Majdanek Trials
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Majdanek Trials
The Majdanek trials were a series of consecutive war-crime trials held in Poland and in Germany during and after World War II, constituting the overall longest Nazi war crimes trial in history spanning over 30 years. The first judicial trial of Majdanek extermination camp officials took place from November 27, 1944, to December 2, 1944, in Lublin, Poland. The last one, held at the District Court of Düsseldorf began on November 26, 1975, and concluded on June 30, 1981. It was West Germany's longest and most expensive trial, lasting 474 sessions. A number of former high ranking SS men, camp officials, camp guards, and SS staff were arraigned before the courts on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed at Majdanek in the period between October 1, 1941, and July 22, 1944. Notably, only 170 Nazis who served at Majdanek had been prosecuted at all, of the 1,037 camp personnel known by name. Half of the defendants charged by the West German justice system were set ...
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Anton Thernes
Anton Thernes (8 February 1892 – 3 December 1944) was a Nazi German war criminal, deputy commandant of administration at the notorious Majdanek concentration camp on the outskirts of Lublin, Poland in World War II. He was tried at the Majdanek Trials and executed on 3 December 1944, along with five other war criminals, near the gas chambers and the Majdanek crematorium. War crimes Thernes was married with six children in Trier before the Nazi German invasion of Poland. A member of the SS, Thernes served as the last administrative chief of KL Lublin / Majdanek. He was also in charge of food and slave labour administration, starvation rationing, and the maintenance of camp structures including the storage depot for property and valuables stolen from the Holocaust victims at the killing centers in Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka.. Thernes was given the task of destroying the evidence of crimes against humanity and genocide, but ran out of time due to his ineptitude and letharg ...
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Treblinka
Treblinka () was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The camp operated between 23 July 1942 and 19 October 1943 as part of Operation Reinhard, the deadliest phase of the Final Solution. During this time, it is estimated that between 700,000 and 900,000 Jews were murdered in its gas chambers, along with 2,000 Romani people. More Jews were murdered at Treblinka than at any other Nazi extermination camp apart from Auschwitz-Birkenau. Managed by the German SS with assistance from Trawniki guards – recruited from among Soviet POWs to serve with the Germans – the camp consisted of two separate units. Treblinka I was a forced-labour camp ('' Arbeitslager'') whose prisoners worked in the gravel pit or irrigation area and in the forest, where they cut wood to fuel the cremation pits. Between 1941 a ...
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German Camp Brothels In World War II
In World War II, Nazi Germany established brothels in the concentration camps (''Lagerbordell'') to create an incentive for prisoners to collaborate, although these institutions were used mostly by Kapos, "prisoner functionaries" and the criminal element, because regular inmates, penniless and emaciated, were usually too debilitated and wary of exposure to Schutzstaffel (SS) schemes. In the end, the camp brothels did not produce any noticeable increase in the prisoners' work productivity levels, but instead, created a market for coupons among the camp VIPs."Camp Brothel".
''Wollheim Memorial''. Accessed June 30, 2011.
The women forced into these brothels came mainly from the

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Oberaufseherin
Aufseherin was the position title for a female guard in the Nazi concentration camps during World War II. Of the 50,000 guards who served in Nazi concentration camps, about 5,000 were women. In 1942, the first female guards arrived at Auschwitz and Majdanek from Ravensbrück. The year after, the Nazis began conscripting women because of a shortage of male guards. In the context of these camps, the German position title of ''Aufseherin'' translates to (female) "overseer" or "attendant". Later female guards were dispersed to Bolzano (1944–1945), Kaiserwald-Riga (1943–44), Mauthausen (March – May 1945), Stutthof (1942–1945), Vaivara (1943–1944), Vught (1943–1944), and at Nazi concentration camps, subcamps, work camps, detention camps and other posts. Recruitment Female guards were generally from the lower to middle class and had no relevant work experience; their occupational background varied: one source mentions former matrons, hairdressers, tramcar-conductres ...
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Elsa Ehrich
Else Lieschen Frida "Elsa" Ehrich (8 March 1914 – 26 October 1948) was a convicted war criminal who served as an ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) guard in Nazi concentration camps, including at Kraków-Płaszów and the Majdanek concentration camp during World War II. She was tried in Lublin, Poland at the Majdanek Trials and sentenced to death for war crimes. Ehrich was hanged on 26 October 1948. She was an '' Oberaufseherin'' at Majdanek, and took active part in all the major selections to the gas chambers and executions. She maltreated prisoners, including children. Her assistant was Hermine Braunsteiner, who was later denaturalized and deported from the United States back to Germany. Background Ehrich was born in Bredereiche. She worked in a slaughterhouse. On 15 August 1940, she volunteered for service in the concentration camp Ravensbrück as an SS guard. From 1941, Ehrich worked as a SS-Rapportführerin (Rapport Leader). In October 1942, she was transferred to Majdanek near ...
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Theodor Schöllen
Theodor is a masculine given name. It is a German form of Theodore. It is also a variant of Teodor. List of people with the given name Theodor * Theodor Adorno, (1903–1969), German philosopher * Theodor Aman, Romanian painter * Theodor Blueger, Latvian professional ice hockey forward for the Pittsburgh Penguins of the National Hockey League (NHL) * Theodor Burghele, Romanian surgeon, President of the Romanian Academy * Theodor Busse, German general during World War I and World War II * Theodor Cazaban, Romanian writer * Theodor Fischer (fencer), German Olympic épée and foil fencer * Theodor Fontane, (1819–1898), German writer * Theodor Geisel, American writer and cartoonist, known by the pseudonym Dr. Seuss * Theodor W. Hänsch (born 1940), German physicist * Theodor Herzl, (1860–1904), Austrian-Hungary Jewish journalist and the founder of modern political Zionism * Theodor Heuss, (1884–1963), German politician and publicist * Theodor Innitzer, Austrian Catholic ca ...
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Kapo (concentration Camp)
A kapo or prisoner functionary (german: Funktionshäftling) was a prisoner in a Nazi camp who was assigned by the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) guards to supervise forced labor or carry out administrative tasks. Also called "prisoner self-administration", the prisoner functionary system minimized costs by allowing camps to function with fewer SS personnel. The system was designed to turn victim against victim, as the prisoner functionaries were pitted against their fellow prisoners in order to maintain the favor of their SS overseers. If they neglected their duties, they would be demoted to ordinary prisoners and be subject to other kapos. Many prisoner functionaries were recruited from the ranks of violent criminal gangs rather than from the more numerous political, religious, and racial prisoners; such criminal convicts were known for their brutality toward other prisoners. This brutality was tolerated by the SS and was an integral part of the camp system. Prisoner functionaries wer ...
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Hermann Vögel
Hermann or Herrmann may refer to: * Hermann (name), list of people with this name * Arminius, chieftain of the Germanic Cherusci tribe in the 1st century, known as Hermann in the German language * Éditions Hermann, French publisher * Hermann, Missouri, a town on the Missouri River in the United States ** Hermann AVA, Missouri wine region * The German SC1000 bomb of World War II was nicknamed the "Hermann" by the British, in reference to Hermann Göring * Herrmann Hall, the former Hotel Del Monte, at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California * Memorial Hermann Healthcare System, a large health system in Southeast Texas * The Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI), a system to measure and describe thinking preferences in people * Hermann station (other), stations of the name * Hermann (crater), a small lunar impact crater in the western Oceanus Procellarum * Hermann Huppen, a Belgian comic book artist * Hermann 19, an American sailboat design built by Ted Herm ...
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Wilhelm Gerstenmeier
''SS-Hauptsturmführer'' Wilhelm Gerstenmeier (17 January 1908 – 3 December 1944) was a German member of the SS (member number 13300) during World War II. He was convicted of atrocities committed at the Majdanek concentration camp in occupied Poland and hanged for war crimes on the grounds of the camp in 1944. Biography Gerstenmeier was born in Augsburg, Kingdom of Bavaria, Bavaria, a son of Karl Gerstenmeier and Elizabeth née Krippendorf. He was married with two children before the Nazi German invasion of Poland. While in Poland, he served as Master Sergeant in the Schutzstaffel squadron of the Waffen-SS and in 1941 was assigned as assistant to ''SS-Obersturmführer'' Anton Thernes, commandant of the Majdanek concentration camp administration in charge of slave labour, starvation rationing and maintenance of the camp structures. Gerstenmeier rose to the rank of ''Obersturmführer'' in Majdanek. He was a manager of the storage depot for property and valuables stolen from the ...
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Death Camp
Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (german: Vernichtungslager), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocaust. The victims of death camps were primarily murdered by gassing, either in permanent installations constructed for this specific purpose, or by means of gas vans. The six extermination camps were Chełmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Auschwitz and Majdanek death camps also used extermination through labour in order to kill their prisoners. The idea of mass extermination with the use of stationary facilities, to which the victims were taken by train, was the result of earlier Nazi experimentation with chemically manufactured poison gas during the secretive Aktion T4 euthanasia programme against hospital patients with mental and physical disabilities. The technology was adapted, expanded, and applied in wart ...
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Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. The murders were carried out in pogroms and mass shootings; by a policy of extermination through labor in concentration camps; and in gas chambers and gas vans in German extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bełżec, Chełmno, Majdanek, Sobibór, and Treblinka in occupied Poland. Germany implemented the persecution in stages. Following Adolf Hitler's appointment as chancellor on 30 January 1933, the regime built a network of concentration camps in Germany for political opponents and those deemed "undesirable", starting with Dachau on 22 March 1933. After the passing of the Enabling Act on 24 March, which gave Hitler dictatorial plenary powers, the government bega ...
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Hermann Florstedt
Arthur Hermann Florstedt (18 February 1895 – 15 April 1945), member of the NSDAP, was a German SS commander, war criminal and convicted war profiteer. He became the third commander of Majdanek concentration camp in October 1942. Florstedt was convicted of corruption and executed by the regime in April 1945. World War II Florstedt joined the SS in 1933 achieving the rank of Standartenführer in 1938. He served at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp from 1940 till 1942. He was appointed the third chief of Majdanek extermination camp in October 1942 to replace ''SS-Sturmbannführer'' Max Koegel. Florstedt was investigated by SS Judge Georg Konrad Morgen and charged by the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) with embezzlement and arbitrary killing of prisoner witnesses. Florstedt was one of two Majdanek commandants put on trial by the SS in the course of the camp operation. He was charged with corruption (wholesale stealing from the Third Reich); he had access to valuables stolen from ...
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