Wilhelm Burger (SS member)

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Wilhelm Max Josef Johann Burger (born May 19, 1904 in Munich ; † December 14, 1979 in Dachau ) was a German SS-Sturmbannführer , head of the site administration in Auschwitz and head of office group D IV in the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office .

Life

Wilhelm Burger was the son of a lawyer. After his school career, he completed training as a teacher. However, he was not active in this profession, but worked as an insurance agent until he became unemployed in the wake of the global economic crisis . In September 1932 he joined the NSDAP ( membership number 1.316.366) and the SS (SS number 47.285). When Burger became SS administrative leader in 1935, he divorced his Jewish wife in order to pursue a career as administrative leader with the SS. After the outbreak of World War II , Burger took part in the French campaign and later in the war against the Soviet Union with the SS Totenkopf Infantry Regiment I until May 1942. In the same year he was promoted to SS-Sturmbannführer. In July 1942, Burger took over the management of the site administration of the Auschwitz concentration camp as administrative manager and remained in this position until the end of April 1943; his successor in this function was Karl Möckel . He was then transferred to the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office, where he acted as head of Office Group D IV ( inspection of the concentration camps ) until the beginning of May 1945. At the beginning of May he fled as part of Office D via the so-called Rattenlinie Nord to Flensburg .

After the end of the war, Burger went into hiding under the false name Georg Bauer and earned his living as an insurance agent. In March 1947 he was arrested and interned by the American military administration. In the course of the Nuremberg trials , he was questioned several times as a witness. In January 1948 he was extradited to Poland and tried there. He was sentenced to five years in prison on April 9, 1952 in Krakow . On October 7, 1953, the sentence was increased to eight years by the Polish Supreme Court in Warsaw , taking into account his time in American internment .

In May 1955 he was transferred to the Federal Republic of Germany . He then lived in Dachau and worked as an authorized signatory at the Bavarian injection molding works. In the second Auschwitz trial (trial "4 Ks 3/63 against Burger u. A.") Before the district court in Frankfurt am Main, which began on December 14, 1965 and ended on September 16, 1966, he stood on trial with two other defendants. Burger was sentenced to eight years in prison by the Frankfurt am Main regional court for procuring Zyklon B for the gassing of prisoners in Auschwitz . However, this sentence was offset against the pre-trial detention and the prison sentence served in Poland, which is why he was released immediately.

literature

  • Ernst Klee : The personal encyclopedia of the Third Reich - who was what before and after 1945. Frankfurt am Main, 2nd edition, 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .
  • 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 .
  • Hermann Langbein : People in Auschwitz. Ullstein-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, Berlin Vienna 1980, ISBN 3-548-33014-2 .
  • Jan Erik Schulte : Forced Labor and Extermination: The Economic Empire of the SS. Oswald Pohl and the SS Economic Administration Main Office 1933–1945. Paderborn 2001, ISBN 3-506-78245-2 .
  • Wacław Długoborski , Franciszek Piper (eds.): Auschwitz 1940–1945. Studies on the history of the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp. Verlag Staatliches Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau, Oswiecim 1999, 5 volumes: I. Construction and structure of the camp. II. The prisoners - conditions of existence, work and death. III. Destruction. IV. Resistance. V. Epilog, ISBN 83-85047-76-X .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Precise life dates according to Ernst Klee: Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices and victims and what became of them. A dictionary of persons , Frankfurt am Main 2013, p. 75.
  2. ↑ a b c d Ernst Klee: Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices and victims and what became of them. A dictionary of persons , Frankfurt am Main 2013, p. 75.
  3. ^ A b Hermann Langbein: People in Auschwitz. Frankfurt am Main, 1980, p. 357.
  4. ↑ Aleksander Lasik: The organizational structure of KL Auschwitz. In: Aleksander Lasik, Franciszek Piper, Piotr Setkiewicz, Irena Strzelecka: Auschwitz 1940–1945. Studies on the history of the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp. Volume I: Structure and Structure of the Camp. Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum , Oświęcim 1999, p. 264 f.
  5. ^ Jan Erik Schulte: Forced Labor and Destruction: The Economic Empire of the SS. Oswald Pohl and the SS Economic Administration Main Office 1933–1945. Paderborn 2001, p. 464.
  6. ↑ Stephan Link: "Rattenlinie Nord". War criminals in Flensburg and the surrounding area in May 1945. In: Gerhard Paul, Broder Schwensen (Hrsg.): Mai '45. End of the war in Flensburg. Flensburg 2015, p. 22.
  7. ^ Records of the United States Nuernberg War Crimes trials Interrogations, 1946-1949. Date Published: 1977 (PDF; 186 kB)
  8. ^ Ernst Klee: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 86 f.
personal data
SURNAME Burger, Wilhelm
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Burger, Wilhelm Max Josef Johann (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS-Sturmbannführer
DATE OF BIRTH May 19, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH December 14, 1979
Place of death Dachau