EXECUTION of Hans Aumeier - Extremely Sadistic NAZI Commandant at Auschwitz & Kaufering Camps
...In January 1942 Hans Aumeier arrived in Auschwitz becoming Deputy commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp.
On Aumeier’s order, 144 women were shot on the 19th of March 1942, at the execution wall in the courtyard of Blocks 10 and 11. On the 27th of May 1942, he was present at a mass execution of 168 prisoners who were shot in the same way.
On that day approximately 400 Polish political prisoners were forced into the penal company. Prisoners were assigned to the penal company for various reasons such escape attempts, contact with civilians or the illegal possession of food, money, additional clothing, or family photographs, or sluggishness at work—in the opinion of the SS supervisors. They performed the hardest labor, usually at double time or on the run and they were liable to be beaten continually by SS men and prisoner functionaries.
Aumeier was known to all the prisoners for beating and kicking them for the slightest fault – for example, failure to march to the pace and rhythm of the orchestra. He was an alcoholic and used to shoot prisoners for no reason when he was drunk.
After the war, Auschwitz survivors testified that whenever Hans Aumeier appeared, the SS men who supervised the work would begin to behave with great cruelty towards the prisoners, yell at them and beat them even more.
Aumeier was also active in the selections on the rail ramp when the arrivals, lined up into two columns, were selected for labor or for work.
In December 1944 Aumeier became a commandant of Kaufering which was the common name of a system of eleven subcamps of the Dachau concentration camp system. The conditions in Kaufering were horrible. The prisoners deported to each of the 11 subcamps had to construct the accommodation themselves. The resulting huts, partially buried for camouflage from aerial reconnaissance, were completely inadequate for the weather conditions.
In January 1945, Hans Aumeier took over as commandant of the Grini police prison camp in Nazi-occupied Norway. He treated prisoners here in a completely different way than in previous camps. Aumeier was lenient towards them, collaborated with the Norwegian Red Cross even letting them enter the camp and on the 7th of May 1945, he released the prisoners and closed the camp.
In the following year he was extradited to Poland where he was tried at the Auschwitz trial which began on the 24th of November 1947 and lasted one month.
On the 22nd of December 1947, the Polish Supreme National Tribunal in Krakow sentenced Aumeier to death by hanging.
He was 41 years old when he was executed on the 24th of January 1948.
On Aumeier’s order, 144 women were shot on the 19th of March 1942, at the execution wall in the courtyard of Blocks 10 and 11. On the 27th of May 1942, he was present at a mass execution of 168 prisoners who were shot in the same way.
On that day approximately 400 Polish political prisoners were forced into the penal company. Prisoners were assigned to the penal company for various reasons such escape attempts, contact with civilians or the illegal possession of food, money, additional clothing, or family photographs, or sluggishness at work—in the opinion of the SS supervisors. They performed the hardest labor, usually at double time or on the run and they were liable to be beaten continually by SS men and prisoner functionaries.
Aumeier was known to all the prisoners for beating and kicking them for the slightest fault – for example, failure to march to the pace and rhythm of the orchestra. He was an alcoholic and used to shoot prisoners for no reason when he was drunk.
After the war, Auschwitz survivors testified that whenever Hans Aumeier appeared, the SS men who supervised the work would begin to behave with great cruelty towards the prisoners, yell at them and beat them even more.
Aumeier was also active in the selections on the rail ramp when the arrivals, lined up into two columns, were selected for labor or for work.
In December 1944 Aumeier became a commandant of Kaufering which was the common name of a system of eleven subcamps of the Dachau concentration camp system. The conditions in Kaufering were horrible. The prisoners deported to each of the 11 subcamps had to construct the accommodation themselves. The resulting huts, partially buried for camouflage from aerial reconnaissance, were completely inadequate for the weather conditions.
In January 1945, Hans Aumeier took over as commandant of the Grini police prison camp in Nazi-occupied Norway. He treated prisoners here in a completely different way than in previous camps. Aumeier was lenient towards them, collaborated with the Norwegian Red Cross even letting them enter the camp and on the 7th of May 1945, he released the prisoners and closed the camp.
In the following year he was extradited to Poland where he was tried at the Auschwitz trial which began on the 24th of November 1947 and lasted one month.
On the 22nd of December 1947, the Polish Supreme National Tribunal in Krakow sentenced Aumeier to death by hanging.
He was 41 years old when he was executed on the 24th of January 1948.
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LearningTranscript
00:00The 30th of January, 1933, Germany.
00:10Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi party, is appointed Chancellor of Germany and aims
00:15to lead the German master race to victory in the racial struggle against those deemed
00:19as inferior peoples, especially the Jews.
00:22The Nazi regime quickly begins to restrict the civil and human rights of the Jewish people
00:27and gradually excludes them from professions, businesses, and public spaces.
00:32The first concentration camp, Dachau, is established less than two months after Hitler became the
00:38Chancellor.
00:39Between 1933 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its European allies would establish more than
00:4544,000 camps and other incarceration sites, including ghettos.
00:50The perpetrators would use these locations for forced labor, detention of people deemed
00:54to be enemies of the state, and the mass murder of millions.
00:58One such perpetrator is a German Nazi commandant, Hans Aumeier.
01:03Hans Aumeier was born on the 20th of August, 1906, in Umbach, then part of the German Empire.
01:10In 1918, at the age of 12, he left school without any qualifications to take up an apprenticeship
01:15as a turner and fitter in a local rifle factory following his father's career.
01:20In 1923, he left the small factory in Umbach and began to work for a bigger rifle company
01:25in Munich.
01:26In 1925, Aumeier tried to join the Reichswehr, the German army, but failed.
01:31He then returned to the rifle factory in Munich, and until 1926 he worked in similar factories
01:36in Berlin, Bremen, and Cologne.
01:39Throughout the period 1926 to 1929, Aumeier moved from one job to another, taking part-time
01:45work and summer jobs in order to survive.
01:48In August 1929, Aumeier became one of the earliest members of the SS, with the identification
01:53number 2700, and soon after joining the organization, he belonged to the Munich staff of Reichsfuhrer
02:00Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS.
02:02The SS, Schutzstaffel, or Protection Squads, was originally established in April 1925 to
02:09protect Adolf Hitler and other Nazi leaders and speakers and provide security for political
02:13meetings.
02:15SS members were subject to strict military discipline and swore an oath of complete loyalty
02:19to Hitler and those appointed by him.
02:22In January 1929, Heinrich Himmler became the head of the SS and the organization greatly
02:27expanded in size and strength.
02:30By the time Hitler came into power in January 1933, Himmler had made the SS the dominant
02:36organization within the Reich.
02:38From the beginning of the Nazi regime, Hitler entrusted the SS, first and foremost, with
02:42the removal and eventual murder of political and so-called racial enemies of the regime.
02:48The SS became a virtual state within a state in Nazi Germany and was staffed by men who
02:53perceived themselves as the racial elite of the Nazi future.
02:57From 1939, the SS assumed responsibility for solving the so-called Jewish question, which
03:03then culminated in 1941, when the leadership planned, coordinated and directed the so-called
03:09Final Solution.
03:11This solution was the genocide of European Jews during World War II, also known as the
03:16Holocaust.
03:17SS officers were directly responsible for the management of concentration camps, where
03:21millions of Jews were murdered by poison gas.
03:25One such officer became Hans Aumeier, whose career in concentration camps began in January
03:291934 at Dachau, situated near Munich.
03:33Established in March 1933, it was the first regular concentration camp built by the Nazi
03:38government.
03:39In October 1933, Dachau's commandant, Theodor Eicke, introduced a system of regulations
03:44which inflicted brutal punishments on prisoners for the slightest offences.
03:49Eicke ensured that the Dachau camp served as a model for all later concentration camps.
03:53It also became a training centre or school of violence for SS guards who were deployed
03:57throughout the concentration camp system.
04:00Dachau concentration camp was a place where many Nazi guards, such as Hans Aumeier, learned
04:04how to torture the prisoners that they supervised and how to get the maximum amount of work
04:08out of them whilst they were still alive.
04:11In April 1936, Aumeier was deployed as a guard in the Estavagen concentration camp, located
04:16near the German-Dutch border.
04:18Most of the prisoners in Estavagen were political prisoners, many of them communists.
04:23The most famous was Karl von Osietzky, a German journalist and political activist, who was
04:27sent to Estavagen in 1933.
04:30For his work in exposing the clandestine German rearmament, he won the Nobel Peace Prize in
04:341935.
04:36However, Osietzky was forbidden from travelling to Norway and accepting the prize, and after
04:40years of starvation, mistreatment and torture in various Nazi concentration camps, Osietzky
04:46died three years later in 1938 in Berlin.
04:50In December 1936, Aumeier became an independent commander of the Guard Company in the Lichtenberg
04:56camp.
04:57Housed in a Renaissance castle, Lichtenberg was among the first concentration camps to
05:00be built by the Nazis and was operated by the SS from 1933 to 1939.
05:06From 1937 to 1939, it held only female prisoners.
05:11One of the camp's most notorious guards was Maria Mandl, whose specialty at Lichtenberg
05:15was to strip the prisoners naked, tie them to wooden posts and beat them mercilessly
05:20until she could no longer lift her arm.
05:23Between 1937 and 1938, Aumeier held the same position at Buchenwald and in August 1938,
05:29she served as camp director and deputy commandant at Flossenburg concentration camp.
05:34Flossenburg's original purpose was to exploit the forced labour of prisoners for the production
05:38of granite for Nazi construction projects.
05:41Until mid-1943, when the camp became a key supplier of Messerschmitt Bf 109 aircraft parts,
05:47the quarry occupied the labour of about half the prisoner population.
05:51In his position, Aumeier was responsible for the operation of the camp, maintaining order
05:56and taking care of daily routines and roll calls.
05:59At Flossenburg, Aumeier created such harsh living conditions for the prisoners that they
06:03often committed suicide.
06:05He often personally carried out executions, punished prisoners personally with whipping
06:10and ordered long and extremely tiring roll calls.
06:13In addition, exclusively for Poles, Aumeier introduced the punitive standing punishments
06:18in the camp, which lasted from 12 to 42 hours.
06:21The standing punishment consisted of standing to attention in ranks without food, drink
06:26or a chance to go to the toilet and without making the slightest movement.
06:30One such standing punishment started with 628 people and finished with less than 500.
06:36The rest were beaten to death, and among them, 46 people were shot on Aumeier's orders,
06:41who selected them personally and was present at the execution.
06:45In January 1942, Hans Aumeier arrived in Auschwitz, becoming deputy commandant of Auschwitz concentration
06:51camp.
06:52His duties included taking care of order in the camp, overseeing the food and clothing
06:56of the prisoners and matters related to their forced labor.
07:00Aumeier terrorized the camp and became known as a cruel sadist with no limits.
07:05He not only signed off on the death sentences, but also conducted them himself, often with
07:09his fellow Nazi colleague Gerhard Palitsch.
07:13Even during work, he would beat and torment the prisoners whenever he could.
07:16He claimed that any prisoner living in the conditions created by him could not survive
07:20for longer than three months.
07:22Aumeier practically became the master of life and death of the Auschwitz prisoners, and
07:27he gave the kapos and guards far-reaching power, which led to an increase of terror
07:31in the camp.
07:32He once said, only a dead prisoner is a decent prisoner.
07:37He hated Poles and used to call them, you Polish pigs.
07:40On Aumeier's orders, 144 women were shot on the 19th of March 1942, at the execution
07:47wall in the courtyard of Blocks 10 and 11.
07:50On the 27th of May 1942, he was present at a max execution of 168 prisoners who were
07:56shot in the same way.
07:58On that day, approximately 400 Polish political prisoners were forced into the penal company.
08:04Prisoners were assigned to the penal companies for various reasons, such as escape attempts,
08:08contact with civilians, or the illegal possession of food, money, additional clothing or family
08:12photographs, or sluggishness at work, in the opinion of the SS supervisors.
08:17They performed the hardest labor, usually at double time or on the run, and they were
08:21liable to be beaten continually by SS men and prisoner functionaries.
08:26Of the above-mentioned 400 prisoners, every few days, the Germans selected several prisoners
08:31from among the penal company and shot them.
08:33The threat of death hovering over the prisoners made them think up a plan to flee.
08:38On the 10th of June 1942, Polish prisoners in the penal company mutinied and attempted
08:44to escape while working in the drainage ditch in Birkenau.
08:47Only nine of them made it to freedom.
08:50In reprisal, the SS executed 20 prisoners by shooting and murdered more than 300 Poles
08:55from the penal company in the gas chamber.
08:58Hans Aumeier took part in these reprisals.
09:00Aumeier was known to all the prisoners for beating and kicking them for the slightest
09:05fault, for example, failure to march to the pace and rhythm of the orchestra.
09:09He was an alcoholic and used to shoot prisoners for no reason when he was drunk.
09:14On one occasion during a bread delivery, the little bits of bread were removed from
09:17the wagon and thrown to the ground.
09:20After the hungry prisoners pounced on them, Aumeier ran up, began to disperse the inmates
09:24and punched them.
09:26After the war, Auschwitz survivors testified that whenever Hans Aumeier appeared, the SS
09:30men who supervised the work would begin to behave with great cruelty towards the prisoners,
09:35yell at them, and beat them even more.
09:37Aumeier was also active in selections on the rail ramp, when arrivals, lined up into two
09:42columns, were selected for labor or for work.
09:45Hans Aumeier used to steal the belongings of the murdered victims, including gold, and
09:49after the camp's commandant, Rudolf Hirst, discovered this, as a punishment in mid-August
09:531943, he sent Aumeier to construct an established Vyvara concentration camp in Estonia.
09:59Since the main purpose of the camps was the fullest exploitation of the work capacity
10:03of their inmates, no large-scale killings of the able-bodied took place in the camps.
10:08Prisoners had to work in the nearby forest, a quarry, or in the oil shale extraction.
10:13Hans Aumeier became the camp's commandant, and under his supervision, the camp's personnel
10:18carried out selections of the inmates who were too old or too sick to work.
10:23Between August 1943 and February 1944, when the camp was operational, more than 1,000
10:29men, women, and children were shot to death in the nearby woods.
10:33In December 1944, Aumeier became a commandant of Kaufering, which was the common name of
10:38the system of 11 sub-camps of the Dachau concentration camp system.
10:42The conditions in Kaufering were horrible.
10:45The prisoners deported to each of the 11 sub-camps had to construct the accommodation themselves.
10:50The resulting huts, partially buried for camouflage from aerial reconnaissance, were completely
10:54inadequate for the weather conditions.
10:57Rain and snow leaked through the earthen roofs, and vermin infested the huts.
11:01Prisoners had to sleep on straw that had been spread on the floor.
11:04The little food the prisoners did have was taken by the SS guards, and those who were
11:08sick were fed even less.
11:11There were even incidents of cannibalism, and some prisoners were so desperate to escape
11:15from their horrible reality that they would try to commit suicide by throwing themselves
11:19into the electrical fencing.
11:21At Kaufering, Aumeier abused and killed the prisoners, as well as willfully neglecting
11:26their care.
11:27Between Kaufering camp's existence between June 1944 and April 1945, 15,000 out of 30,000
11:35prisoners died from hunger, disease, executions, or during death marches.
11:41In January 1945, Hans Aumeier took over as commandant of the Gruny police prison camp
11:46in Nazi-occupied Norway.
11:48He treated prisoners here in a completely different way than in previous camps.
11:52Aumeier was lenient towards them, collaborated with the Norwegian Red Cross, even letting
11:56them enter the camp, and on the 7th of May 1945, he released the prisoners and closed
12:02the camp.
12:03Thanks to MI6, the British Secret Intelligence Service, he was captured in his SS uniform
12:08by the British forces on the 11th of June 1945.
12:12In the following year, he was extradited to Poland, where he was tried at the Auschwitz
12:17trial, which began on the 24th of November 1947, and lasted one month.
12:22At the trial, he claimed he knew nothing about the gas chambers, and that he never killed
12:26anyone and neither had any of his men.
12:29He even stated that the evidence against him was based on witnesses who were haunting him
12:33with their hatred.
12:35He also stated that if he was found guilty and sentenced to death, he would die as a
12:39scapegoat for Germany.
12:40In addition, Aumeier claimed that he had repeatedly demanded from his superiors to be sent to
12:45the front, but his requests were not met.
12:48However, his lies did not help him escape justice.
12:52On the 22nd of December 1947, the Polish Supreme National Tribunal in Kraków sentenced
12:58Aumeier to death by hanging.
13:00He was 41 years old when he was executed on the 24th of January 1948.
13:07There were no tears shed for Hans Aumeier.