Rudolf Beckmann (SS member)

Rudolf Beckmann (born February 20, 1910 in Osnabrück , † October 14, 1943 in the Sobibór extermination camp ) was a German SS Oberscharführer in the Sobibór extermination camp. He was stabbed to death by inmates during the Sobibór uprising . Beckmann was a member of the NSDAP ( membership number 305.721) and the SS . Nothing is known about his early life.

SS career

Beckmann was initially a corpse incinerator in the Nazi killing centers Grafeneck and Hadamar , where the sick were gassed, as part of the T4 campaign . In “ Aktion Reinhardt ” he came to camp Sobibor, where he was mainly employed in camp II as the head of the sorting command that sorted clothing and was responsible for keeping horses.

In Sobibór

“After the arriving Jews had reached the ramp, they had to strip naked and put all their clothes and luggage aside. Those who could not walk were taken away in carts. ”If this did not happen or if this happened too slowly, their clothes were forcibly torn from their bodies. Then the order was given to go to the bath house (the gas chamber ). Before that, they had to pass a counter where Alfred Ittner was sitting, who took away all valuables such as gold and other jewelry. When they were in the gas chamber, Walter Nowak and the Wolf brothers came and took the clothes to the nearby luggage and sorting barracks. Then came the command of Rudolf Beckmann and Paul Groth , who stuffed all papers, documents and objects that did not get into the sorting barracks into sacks and brought them to the cremation site. The ground was then raked. "All of this had to be done at high speed so that the next group of Jews could be gassed as quickly as possible."

He also worked as an administrative manager in the so-called forester's house. During the Sobibór uprising, it was planned that Beckmann and Steffl should be liquidated there. There both were taken by surprise behind their desks during the uprising on October 14, 1943 and killed with knives by Chaim Engel and Kapo Pożyczki. They took their pistols. Like the other SS members who were killed, Beckmann was buried with military honors in the Chełmer military cemetery. Franz Suchomel arranged the Beckmann estate .

literature

• Barbara Distel : Sobibor: In: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (Hrsg.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 8: Riga, Warsaw, Vaivara, Kaunas, Płaszów, Kulmhof / Chełmno, Bełżec, Sobibór, Treblinka. CH Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-57237-1 .
• Jules Schelvis : Sobibór extermination camp. Unrast-Verlag. Hamburg / Münster 2003. ISBN 3-89771-814-6

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Ernst Klee : The cultural lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 37.
2. ↑ Schelvis: Sobibór extermination camp, p. 294 (see literature)
3. ↑ Schelvis: Sobibór extermination camp. P. 84.
4. ↑ ^{a b} Schelvis: Sobibór extermination camp. P. 82.
5. ↑ Schlevis: Sobibor extermination camp. P. 191.
6. ↑ Online presence of Museum Wlodawa (Poland) ( Memento of the original from May 31, 2009 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. : Pictures of the burial of the military ceremony; Text in Polish