Viktor Pestek

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Viktor Pestek (born April 18, 1924 in Oberscheroutz near Chernivtsi , † October 8, 1944 in Międzybrodzie Bialskie ) was an SS-Unterscharfuhrer who was deployed as a security guard in Auschwitz-Birkenau and, according to various testimonies, helped a Jewish prisoner escape from there , was caught and executed while attempting to escape.

origin

According to Hermann Langbein, Pestek's father was a German-speaking blacksmith in Bukowina and owned a small farm. Viktor Pestek is said to have learned his father's profession and raised a Catholic.

Service in the SS

Pestek is said to have joined the SS out of a thirst for adventure . He was used on the Eastern Front. There he is said to have been injured in an ordered massacre of villagers, allegedly partisans . He had to wait in a barn in the village until the SS was rescued the following day. Russians helped him and provided him with water. This reawakened his Catholic faith . After his recovery he was classified as unfit for the front and was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp for guard duty.

Escape actions

Pestek is said to have fallen in love with the Jewish prisoner Renée Neumanová (Neumann) and got her a job as a block clerk . He then wanted to help her and other inmates escape. There are no indications that she returned his affection. She refused to disguise her as an SS woman and to flee without her mother.

In internal conversations, prisoners described Pestek as decent and humane. He is said to have discussed his escape plans with the prisoners Rudolf Vrba and Alfréd Wetzler . However, the latter rejected his proposals as too risky after similar escape plans by other prisoners were exposed in September 1944 through betrayal by the SS interlocutors, who received rewards for this, and those who wanted to flee were executed. Pestek then approached the former Czech army officer and block elder Vitezlav Lederer . In return for a successful escape, he had promised him help with submerging in Bohemia . According to historian Ruth Linn , Pestek had hoped for advantages for the post-war period after the Red Army occupied his Bukovinian homeland in March 1944. On April 5, 1944, after he had obtained an SS uniform and vacation papers for camouflage and had made his SS comrades drunk, he fled by train to Prague . In Prague and later in Pilsen they were hidden by acquaintances of Lederer's.

Lederer later testified about the escape:

“(…) Raised my arm in the Hitler salute, I drove through the iron gate of the family camp . My 'colleague' SS Rottenführer Viktor Pestek, who was on duty at the time, opened the gate for me. He reported to his successor, who was relieving him of the night shift, that he was going on vacation. In Pestek's company, I went through the chain of posts. The slogan 'inkwell' opened the barriers for us. When Pestek and I got to the nearby Auschwitz train station at 8:30 p.m., we could just jump on the approaching express train. (...) "

Pestek and Lederer now planned to free more prisoners. To do this, they had documents falsified which identified Pestek as an SS leader and authorized him to fetch three prisoners from Auschwitz for interrogation. On May 23, Pestek and Lederer drove to Auschwitz in SS uniforms. At the train station Pestek was recognized by SS members and arrested; Lederer was able to flee. He was initially detained in the main camp of Auschwitz in the bunker of Block 11 and interrogated under abuse.

Sentencing and execution

According to Wilhelm Boger in the first Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial in 1963 was due Pestek favoring inmates and desertion tried and executed by firing squad:

“Pestek was properly tried and executed by an SS and police court at the Katowice branch . The trial against Pestek took place in Auschwitz. The clerk, Unterscharführer Mertnes, was present, as was the execution of the sentence, which was carried out in Miedzebrodze . "

- Wilhelm Boger in 1963 in the first Auschwitz trial in Frankfurt

literature

  • Hermann Langbein : People in Auschwitz , Ullstein, Munich and Frankfurt a. M., 1980, pp. 494-501.
  • Erich Kulka : Escape from Auschwitz. Bergin & Garvey Publishers, 1986, ISBN 0-89789-088-4
  • 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 .
  • Henryk Świebocki: Escape with the help of SS members. In: Wacław Długoborski , Franciszek Piper (eds.): Auschwitz 1940-1945. Studies on the history of the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp. III. Volume Resistance , Verlag Staatliches Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau, Oswiecim 1999, ISBN 83-85047-76-X , pp. 275f.
  • Alan J. Levine: Captivity, Flight, and Survival in World War II. Frederick Praeger, 2000, ISBN 978-0-275-96955-4 , pp. 215-225
  • Ruth Linn: Escaping Auschwitz / A culture of forgetting , Cornell University Press, 2004, p. 15f.

Web links

www.ghetto-theresienstadt.info:

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Date and place of birth and date of death according to Ernst Klee: Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices and victims and what became of them. An encyclopedia of persons , Frankfurt am Main 2013, p. 312
  2. ^ Hermann Langbein: People in Auschwitz , Ullstein, Munich and Frankfurt am Main, 1980, p. 494.
  3. ^ Hermann Langbein: People in Auschwitz , Ullstein, Munich and Frankfurt a. M., 1980, pp. 494f.
  4. ↑ ghetto-theresienstadt.info: Victor Pestek
  5. ^ A b Alan J. Levine: Captivity, Flight, and Survival in World War II. Frederick Praeger Verlag, 2000, ISBN 978-0-275-96955-4 , p. 216
  6. ^ Hermann Langbein: People in Auschwitz , Munich and Frankfurt a. M., 1980, p. 495.
  7. ↑ also: Vítězslav Lederer, see article in the Czech Wikipedia cs: Vítězslav Lederer , also: Siegfried Lederer, see Randolph L. Braham : The politics of genocide. The Holocaust in Hungary , Columbia University Press, New York 1981, ISBN 0-231-05208-1 , p. 709
  8. ^ Hermann Langbein: People in Auschwitz , Ullstein, Munich and Frankfurt a. M., 1980, p. 498
  9. ↑ Ruth Linn: Escaping Auschwitz / A culture of forgetting , Cornell University Press, 2004, p. 15.
  10. ↑ Lederer, Vitezslav on www.hagalil.com
  11. ^ Hermann Langbein: People in Auschwitz , 1980, p. 498.
  12. ^ Ernst Klee: Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices and victims and what became of them. An encyclopedia of persons , Frankfurt am Main 2013, p. 312
  13. ↑ Quoted in: Hermann Langbein: People in Auschwitz , Ullstein, Munich and Frankfurt a. M., 1980, p. 499.
personal data
SURNAME Pestek, Viktor
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Romanian SS Rottenführer in Auschwitz concentration camp
DATE OF BIRTH April 18, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Oberscheroutz
DATE OF DEATH October 8, 1944
Place of death Międzybrodzie Bialskie