KL Commanders info

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chrish
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Joined: 25 May 2003, 20:29
Location: Poland

KL Commanders info

#1

Post by chrish » 31 May 2003, 09:49

I’ am looking for some info of following Konzentrationslager’s Commanders :

Chmielewski Karl [ KL Herzogenbusch] : Hpstf promotion date , death data and place

Deubel Heinrich [KL Dachau] : death place

Eisfeldt Walter [KL Sachsenhausen] : birth place , death date & place (??.??.1940 )

Foerschner Otto [KL Mittelbau] : birth place , SS-Stub promotion date

Gideon Wilhelm [KL Gross-Rosen] : death date & place

Goeth Amon [KL P³aszów] : Ust , Ost , Hpst promotion dates

Grunewald Adam [KL Herzogenbosch] : birth place

Haas Adolf [KL Esterwegen , Bergen Belsen] : birth place , death date & place

Huttig Hans [KL Natzweiler] : birth place , death date & place

Kunstler Karl [KL Flossenburg] : birth place , death date (??.??.1945) , SS-Ostub promotion date

Kramer Josef [KL Natzweiler , Birkenau , Bergen-Belsen] : hpstf promotion date

Piorkowsky Alex [KL Dachau] : birth place , executions date (??.??.1948)

Pister Hermann [KL Hinzert , Buchenwald] : birth place

Sauer Albert [KL Mauthausen,Riga,Ravensbruck] : birth place

Schwarz Heinrich [KL Auschwitz-Monowitz,Natzweiler] : Ostuf & Hpstf promotons dates

Sporrenberg Paul [KL Hinzert] : birth place , Ostuf,Hstuf,[Stub?] promotions dates , death date (??.??.1961)

Suhren Fritz [KL Ravensbruck] : birth place

Wackerle Hilmar [KL Dachau] : SS-Staf promotion date

Weiseborn Jakob [KL Flossenburg] : birth place

Weiss Martin [KL Neuengamme , Dachau , Lublin] : Hpst,Stub,Ostub promotions dates

Weiter Eduard [KL Dachau] : Ostub promotion date , suicide date (??.??.1945)

Ziereis Franz [KL Mauthausen] : Ostub promotion date

Zill Egon [KL Hinzert ,Natzweiler,Flossenburg] : birth place , Stub,[Ostub?] promotion date , death date & place (??.??.1974)

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HPL2008
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Location: Bavaria, Germany

#2

Post by HPL2008 » 31 May 2003, 10:57

Hello Chrish,

I have some of that data. It's not even nearly all, but it's a beginning:

Eisfeld Walter - born in Halle, died 3 April 1940
Foerschner Otto - born in Dürrenzimmern, promoted to Stubaf 9 November 42
Grünewald Adam - born in Frickenhausen
Haas Adolf - born in Siegen, killed in action on 31 March 45
Hüttig Hans - born in Dresden
Künstler Karl - born in Zella, promoted to Ostubaf 1 September 41
Piorkowsky Alex - born in Bremen, executed 22 October 48
Pister Hermann - born in Lübeck
Sauer Albert - born in Misdroy
Sporrenberg Paul - born in Venlo (Netherlands)
Suhren Fritz - born in Varel
Weiseborn Jakob - born in Frankfurt
Weiss Martin - promoted Ostubaf 30 January 44
Weiter Eduard - promoted Ostubaf 9 November 41 , died 6 May 45
Zill Egon - born in Plauen, promoted Stubaf 30 January 42


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Jeremy Dixon
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#3

Post by Jeremy Dixon » 31 May 2003, 13:32

PISTER HERMANN
SS-Oberfuhrer 30.1.45
SS-Standartenfuhrer 9.11.43 SS: 29892
Born: 21 February 1885
Untersturmfuhrer 20.4.43; Staff SS Hauptamt 1938, Commandant Buchenwald 1941-1944, sentenced to death in August 1945, died in September 1948.
Pister assumed command of Buchenwald on 21 January 1942 and remained in command until the end.
It was well known that Pister was by nature a bureaucrat, he would never undertake anything on his own initiative, and that he liked to postpone decisions until he heard from higher authority. Commandant of Buchenwald after Karl Koch. He eventually became commander of all camps in the south. He was ordered by Hitler near the end of the war to blow up Buchenwald, Dachau, Mauthausen and Theresienstadt along with all inmates. Pister was not just commandant of Buchenwald, he was also General Manager of the German Armament Works, with a salary & profit-sharing interest, as well as of the German Earth & Stone Works and of the Gustloff Works.
Pister organised terror more correctly than Koch and more bureaucratically, he was of course very brutal but it was always within the framework of his own orders. Toward the end of the Nazi regime at Buchenwald, Pister became baiscally cowardly, as most Nazis were at this stage, and wavered in his measures. He tried to find a way to cover his back in the hope the he could go over to the Americans together with the prisoners.
He was captured after the war & put on trial along with other Buchenwald staff members. He was sentenced to be hanged in April 1947. He died of a heart attack in Landsberg prison on 28 September 1948.

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Jeremy Dixon
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#4

Post by Jeremy Dixon » 31 May 2003, 13:36

FORSCHNER OTTO
SS-Sturmbannfuhrer No: 191554 9.11.42
Born: 4 November 1902
Commandant of Buchenwald and then of Dora-Mittilbau the camp which supplied Nordhausen with slave labourers.
In the spring of 1942 Forchner took over leadership of the guard battalion at Buchenwald. His conduct toward the prisoners was always above reproach. When he later became commandant of Dora camp at Nordhausen, his command was cruel and savage.
In the spring 1942 Forschner took over leadership of the guard battalion. His conduct toward the prisoners was always above reproach. When he later became commandant of the Dora camp at Nordhausen, he distinguished himself from the rest of the SS administration through his understanding of the prisoners situation.
Approx. 150,000 slave labourers from Buchenwald went to work at Dora, a terrain of several thousand acres around Nordhausen, about 42 miles from Buchenwald. These labourers would work on the underground tunnels of the Dessau Junkers Works in inhumane conditions. They would help in the building of the factories for the production of the V1 and V2 rockets. In October 1944 Dora camp became independent of Buchenwald with its own administration and commandant, Otto Forschner. Under Forschner, Dora eventually was controlled by capos, professional criminals. They were ordered by the commandant to hang comrades who were condemned to death. In autumn 1944 more than 100 political prisoners were sent to Dora, where many were hanged for sabotage, they included doctors of all nationalities.
1922 when he was 20 he joined the army and served for 12 years. Then in 1934 he entered the ranks of the SS. He remained in the same unit when war broke out. In 1940 he was transferred to the Deaths Head Units, and in 1942 he was stationed at Buchenwald. He then went on to become Commandant of Dora from November 1944 until April 1945. Said to be too close to his men and a man who adopted a soft attitude towards them. However he was a cruel commandant when it came to the prisoners.
He was executed after the war as a war criminal by the Americans in May 1946, for his role as commandant of Dora concentration camp.

HAAS ADOLF
SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer SS: 28943 9.11.43
Born: 18 April 1910
Haas a grim, taciturn man, directed and governed Bergen-Belsen as he saw fit. He had actually been for a time at Sachsenhausen, in 1939 as commander of the protective custody camp, (Schutzhaftlagerfuhrer), he had come from the Allegemiene SS and didn't know much about the concentration camp system. He made no attempt to improve the state of the buildings there and of the terrible hygienic conditions, it had been an old POW camp taken over from the army. He had to be relieved of his command in the autumn of 1944 because of the way he neglected the camp and carried on with the women.
Commandant of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp 1943-1944. He was relieved of his command in 1944 and camp commandant was Josef Kramer. In 1939 he had been commandant of Sachsenhausen.

KUNSTLER KARL
SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer SS: 40005 1.9.41
Born: 12 January 1901 2nd Flossenburg Kommandant.
Kunstler was a professional soldier, and he also saw the SS as a military organisation. He was born in Zella in Thuringia. His father was a barber. After completing his schooling he left home and started to work as a clerk in the post office in Kassel. That was in November 1915. He had no trouble in finding work since most men were fighting at the front, he was too young to go. However in 1919 he was old enough and joined where he was happy signing up for 12 years, until 1931.
Kustler went through several courses in the army and was sent to the military management school. In 1929 he had married. By the time he had decide to leave the army in 1931, he had reached the rank of master sergeant. Aside from what he had learned in the army he had no professional experience. Immediately upon his release he joined the SS on a full-time basis. He saw his job as commandant of a concentration camp as one of his military assignments. Kunstler was a chronic drinker. As punishment for his drinking he was transferred to the Prinz Eugen Waffen-SS Division.
Commandant of Flossenberg 1941-1942. He was a chronic drinker and was dismissed from his post. During his time as commandant he used to hang prisoners from a giant Xmas tree until they died. For his drunkenness he was punished by being given a military assignment to the Prinz Eugen Waffen-SS Regiment where he was killed during the battle for Nuremberg in April 1945.

WEISS MARTIN
SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer SS: 31147 30.1.44
Born: 3 June 1905
Commandant of Dachau camp in 1942. Commandant of Neuegamme and Majdanek. He was said to be one of the most humane of all the commandants at Dachau. However in April 1945 he would not carry out Himmlers orders of destruction of camps in his area as camp inspector. In 1943 he took command of Lublin camp, and under Weiss numerous executions took place. At Majdanek he proved to be a severe commandant. Commandant Majdanek Nov. 1943-May 1944.
He was captured at the end of the war and tried as a war criminal. He was sentenced to death for crimes against humanity. He was executed by US forces in May 1946 at Dachau.
In 1942 Weiss became commandant of Dachau. Previously he had been commandant of Neuengamme, Weiss remains a man of controversy. The Allies executed him after his war crime trial, and some Dachau survivors maintain bitterly that he should have been allowed to live because of his humane camp administration. In 1943 Himmler appointed him commandant of Majdanek. The survivors here never indicated that his life should have been spared, here he ran a more strict regime, the usual commandants regime!
Martin Weiss was Majdanek's fourth commandant and held this post from November 1943 until May 1944. The period of his rule was characterised by a certain improvement in the prisoners living conditions. Beating was prohibited, the length of roll calls reduced, and more food supplies were permitted from families and charitable organisations. Just as in Dachau, where he had previously served as commandant, during his rule the fate of prisoners became more bearable. The changes for the better in both camps, however, did not result from any humanitarian motives. Weiss, the youngest camp commandant, an engineer, technocrat by profession, comprehended the meaning of Pohl's and later Mauer's in 1942, instructions to economise the prisoners labour force. He realised that if a prisoner were to replace at the work-bench a German worker called up into the army and if, in the Third reichs deteriorating economic situation, a considerable part of industrial production were to be shouldered by prisoners, it would be necessary to ensure them at least the elementary conditions of existence.
Weiss, as commandant of the Lublin camp, is co-responsible for the extermination of several thousand chronically ill prisoners from various camps in the territory of the Reich, deported to Majdanek between December 1943 and february 1944. Those gravely ill people were accommodated in wintertime, in Compounds 3 and 4, in stable barracks deprived of elementary sanitary installations. They were not given medical aid, and as a result almost all of them died. Also, the number of executions rose during Weiss' rule while the evacuation of the camp in April 1944 resulted in the death of scores of prisoners.


WEITER EDUARD
SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer SS: 276877 9.11.41
Born: 18 July 1889 in Eschwege near Kassel in Germany.
Weiter didn't join the Nazi Party until 1937, more than six months after he began serving in the SS. He had previously worked as a paymaster in the army and in the police. When he was appointed at the end of 1943, to be that last commandant of Dachau he saw it as a purely administrative job.
Weiter was born in July 1889 in Eschwege, a small industrial town about 45 miles south of the city of Kassel. His father made horsewhips. Weiter completed his basic schooling and in the next six years worked as a salesman in a book store. Then in 1909 he volunteered for the army. He had meant to serve for two years but he ended up staying for ten. He went with his unit to the French, Russian and Balkan fronts. Afterwards he became battalion paymaster and finally regimental paymaster. In the meantime he married and had two children. The defeat of Germany, and the fact that the army was disbanded did not affect Weiter very much, since October 1920 he had been serving as paymaster in the Bavarian state police. The political agitation's of Germany, which included the rise of Hitler and the Nazis did not interest Weiter very much since he was fully occupied with his job. In March 1936 the Bavarian police force became part of the army. A few months after Weiter had qualified for retirement at the age of 47, and he went to work at the Waffen-SS administration as a paymaster. He had transferred from one army to another, and his superiors gave him very good recommendations and praised his ability.
In 1936 he started to think about politics, he felt he had no clear political identity. Even so he made sure people knew that he had never been against the Nazis, so much so that he joined the Party later that year. He had a military background, and he was a serving member of the SS, his superiors felt that he was an experienced bureaucrat with a lot to give. It wasn't long before Oswald Pohl, the administrator of the concentration camps got in contact with him. During World War II he continued to serve in various administrative and financial positions within the Waffen-SS. At one time he was even put in charge of the administration at Dachau concentration camp. He had no contact with the prisoners, but it was a good way to get used to what was going on inside the camps. At the end of 1943 he was appointed commandant of the camp. After the war, survivors of Dachau said that Weiter was rarely seen in the camp, spending most of his time in his office behind his desk, working on administration matters. He made only small changes of no relatively no importance at Dachau. The camp deteriorated, among other reasons because of the overcrowding, which had become more serious since other camps in the east were being evacuated and the prisoners were sent to other camps, like Dachau.
During the last days of the war he spoke some inmates in an attempt to ensure that they would testify in his favour after the war, he had said that he had always tried to help. In the case of the overcrowding and disease in the camp of which many were dying, he had done nothing. Now the end was near and Weiter like many other SS officers was thinking of war crime trials and only himself. He did try to contact the allies with a plan of letting go some of the prisoners but no action was taken it was just words, and it lead to nothing. Weiter died a few days before the camp was liberated. The circumstances are unclear, it seems that he was killed by one of his colleagues, who had felt that Weiter lacked the ideology of a true SS officer. He had perhaps heard of the plan to release some prisoners.
Last commandant of Dachau concentration camp 1944-45. He made very few changes to the camp under his command but many people died during his reign. In the last stages of the war he tried to make contact with the Allies and would have agreed to free some of the privileged prisoners, however he clashed with the camps Schutzhaftlagerfuhrer, Protective Custody commander and subsequent deputy, who shot him in April 1945.

ZILL EGON
SS-Sturmbannfuhrer SS: 535
Born: 28 March 1906
Egon Zill was 8 years old when World War I broke out. His father was drafted immediately, was gone from home for the entire war, and was very badly wounded. Before the war he had worked in a brewery in Plauen, a city not far from Leipzig in north Germany. Zill was born there. He had a younger brother who died at the age of 8 months and a little sister. After he finished school it was decided that he would be a baker. He worked for three years as an apprentice and then received a certificate. A few days later he joined the SA and the Nazi party. He was attracted to the SA nor for economic reasons, as the SA could not pay wages, it was for comradeship. Many young men joined at the same time as Zill. Through them he met his future wife, a blacksmiths daughter. Zill remained loyal to the party even when it stopped functioning during Hitlers imprisonment, and returned to its ranks immediately upon its reorganisation in 1925. In time an SS formation was established in Plauen, and Zill joined it at once. Only 534 men in all of Germany joined the SS before he did.
Zill was unemployed for a time in 1927, and then found work as a guard in a local curtain factory, this is where he met his wife. He remained at this job for seven years. With millions of Germans unemployed he was better off than many. Even after the Nazis came to power he did not rush to leave work. Only in May 1934 did he go to work for the SS full-time. He was stationed in a small concentration camp near Chemniz, halfway between Plauen, where he lived, and Dresden. He claimed that the SS drafted him. The truth is that he supported the movement and volunteered himself. When the movement had the power to improve his lot, Zill trained as an officer.
Zill remained in the camps for nine years. In 1943 he was transferred to the eastern front. He served in the Elbe guard unit and patrolled the area around the Lichtenburg camp. Until 1943 he served in different positions in Dachau, Lichtenburg, Ravensbruck, and Hinzert and finally as commandant at the Natzweiler and Flossenburg camps. In this way he advanced along with the camps from the start, followed the growing brutality, and became part of it. Each stage prepared him for the one after. He once suggested that inmates who had turned from opponents to supporters of the Nazis through camp education should be allowed to prove their loyalty to the Reich by fighting at the front. If they survived they would receive their freedom in exchange for their combat service.
Zill was a cruel sadistic commandant, he ordered and personally carried out many terrible atrocities on inmates. One case involved a group of Soviet POW who were ordered to strip naked and then paraded in front of Zill. He watched them for some time while he amused himself with his riding whip, he enjoyed his power over them, choosing who would live and who would die. He then chose one of them and shot him, with his own gun. He would frequently torture prisoners. There is also evidence that he once caught venereal disease. This could have meant that he also sexually abused the prisoners, as well as torturing them, in any case they were often paraded naked in front of him.
He was a short man, who behind his back was called "little Zill". After the war he took on a false name, but he registered his baby under his real name, even though the mother was not his wife. This led to his discovery, arrest and trial. In 1955 a court in Munich first sentenced him to life imprisonment, but later accepted his appeal and the sentence was reduced to 15 years. Zill died in 1974 in the town of Dachau, a mile or so from the concentration camp in which he had once worked.
Commandant of Natzweiler and Flossenburg concentration camps. He was commandant of Natzweiler in the early stages and the second to last commandant of Flossenberg, 1944. Before being made commandant he was the Lagerfuhrer at Dachau camp and he took delight in torturing people. Zill tied prisoners to trees and ordered his dog to attack their genitals.
In January 1955 he was sentenced to life imprisonment for war crimes. He later died at his home in Dachau in 1974.

chrish
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Location: Poland

#5

Post by chrish » 31 May 2003, 14:18

Thank You very much ! :)

Phil Nix
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Joined: 15 Oct 2002, 11:52
Location: Birmingham England

#6

Post by Phil Nix » 02 Jun 2003, 10:05

SS Oberfuhrer Hermann Pister born in Lubeck
SS Standartenfuhrer Himar Wackerle Promoted SF 21.8.40
Philmil

chrish
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Posts: 1072
Joined: 25 May 2003, 20:29
Location: Poland

#7

Post by chrish » 02 Jun 2003, 22:15

Thanks ! Especialy for Wackerle promotion's date .

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