Wilhelm Reischenbeck

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Wilhelm Reischenbeck (born June 23, 1902 in Munich , † November 13, 1962 in Fürstenfeldbruck ) was a German SS-Obersturmführer who was sentenced to ten years in prison for violent Nazi crimes in connection with concentration camps .

Early years

Reischenbeck joined after the First World War, a volunteer corps to. He joined the SA in 1922 and took part in the Hitler putsch in Munich in November 1923 , for which he received the so-called Blood Order at the time of National Socialism . He earned his living as a laborer. At the end of the 1920s he switched from the SA to the SS (SS no.3,926) and became a member of the NSDAP in 1930 ( membership number 348,953). In April 1933, shortly after power was handed over to the National Socialists , he and other SS men robbed Jews from their homes in Munich and the surrounding area using weapons. His brother Ewald was also involved in the raids.

Second World War

From 1939 he served with the guards of the Dachau and Mauthausen concentration camps . From May 1940 he was involved in the Litzmannstadt settlement staff with the resettlement of Poles from the Warthegau and from October 1941 belonged to the courier office at the Wolfsschanze headquarters . In November 1943 he was promoted to SS-Obersturmführer of the Waffen-SS , his highest SS rank. In August 1944 he was transferred to the Auschwitz concentration camp , where he became the leader of two guard companies. In the course of the war-related evacuation of the camps, he led the last major “evacuation march” on January 19, 1945 with more than 3,900 prisoners from Auschwitz. The column of prisoners was first driven to Loslau and those prisoners who could not keep the marching pace due to exhaustion or illness were shot by the accompanying SS men. In the later judgment against Reischenbeck, reference was made to the cruel circumstances of this evacuation march: “The shoes (of the prisoners) consisted partly of wood with sewn-on canvas, only a few wore leather shoes. They had received bread rolls, tinned meat and margarine as food for the march. The temperature was below minus 15 degrees; there was a closed blanket of snow. Some of the prisoners' physical condition was already very poor when they left. The exertions of the march - icy roads, bad shoes, very cold - meant that on the first day several prisoners could no longer drag themselves. " In Loslau, the surviving prisoners were crammed into train wagons and taken to Mauthausen concentration camp. At the end of the war, Reischenbeck was in charge of a prisoner transport from the Melk subcamp to the Ebensee subcamp in April 1945 , where he had also ordered the shooting of inmates.

Post War and Trial

After the end of the war, Reischenbeck was interned by the Allies. Before his planned court proceedings , he was able to escape from the Darmstadt internment camp in 1948. Then he lived under the false names Wilhelm Lang and Wilhelm Bachmann and hired himself again as an unskilled worker. He maintained this camouflage until 1950. In 1954, he and other persons involved in the robbery of Jews in April 1933 were tried before the Munich Regional Court. Reischenbeck was sentenced to eight months' imprisonment for "deprivation of liberty, presumption of office and stolen goods", which was suspended on probation. His brother was sentenced to two years and eight months in prison . The other accused were acquitted for lack of evidence. The former Auschwitz inmate Adolf Rögner , who also initiated the first Frankfurt Auschwitz trial, finally reported Reischenbeck for the murders during the evacuation of Auschwitz in January 1955 in Munich. During the investigation, survivors of the evacuation march were interviewed. Reischenbeck himself stated that he had received the order to shoot prisoners who were unable to march from Richard Baer , the last commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp , and thus denied any personal responsibility. Because of the final phase crimes in the Auschwitz and Mauthausen concentration camps, he had to appear before the jury court at Munich I district court in May 1958 . Specifically, he was accused of murder or attempted murder in four cases: Due to the "order to shoot at least 40 prisoners in Pless and Königsdorf, eleven prisoners at Loslau station, 25 prisoners unable to march in Gmunden, and the selection of 50 prisoners in Ebensee, which were to be executed, although it was uncertain whether this execution had actually been carried out ”. As a result of the evidence, the court only opened main proceedings against Reischenbeck with regard to the Pless / Königsdorf and Gmunden complexes. Because the court did not consider the hand-shot shootings of Reischenbeck to be proven, despite a corresponding testimony, he was sentenced on October 22, 1958 as a recipient of orders to a ten-year prison term for multiple aiding and abetting in manslaughter only because he had passed orders and tolerated the shooting of prisoners who were unable to march . In the judgment, the court found that Reischenbeck “did not show any trace of mercy”. Nevertheless, the court did not follow the prosecution's request to sentence Reischenbeck to life imprisonment for murder. The mild verdict aroused incomprehension and outrage among Auschwitz survivors and victims' associations. On October 19, 1962, his detention was suspended due to illness.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h Andreas Eichmüller: No general amnesty. The prosecution of Nazi crimes in the early Federal Republic , Munich 2012, p. 304
  2. ↑ a b c d Ernst Klee: Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices, victims and what became of them. Lexicon of persons. Frankfurt am Main 2013, p. 332 f.
  3. ↑ The Russians, the Russians . In: Der Spiegel , issue 4/1995 of January 23, 1995, p. 37
  4. ↑ a b c d Andreas Eichmüller: No general amnesty. The prosecution of Nazi crimes in the early Federal Republic. Munich 2012, p. 305.
  5. ^ Sven Keller: Volksgemeinschaft am Ende: Society and violence 1944/45. Munich 2013, p. 37.
  6. ^ Henry Leide: The Auschwitz inmate Adolf Rögner. The failed search for recognition in the Federal Republic and in the GDR , BStU.
  7. ↑ Jörg Zedler: “Taking a walk meant death”. The perception of Holocaust perpetrators in the Federal Republic of Germany using the example of the Mauthausen trials . In: Cord Arendes , Edgar Wolfrum , Jörg Zedler (eds.): Terror to the inside. Crimes at the end of the Second World War. Wallstein, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 978-3-8353-0046-0 , p. 190.
  8. ↑ Christian Rabl: Mauthausen in front of the court: Post-war trials in international comparison . new academic press, Vien 2019, ISBN 978-3700321149 , p. 216.
personal data
SURNAME Reischenbeck, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS-Obersturmführer in Auschwitz concentration camp
DATE OF BIRTH June 23, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH November 13, 1962
Place of death Fürstenfeldbruck