 1973 an arrest warrant was issued against Günther for his criminal activities for the RSHA. From the late 1950s onwards, his family was observed and repeatedly questioned at the instigation of the public prosecutor .

literature

  • Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich: Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .
  • Jan Björn Potthast: The Jewish Central Museum of the SS in Prague - Opponent Research and Genocide under National Socialism. Campus-Verlag, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-593-37060-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Jan Björn Potthast: The Jewish Central Museum of the SS in Prague - Opponent Research and Genocide in National Socialism. Munich 2002, p. 77 f.
  2. ↑ Eichmann's Helpers. Rolf Günther in: Aktion Reinhard Camps .
  3. ↑ Numery członków SS od 290 000 do 290 999. Rolf Günther on the seniority list of the SS. In: Dws-xip.pl.
  4. ↑ a b c Georg Bönisch: Hunting in the Underground - Still on the wanted list of the judiciary: SS henchmen, doctors, Nazi murderers. In: Der Spiegel . Issue 22, May 26, 1997, p. 74.
  5. ↑ Heinz Höhne : The Order under the Skull - The History of the SS. Augsburg 1998, p. 345 ff.
  6. ↑ Kurt Gerstein - The Christian, the gas and the death. Booklet accompanying the film, LWL media center for Westphalia Westphalia, the regional church archive of the Evangelical Church of Westphalia and Matthias-Film GmbH, 2007, ISBN 978-3-923432-55-4 (PDF; 321 kB) .
  7. ↑ See Ernst Klee : Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich. Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 209.
  8. ^ Marlis Gräfe, Bernhard Post, Andreas Schneider: The Secret State Police in the NS Gau Thuringia 1933–1945. Sources on the history of Thuringia. II. Half volume, published by the State Center for Political Education Thuringia , unchanged new edition 2005, ISBN 3-931426-83-1 .
  9. ↑ Sworn statement by Walter Huppenkothen in Nuremberg on July 11, 1947. Quoted in: Jan Björn Potthast: The Jewish Central Museum of the SS in Prague - Opponent Research and Genocide under National Socialism. Munich 2002, p. 393.
  10. ↑ Jan Björn Potthast: The Jewish Central Museum of the SS in Prague - Opponent Research and Genocide under National Socialism. Munich 2002, p. 401.
personal data
SURNAME Günther, Rolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS-Sturmbannführer and representative of Adolf Eichmann in the RSHA
DATE OF BIRTH January 8, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Erfurt
DATE OF DEATH August 1945
Place of death Ebensee