Walter Többens

Walter Caspar Többens , also Walther Többens , (born May 19, 1909 in Meppen ; † November 16, 1954 ) was the owner of the Többenswerke in the Warsaw ghetto .

Life

Walter Többens, a businessman by trade, was employed in a coffee roastery in Bremen until 1934 . Since 1932 he has acquired seven shops that had previously belonged to Jewish citizens (see Aryanization ). He joined the NSDAP in September 1937 ( membership number 5,349,852).

After the outbreak of the Second World War , Többens was appointed by Dr. Lautz, managing director of the wholesale and retail business group in Berlin, wholesaler in the Tomaschow district . Jewish slave laborers had to work there for its production. In 1941, Többens was brought to the Warsaw Ghetto , again by Lautz, to carry out Wehrmacht orders as a member of a production commission , which were to be processed via the German transfer office . Without equity, Többens was able to make himself independent through corruption and set up the Többens factory in the Warsaw ghetto. In addition to tailoring, shoemaking and skinning, the production facilities also included a hat and rubber factory. Up to 25,000 Jewish forced laborers had to do forced labor in these production facilities under inhumane living and working conditions. There were regular selections and women workers were deported to the Treblinka extermination camp .

At the beginning of 1943, the Higher SS and Police Leader Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger was requested by Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler to have the Többens factory checked. However, Többens was able to avert the audit and was appointed by Odilo Globocnik at the beginning of 1943 as "authorized representative for the relocation of the Jewish factories in Warsaw" in order to be able to transfer the workers of his factories and their families to Lublin camps. This prevented the SS from taking over the company and the transfer of the Jewish workers to the Majdanek concentration camp ordered by Himmler . In April and May 1943, during the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto , 10,000 forced laborers and their families were transferred from Többens factories to the Poniatowa forced labor camp. The production facilities of the Többenswerke were also relocated to Poniatowa. On November 4, 1943, about 15,000 Jews from the labor camp were shot as part of the “ Aktion Erntefest ”.

Többens then set up another production facility in Warsaw and in February 1944 acquired the Bambergerhaus in Bremen for 1.4 million RM . Due to the war, Többens relocated its production to Delmenhorst , probably at the end of 1944 .

After the end of the war

On September 11, 1945, Többens was arrested and interned by members of the Counter Intelligence Corps in Bremen. In January 1946 he managed to escape from internment and after his recapture in June 1946 he was able to escape again from internment in Darmstadt on November 22, 1946. The Bremen Spruchkammer sentenced him in absentia to the main culpable war criminal . After the end of the denazification , Többens surrendered to the authorities voluntarily in April 1951 and was classified only as a “fellow traveler” at the end of May 1952, also due to exonerating statements by former employees. Többens died in November 1954 together with his secretary in a car accident. The Többensbetrieb went in June 1988 in insolvency .

literature

• Günther Schwarberg : The ghetto. , 1st edition. Steidl, Göttingen 1989, ISBN 3-88243-108-3 .
• Josef Wulf : The Third Reich and its executors. The liquidation of 500,000 Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto . Arani-Verlags GmbH, Berlin 1961.
• Barbara Schwindt: The Majdanek concentration and extermination camp. Functional change in the context of the " final solution ". Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2005, ISBN 3-8260-3123-7 , (also: Cologne, Univ., Diss., 2004).
• Joachim Jahns, The Warsaw Ghetto King , Dingsda-Verlag Leipzig 2009, ISBN 978-3-928498-99-9 .
• Walter Többens: Report on Warsaw and works by Poniatowa. Walter Többen's report . Bremen, September 15, 1945 (near Yivo)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Josef Wulf: The Third Reich and its executors - The liquidation of 500,000 Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto , Berlin 1961, p. 336f.
2. ↑ ^{a b c} See archive discussions  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 860 kB), in: Der Bremer Antifaschist, regional association of the association of those persecuted by the Nazi regime - Bund der Antifaschistinnen und Antifaschisten Bremen eV, No. 10/2008, p. 4.  
3. ↑ Cf. Barbara Schwindt: The Majdanek concentration and extermination camp. Functional change in the context of the " final solution ". Würzburg, Königshausen & Neumann, 2005, p. 192f.
4. ↑ see Stroop report ( memento of the original from January 10, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) 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. Sheet "Telex April 20, 1943" 
5. ↑ Cf. Barbara Schwindt: The Majdanek concentration and extermination camp. Functional change in the context of the " final solution ". Würzburg, Königshausen & Neumann, 2005, pp. 208f.