Walter Nowak (SS member)

Walter Alois Nowak (born May 12, 1912 in Dresden ; † unknown) was a German SS squad leader who acted as a nurse and transport companion in the Nazi killing center Sonnenstein and was then deployed in the Sobibor extermination camp .

Life

Nowak was a member of the NSDAP and the SS . He was a nurse and transport attendant at the Nazi killing center in Sonnenstein . He was then assigned to the Sobibór extermination camp .

There he and Erich Hermann Bauer were responsible for supervision in the hair cutting barrack. The female transport Jews had to undress after their arrival in Sobibór. If that didn't happen, SS men, Rudolf Beckmann , who was killed during the uprising in Sobibór , and Michel yelled at them. Then they were driven into the way to the gas chambers, the so-called hose. Walter Nowak and Josef Wolf , who was also killed in the uprising, and his brother Franz Wolf immediately appeared at the undressing area, and they quickly cleared the area so that it was free for the next extermination transports. The naked women were driven into the hair-cutting barracks, where young prisoners, for example 15-year-old Thomas Blatt, were waiting with scissors in hand. When the women came into the barracks in which Nowak was doing his duty, they shrank from shame. Anyone who did not obey the order to “sit down” quickly enough was beaten with whips by the SS. Their hair was cut off within half a minute. Polish Jews who refused were beaten up and taken into a corridor to the gas chambers. The hair was brought in bales from the camp to Lublin and sent by the local SS site administration to the Reimann company in Breslau , which paid half a Reichsmark for one kilogram .

Sometimes Nowak also led the external command, the forest command, which felled wood for the cremation of the corpses in the nearby forest. Nowak was often in Camp III. This was confirmed by Paul Rost after World War II . According to an older account by Jules Schelvis , he was killed by the camp inmates during the Sobibór uprising on October 14, 1943. This was confirmed by inmate Stanisław Szmajzner and Erich Hermann Bauer on September 23, 1960 during his trial in Berlin.

Nowak's time in Sobibor was not the subject of the Dresden “euthanasia” process. Paul Rost testified in 1946 that Nowak was last "with the police in Italy". Most recently, he met him in the American Habach release camp near Garmisch-Partenkirchen . Nowak wanted to go home then. After his release in 1947, an unsuccessful search for Nowak. The Pirnaer district police issued in 1946 in the house Nowak stolen watches and gold jewelry safely. During the police interrogation, his wife confirmed that he had been a member of an SS special unit in Sobibór.

literature

• Barbara Distel : Sobibor. In: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (eds.): 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 , p. 376 ff.
• 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. 438.
• Jules Schelvis : Sobibór extermination camp. Unrast-Verlag . Hamburg / Münster 2003. ISBN 3-89771-814-6
  • Sobibor. A History of a Nazi Death Camp . ed. by Bob Moore. Berg, London 2007.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jules Schelvis: Sobibor. A History of a Nazi Death Camp . ed. by Bob Moore. Berg, London 2007, p. 260. Older literature assumes that Nowak was killed on October 14, 1943 in the Sobibór extermination camp. E.g. Ernst Klee: The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 438.
2. ^ Ernst Klee: The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 438.
3. ↑ Schelvis: Sobibór extermination camp. P. 82 and p. 324, note 204.
4. ↑ Schelvis: Sobibór extermination camp. P. 83 and p. 324 note 205.
5. ↑ Schelvis: Sobibór extermination camp. P. 84.
6. ↑ ^{a b} Schelvis: Sobibór extermination camp. P. 307.
7. ↑ ^{a b c} Jules Schelvis: Sobibor. A History of a Nazi Death Camp . ed. by Bob Moore. Berg, London 2007, p. 260.
8. ↑ Schelvis: Sobibór extermination camp . P. 307.
9. ↑ Joachim Stephan Hohmann: The "Euthanasia" process Dresden 1947. A contemporary historical documentation . P. Lang, Frankfurt / M. 1993, p. 259.
10. ↑ Julius Scharnetzky: "After all, we all [...] came out of euthanasia." On the personal connection between "Aktion T4" and "Aktion Reinhardt" using the example of the staff at the Sonnenstein killing center. In: Günther Heydemann, Jan Erik Schulte u. Francesca Weil (Ed.): Saxony and National Socialism . V&R, Göttingen 2014, p. 209.