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Karl Chmielewski
Karl Chmielewski (16 July 1903 – 1 December 1991) was a German ''Schutzstaffel, SS'' officer and concentration camp commandant. Such was his cruelty, he was dubbed ''Teufel von Gusen concentration camp, Gusen'' or the Devil of Gusen."Sagel-Grande, et.al.: ''Justiz und NS-Verbrechen - Strafverfahren gegen Chmielewski Karl (Lage, Aufbau und personelle Besetzung des Lagers Gusen und Lebensbedingungen seiner Häftlinge''. Band XVII, Amsterdam 1977. p. 160 ff. Chmielewski joined the SS whilst unemployed in 1932 and joined the Nazi Party the following year. After initially serving in the office of Heinrich Himmler, he was transferred to the Columbia concentration camp in 1935, before moving to Sachsenhausen concentration camp the following year. He was promoted to Untersturmführer in 1938 and attached to the ''Schutzhaftlagerführer, Schutzhaftlagerführung"", the 'Protective custody' units of the ''SS-Totenkopfverbände''. From 1940 to 1942 Chmielewski, by then a ''Hauptsturmführe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frankfurt Am Main
Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its namesake Main River, it forms a continuous conurbation with the neighboring city of Offenbach am Main and its urban area has a population of over 2.3 million. The city is the heart of the larger Rhine-Main metropolitan region, which has a population of more than 5.6 million and is Germany's second-largest metropolitan region after the Rhine-Ruhr region. Frankfurt's central business district, the Bankenviertel, lies about northwest of the geographic center of the EU at Gadheim, Lower Franconia. Like France and Franconia, the city is named after the Franks. Frankfurt is the largest city in the Rhine Franconian dialect area. Frankfurt was a city state, the Free City of Frankfurt, for nearly five centuries, and was one of the most import ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of the Holocaust. As a member of a reserve battalion during World War I, Himmler did not see active service, and did not fight. He studied agriculture in university, and joined the Nazi Party in 1923 and the SS in 1925. In 1929, he was appointed by Adolf Hitler. Over the next 16 years, he developed the SS from a 290-man battalion into a million-strong paramilitary group, and set up and controlled the Nazi concentration camps. He was known for good organisational skills and for selecting highly competent subordinates, such as Reinhard Heydrich in 1931. From 1943 onwards, he was both Chief of German Police and Minister of the Interior, overseeing all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo (Secret State Police). H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Austria
Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous city and state. A landlocked country, Austria is bordered by Germany to the northwest, the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia to the northeast, Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west. The country occupies an area of and has a population of 9 million. Austria emerged from the remnants of the Eastern and Hungarian March at the end of the first millennium. Originally a margraviate of Bavaria, it developed into a duchy of the Holy Roman Empire in 1156 and was later made an archduchy in 1453. In the 16th century, Vienna began serving as the empire's administrative capital and Austria thus became the heartland of the Habsburg monarchy. After the dissolution of the H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dachau Concentration Camp
, , commandant = List of commandants , known for = , location = Upper Bavaria, Southern Germany , built by = Germany , operated by = ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) , original use = Political prison , construction = , in operation = March 1933 – April 1945 , gas chambers = , prisoner type = Political prisoners, Poles, Romani, Jews, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Catholic priests, Communists , inmates = Over 188,000 (estimated) , killed = 41,500 (per Dachau website) , liberated by = U.S. Army , notable inmates = , notable books = , website = Dachau () was the first concentration camp built by Nazi Germany, opening on 22 March 1933. The camp was initially intended to intern Hitler's political opponents which consisted of: communists, social democrats, and other dissidents. It is located on the grounds of an abandoned munitions factory northeast of the medieval town of Dachau, about northwest o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adam Grünewald
Adam Grünewald (20 October 1902 – 22 January 1945) was a German Schutzstaffel officer and Nazi concentration camp commandant. The son of a carpenter who died when he was 8, Grünewald apprenticed as a baker but found work difficult to come by when the First World War ended and the demobilised soldiers entered the labour market.Tom Segev, ''Soldiers of Evil'', Berkley Books, 1991, p. 71 Attracted to the nationalist propaganda prevalent at the time Grünewald joined the Freikorps before signing on with the army for a 12-year stint. Leaving the army as a staff sergeant in April 1931 Grünewald again struggled to find employment and so joined the Sturmabteilung. He rose to the rank of Obersturmbannführer in the SA before switching to the SS shortly after the Night of the Long Knives. In 1943, Grünewald succeeded Karl Chmielewski as commandant of Herzogenbusch concentration camp (aka Kamp Vught). However, like his predecessor he was also removed. He was found guilty of exces ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Franz Ziereis
Franz Xaver Ziereis (13 August 1905 – 24 May 1945) was the commandant of the Mauthausen concentration camp from 1939 until the camp was liberated by the American forces in 1945. Early life and SS career Ziereis was born on 13 August 1905 in Munich, Kingdom of Bavaria, German Empire (now in Bavaria, Germany), where he spent 8 years in elementary school and then began as an apprentice and messenger boy in a department store. In the evenings he studied commerce. In 1922 he went to work as a labourer in a carpentry shop. Ziereis joined Germany's Reichswehr (army) on 1 April 1924, for a period of 12 years. He was discharged with the rank of sergeant in 1936 and joined the SS on September 30 of the same year. He attained the rank of SS-Obersturmführer and was assigned as a training instructor to the SS-Totenkopfverbände. In 1937 he was given command of a Totenkopfverbände unit and later became a training instructor. Concentration camp commandant Zeireis replaced Albert Saue ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tom Segev
Tom Segev ( he, תום שגב; born March 1, 1945) is an Israeli historian, author and journalist. He is associated with Israel's New Historians, a group challenging many of the country's traditional narratives. Biography Segev was born in Jerusalem. His parents, Ricarda (née Meltzer) and Heinz Schwerin were artists who had met at the Bauhaus art school and fled Nazi Germany in 1935 due to their Communist orientation (Heinz was also Jewish). His mother was a photographer; his father, an architect and toy manufacturer, was killed on guard duty in Jerusalem in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Segev's first language was German; his mother never learned Hebrew beyond a basic level. He earned a BA in history and political science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a PhD in history from Boston University in the 1970s. His sister is the German politician Jutta Oesterle-Schwerin. Journalism career Segev worked during the 1970s as a correspondent for ''Maariv'' in Bonn. He was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Netherlands
) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherlands , established_title2 = Act of Abjuration , established_date2 = 26 July 1581 , established_title3 = Peace of Münster , established_date3 = 30 January 1648 , established_title4 = Kingdom established , established_date4 = 16 March 1815 , established_title5 = Liberation Day (Netherlands), Liberation Day , established_date5 = 5 May 1945 , established_title6 = Charter for the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Kingdom Charter , established_date6 = 15 December 1954 , established_title7 = Dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles, Caribbean reorganisation , established_date7 = 10 October 2010 , official_languages = Dutch language, Dutch , languages_type = Regional languages , languages_sub = yes , languages = , languages2_type = Reco ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hauptsturmführer
__NOTOC__ (, ; short: ''Hstuf'') was a Nazi Party paramilitary rank that was used in several Nazi organizations such as the SS, NSKK and the NSFK. The rank of ''Hauptsturmführer'' was a mid-level commander and had equivalent seniority to a captain (''Hauptmann'') in the German Army and also the equivalency of captain in foreign armies. The rank of ''Hauptsturmführer'' evolved from the older rank of ''Sturmhauptführer'', created as a rank of the ''Sturmabteilung'' (SA). The SS used the rank of ''Sturmhauptführer'' from 1930 to 1934 at which time, following the Night of the Long Knives, the name of the rank was changed to ''Hauptsturmführer'' although the insignia remained the same. ''Sturmhauptführer'' remained an SA rank until 1945. Some of the most infamous SS members are known to have held the rank of ''Hauptsturmführer''. Among them are Josef Mengele, the infamous doctor assigned to Auschwitz; Klaus Barbie, ''Gestapo'' Chief of Lyon; Joseph Kramer, commandant of B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SS-Totenkopfverbände
''SS-Totenkopfverbände'' (SS-TV; ) was the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) organization responsible for administering the Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps for Nazi Germany, among similar duties. While the ''Totenkopf'' was the universal cap badge of the SS, the SS-TV also wore this insignia on the right collar tab to distinguish itself from other SS formations. The SS-TV originally created in 1933 was an independent unit within the SS, with its own command structure. It ran the camps throughout Germany and later in occupied Europe. Camps in Germany included Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, and Buchenwald; camps elsewhere in Europe included Auschwitz- Birkenau in German occupied Poland and Mauthausen in Austria among the numerous other concentration camps, and death camps handled with the utmost of secrecy. The extermination camps' function was genocide; they included Treblinka, Bełżec, and Sobibór built specifically for ''Aktion Reinhard'', as well as the original Chełmn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Protective Custody
Protective custody (PC) is a type of imprisonment (or care) to protect a person from harm, either from outside sources or other prisoners. Many prison administrators believe the level of violence, or the underlying threat of violence within prisons, is a chief factor causing the need for PC units. Prisoners have the opportunity to request protective custody if they get the impression that the environment they are living in is harmful to their well being. Their request may be granted if the officials rule that the prisoner is truly at risk. Protective custody might simply involve putting the person in a secure prison (if the threat is from the outside), but usually protective custody involves some degree of solitary confinement. For people who are threatened because of their association with a certain group or gang, moving them to another section of the prison may be sufficient. History of starting PC units Early uses of protective custody started in the 1960s by law enforceme ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Schutzhaftlagerführer
''Schutzhaftlagerführer'' (head of the "preventive detention camp") was a paramilitary title of the SS, specific to the concentration and extermination camps '' Totenkopfverbande'' ("Death's-Head units"). A ''Schutzhaftlagerführer'' was in charge of the economic function of the camp. Usually, there was more than one SS man performing that function at each location due to their enormous size. ''Schutzhaftlagerführers'' received orders from the central offices in Berlin, such as DEST run directly by the SS. Prisoners' lives were entirely in their hands. Their orders, which usually involved routine maltreatment of condemned victims, were carried out through "assignments" so they would not have to deal with the dead resulting from them. The ''Schutzhaftlagerführer'' and his adjutant were responsible for the operation of the camp. The ''Schutzhaftlagerführer'' had to maintain order, take care of daily routines, roll calls and so on. Under him were the ''Rapportführer'', the '' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
