Vincent Nohel

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Vinzenz Nohel reads his testimony during the Mauthausen trial in spring 1946.

Vinzenz Nohel (born December 24, 1902 in Freindorf in Upper Austria ; † May 27, 1947 in Landsberg am Lech ) was an Austrian National Socialist , member of the NSDAP and, from 1939, involved in the "euthanasia" murders in the Hartheim Nazi killing center He was sentenced to death in the Dachau Mauthausen Trial in 1946 and executed in 1947 .

Life

Early life

After finishing school, Vinzenz Nohel worked for a company in Ebelsberg from 1917 to 1926 , initially as an apprentice locksmith and later as a locksmith for mass-produced items. In 1919 he was hit by a falling tree on his way home in stormy weather, sustaining a head injury. Because of a fractured skull base he had to undergo an operation in the general hospital in Linz and was unable to work for almost a year. The permanent consequences of the accident were poor memory and partial paralysis on the right side of his body.

In 1939 he worked for a company in Freindorf near Ansfelden , where he received a weekly wage of only 25  Reichsmarks (RM). Nohel was married and had four children. He could hardly support his family because of his low earnings. He tried to get additional income and therefore approached his brother Gustav Nohel as early as 1938 , who at that time had returned from the German Reich to Linz in Austria as SA brigade leader . In April 1939 he and other people were summoned by his brother to his office on Freiheitsstrasse. Then the group of people went to a person named Kaufmann in the Linz country house . Vinzenz Nohel and the other people were hired as workers for the Nazi killing center in Hartheim, swearing in to a duty of confidentiality and absolute obedience.

"Brenner" in the Hartheim killing center

Hartheim Castle, in which the Nazi killing center Hartheim was located. On the ground floor is the shed that was recreated by the memorial and in which the disabled were taken from the transport bus during the Nazi era. (2005)

From April 1940, Nohel was initially employed as an unskilled worker for various tasks, such as building an incinerator, as part of the T4 campaign in the Nazi killing center in Hartheim in Upper Austria (then called Reichsgau Oberdonau ). From May 1940 he was involved in the gassing and cremation of disabled and sick people in the killing facility headed by the T4 expert Rudolf Lonauer . Nohel's duties included breaking out gold teeth.

Nohel was part of a working group that was known as "burners" or "stokers". According to his later statement, the workers received above-average wages: 170 Reichsmarks (RM) net wage per month  , plus 50 RM separation allowance for free board and lodging, 35 RM hardship allowance as a “stoker” and 35 RM bonus as a confidentiality bonus. In addition, there was a daily ration of a quarter liter of schnapps.

After the end of Operation T4 in August 1941, the centralized “euthanasia” was discontinued and converted into a decentralized one. In Hartheim and some other institutions such as the Bernburg killing center and the Pirna-Sonnenstein killing center , the Nazi murders were continued until 1944 under the name “ Aktion 14f13 ”, with concentration camp prisoners who were sick or unable to work being killed.

As Nohel stated in his later testimony, according to his estimate by the end of 1944, “a total of around 30,000 people died” in the Hartheim killing center. The killings were stopped at the end of 1944 and by mid-January 1945 the structural traces of the killing facility had been removed by demolition and renovation work, with the incinerator being demolished last.

War Crimes Trial and Death Sentence

The US troops reached Upper Austria in early May 1945; and on May 8, 1945, VE Day , World War II ended in Europe. Nohel was arrested and questioned by the Linz criminal police on September 4, 1945. He was charged with war crimes in connection with the Mauthausen concentration camp and its sub-camps because he had participated in the murder of sick and incapable concentration camp prisoners from these camps in the NS killing center in Hartheim, and charges were brought against him.

The trial room in the Dachau internment camp with a view of the judges' table (here on December 4, 1945, during the main Dachau trial )

Nohel was one of the 61 defendants in the Mauthausen main trial , a war crimes trial of the United States Army as part of the so-called Dachau trials in the American zone of occupation at the military court in Dachau . This process took place from March 29, 1946 to May 13, 1946 in the Dachau internment camp , where the Dachau concentration camp was located until the end of April 1945 . Most of the accused consisted of SS members , most of whom had worked in Mauthausen concentration camp and its sub-camps, as well as a few civilians , including Nohel.

Nohel, referred to in the American files as "Fireman at Castle Hartheim", was "the only defendant who openly described to the court what his work in the 'euthanasia' institution Hartheim had been". He, who was involved in the murder of tens of thousands of allegedly mentally ill people , was now trying to escape conviction by feigning mental illness. However, a court-appointed commission of inquiry ruled that Nohel, although of "subnormal mentality", was fully responsible for his actions.

Vincent Nohel was on 13 May 1946 to death by the strand convicted. All 61 accused were found guilty, 58 of whom received Nohel's death penalty and three accused received life imprisonment. All of them filed a petition of review for the judgment to be reviewed. The trial ended in April 1947, with sentences reduced for a few defendants and the death penalty commuted to life imprisonment. The verdict against Vincent Nohel remained unchanged and Nohel was on May 27, 1947 prison for war criminals in Landsberg am Lech executed , where he was buried.

meaning

The Nazi killing center Hartheim was one of the centers for the extermination of people as part of Action T4 from 1940 to 1941. Even after the centralized “ euthanasia ” was stopped , it was continued as a decentralized one, and until the end of 1944, sick and disabled concentration camps were also in Hartheim - Prisoners murdered as part of "Aktion 14f13". The "factory-like" mass murder of the disabled people classified as inferior by the Nazi racial hygiene ("life unworthy of life") in the "euthanasia" killing centers served the invention and development of murder techniques, without which the murder of millions of mainly Jewish people from all over Europe in the extermination camps would not have been possible.

In his post-war interrogation, Nohel reported extensively on the "T4" killing process. His “description of a person directly involved” is one of the “most haunting sources on Hartheim”. His testimony enabled the US prosecution to establish a connection between the Mauthausen concentration camp and the Nazi killing center in Hartheim in the main Mauthausen trial later Nazi war crimes trials were used as evidence.

With the death penalty, Nohel had received the highest sentence of all those who had worked in the Nazi killing center in Hartheim. The first Hartheim trial in Upper Austria ended in November 1947 with six acquittals for five nurses and the office manager, 2½ years in prison for a transport attendant and “Brenner” and 3½ years in prison for the manager of the Hartheim transport bus driver. Two of the main perpetrators, Franz Stangl and Georg Renno , were later also on trial. Stangl, head of administration in Hartheim and then, among other things, camp commanding the Treblinka extermination camp , was sentenced to life imprisonment in Düsseldorf in 1970 for the collective murder of at least 400,000 Jews. Renno, from 1940, as deputy medical director of the Hartheim killing center, jointly responsible for the murder of around 30,000 people, came to Frankfurt am Main in 1967; the proceedings were later dropped because of Renno's inability to stand trial.

literature

Movies

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e "Statement Nohel 1 - 6". (PDF) In: www.mauthausen-memorial.at. Mauthausen concentration camp memorial , accessed on December 27, 2009 (available from the online archive >> Enter search word “Nohel”: statement by Vinzenz Nohel to the Linz criminal police on September 4, 1945).
  2. ^ A b c Brigitte Kepplinger : The Hartheim Killing Center 1940–1945. (PDF; 197 kB) In: antifa-info.at. Retrieved February 21, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Tom Matzek: The Murder Castle. On the trail of Nazi crimes in Hartheim Castle . Vienna 2002.
  4. ↑ a b c d e Florian Freund: The Dachau Mauthausen Trial . In: Documentation archive of Austrian resistance (ed.): Yearbook 2001 . Vienna 2001, p. 35–66 ( doew.at [PDF; accessed December 27, 2009]).
  5. ↑ Henry Friedlander: The Development of Murder Technique . In: Ulrich Herbert et al. (Ed.): The National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 1 . Göttingen 1998, pp. 493-507.
  6. ↑ Herwig Czech: Nazi medical crimes in the sanatorium Gugging. Background and historical context. (PDF; 791 kB) (No longer available online.) Documentation archive of the Austrian resistance, pp. 7–8 , archived from the original on July 14, 2015 ; Retrieved December 27, 2009 . 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.memorialgugging.at
  7. ↑ Reinhold Gärtner: "Den Gnadentod grant ..." (PDF; 224 kB) In: Information from GFPA No. 60. Society for Political Enlightenment (GFPA), Innsbruck and Vienna, March 1999, accessed on December 27, 2009 .
personal data
SURNAME Nohel, Vincent
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian National Socialist and Nazi perpetrator
DATE OF BIRTH December 24, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Freindorf , Upper Austria
DATE OF DEATH May 27, 1947
Place of death Landsberg am Lech