Wilhelm Claussen (SS member)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wilhelm Edmund Claussen , also written Clausen (born December 16, 1915 in Altona , † December 6, 1948 in Krakow ) was a German SS-Oberscharführer and report leader in the Auschwitz concentration camp .

Life

From 1939 Claussen was deployed in Sachsenhausen concentration camp and then as SS-Oberscharführer in Mauthausen concentration camp . Claussen was a member of the NSDAP .

From November 21, 1940 to February 19, 1941 Claussen was verifiably a political prisoner in the Buchenwald concentration camp , but the reasons for the transfer to the concentration camp are unknown. His brother Egon was transferred to a concentration camp on April 1, 1941. Claussen himself stated in front of American interrogators after the end of the war that he u. a. came to Buchenwald for desertion. In March 1943 his brother died in the Natzweiler concentration camp and, after his release from the camp, he was sent to the camp SS in Auschwitz.

He became an employee and finally the first head of the reception office of the Political Department in the main camp of Auschwitz . According to a post-war statement from Claussen's superior, the head of the Political Department Maximilian Grabner , Claussen was a confidante of the camp commandant Rudolf Höß . Claussen is said to have sent information about Grabner to Höss.

On February 26, 1942, Claussen was posted to the administration, where he worked as a clerk for the SS Auschwitz Sports Association. On May 27, 1944, he became a report leader in the main camp of Auschwitz. Claussen was involved in the shooting of prisoners at the Black Wall , in selections on the ramp, and in severe abuse during interrogation of prisoners in the Political Department.

From the end of August to the beginning of September 1944, Claussen headed a bomb search squad in Chekhovitz , where around a hundred prisoners were deployed to clear the rubble, recover duds and carry out repairs after an Allied bombing raid on August 20, 1944. In September 1944 he was posted to the front, first to Italy and later to Hungary.

After the end of the war he was in the Försterheim hospital in the Sankt Gilgen community . There he posed as a former concentration camp prisoner and complained about the bad treatment by the SS and their methods. He was eventually arrested, detained and questioned by the American military police. He cooperated with the interrogators and in autumn 1945 wrote a 120-page report on Auschwitz. He was later extradited to Poland because of his crimes committed in Auschwitz concentration camp as an employee of the political department and report leader, where he died in custody before his conviction.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Ernst Klee: Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices and victims and what became of them. An encyclopedia of persons , Frankfurt am Main 2013, p. 82
  2. ^ A b Hermann Langbein: People in Auschwitz ; Frankfurt am Main, 1980; P. 235 ff.
  3. ^ A b Geoffrey P. Megargee (Ed.): The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945: Vol. 1 - Early Camps, Youth Camps and Concentration Camps and Subcamps under the SS-Business-Administration Main Office (WVHA). Indiana University Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-2533-5328-3 , pp. 273
  4. ↑ Timeline ( Memento from January 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (ed.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 5: Hinzert, Auschwitz, Neuengamme. CH Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-52965-8 , p. 209.
personal data
SURNAME Claussen, Wilhelm
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Claussen, Wilhelm Edmund (full name); Clausen, Wilhelm (alternative spelling)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS-Oberscharführer, report leader in Auschwitz
DATE OF BIRTH December 16, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Altona
DATE OF DEATH December 6, 1948
Place of death Krakow