|
Rapportführer
''Rapportführer'' (Report Leader; feminine: ''Rapportführerin'') was a paramilitary title of the SS, specific to the '' Totenkopfverbände'' (Concentration Camp Service). An ''SS-Rapportführer'' was usually a mid-level SS-non-commissioned officer (often an ''Oberscharführer'' or ''Hauptscharführer'') who served as the commander of a group of '' Blockführer'' who themselves were assigned to oversee barracks within a Concentration Camp. The primary duty of a ''Rapportführer'' was to conduct daily and evening camp roll call, which was usually a long and grueling process involving prisoners standing for sometimes hours on end in all types of weather conditions. The ''Rapportführer'' also oversaw camp discipline of prisoners as well as training for junior SS personnel. Most ''Rapportführers'' in the SS were known for their brutality, which such individuals as Eric Muhsfeldt and Gustav Wagner holding this position. In larger camps (such as Auschwitz), the ''Rapportführer' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blockführer
''Blockführer'' (Block Leader) was a paramilitary title specific to the SS-Death's Head Units in Concentration Camp Service. An SS-Block Leader was typically in charge of a prisoner barracks ranging from two hundred to three hundred concentration camp prisoners; in larger camps, the number of prisoners could reach as a high as a thousand. The Block Leader was in charge of daily attendance, supervising daily work details, and the distributing of rations to prisoners. Assisting in this case were several prisoner trustees, known as ''kapos''. The position of Block Leader was usually held by an SS soldier holding the rank of SS-Corporal or non-commissioned officer rank of SS-Sergeant. In the Nazi death camps, the task of gassing prisoners with Zyklon B was performed by a Block Leader. A similar title, known as ''Blockleiter'' (Block Warden), also existed in the Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsoziali ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Majdanek - Hermine Braunsteiner
Majdanek (or Lublin) was a Nazi concentration and extermination camp built and operated by the SS on the outskirts of the city of Lublin during the German occupation of Poland in World War II. It had seven gas chambers, two wooden gallows, and some 227 structures in all, placing it among the largest of Nazi concentration camps. Although initially intended for forced labor rather than extermination, the camp was used to murder people on an industrial scale during Operation Reinhard, the German plan to murder all Polish Jews within their own occupied homeland. The camp, which operated from 1 October 1941 to 22 July 1944, was captured nearly intact. The rapid advance of the Soviet Red Army during Operation Bagration prevented the SS from destroying most of the camp's infrastructure, and Deputy Camp Commandant Anton Thernes failed to remove most incriminating evidence of war crimes. The camp was nicknamed Majdanek ("little Majdan") in 1941 by local residents, as it was adjacen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Non-commissioned Officer
A non-commissioned officer (NCO) is a military officer who has not pursued a commission. Non-commissioned officers usually earn their position of authority by promotion through the enlisted ranks. (Non-officers, which includes most or all enlisted personnel, are of lower rank than any officer.) In contrast, commissioned officers usually enter directly from a military academy, officer candidate school (OCS), or officer training school (OTS) after receiving a post-secondary degree. The NCO corps usually includes many grades of enlisted, corporal and sergeant; in some countries, warrant officers also carry out the duties of NCOs. The naval equivalent includes some or all grades of petty officer. There are different classes of non-commissioned officers, including junior (lower ranked) non-commissioned officers (JNCO) and senior/staff (higher ranked) non-commissioned officers (SNCO). Function The non-commissioned officer corps has been referred to as "the backbone" of the armed se ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oberscharführer
__NOTOC__ ''Oberscharführer'' (, ) was a Nazi Party paramilitary rank that existed between 1932 and 1945. ''Oberscharführer'' was first used as a rank of the ''Sturmabteilung'' (SA) and was created due to an expansion of the enlisted positions required by growing SA membership in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The SA rank of ''Oberscharführer'' was senior to ''Scharführer'' and junior to the rank of ''Truppführer''. Since early ranks of the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) were identical to the ranks of SA, ''Oberscharführer'' was created as an SS rank at the same time the position was created within the SA. Initially, the rank of SS-''Oberscharführer'' was equal to its SA counterpart; however, this changed in 1934 following the Night of the Long Knives. At that time, the SS rank system was reorganized and several new ranks established with older SA titles discontinued. The rank of SS-''Oberscharführer'' was therefore "bumped up" and became equal to an SA-''Truppführer''. Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hauptscharführer
__NOTOC__ ''Hauptscharführer'' ( ) was a Nazi paramilitary rank which was used by the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) between the years of 1934 and 1945. The rank was the highest enlisted rank of the SS, with the exception of the special Waffen-SS rank of '' Sturmscharführer''. The ''Hauptscharführer'' became a SS rank after a reorganization of the SS following the Night of the Long Knives. The first use of ''Hauptscharführer'' was in June 1934 when the rank replaced the older SA title of ''Obertruppführer''. Within the ''Allgemeine-SS'' (general-SS), a ''Hauptscharführer'' was typically the head SS- non-commissioned officer of an ''SS-Sturm'' (company) or was a rank used by enlisted staff personnel assigned to an SS headquarters office or security agency (such as the Gestapo and ''Sicherheitsdienst'' (SD)). The rank of ''Hauptscharführer'' was also commonly used in the concentration camp service and could also be found as a rank of the '' Einsatzgruppen''. The rank of SS-''H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nazi Concentration Camps
From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps, (officially) or (more commonly). The Nazi concentration camps are distinguished from other types of Nazi camps such as forced-labor camps, as well as concentration camps operated by Germany's allies. on its own territory and in parts of German-occupied Europe. The first camps were established in March 1933 immediately after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. Following the 1934 purge of the SA, the concentration camps were run exclusively by the SS via the Concentration Camps Inspectorate and later the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office. Initially, most prisoners were members of the Communist Party of Germany, but as time went on different groups were arrested, including "habitual criminals", "asocials", and Jews. After the beginning of World War II, people from German-occupied Europe were imprisoned in the concentration camps. Following Allied military victories, the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Weather
Weather is the state of the atmosphere, describing for example the degree to which it is hot or cold, wet or dry, calm or stormy, clear or cloudy. On Earth, most weather phenomena occur in the lowest layer of the planet's atmosphere, the troposphere, just below the stratosphere. Weather refers to day-to-day temperature, precipitation, and other atmospheric conditions, whereas climate is the term for the averaging of atmospheric conditions over longer periods of time. When used without qualification, "weather" is generally understood to mean the weather of Earth. Weather is driven by air pressure, temperature, and moisture differences between one place and another. These differences can occur due to the Sun's angle at any particular spot, which varies with latitude. The strong temperature contrast between polar and tropical air gives rise to the largest scale atmospheric circulations: the Hadley cell, the Ferrel cell, the polar cell, and the jet stream. Weather system ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eric Muhsfeldt
Erich Mußfeldt also spelled Erich Muhsfeldt (18 February 1913 – 24 January 1948) was a German war criminal. He served as an SS NCO in three extermination camps during World War II in occupied Poland and Germany: Auschwitz, Majdanek and Flossenbürg. After the war, he was tried for war crimes by the U.S. military, found guilty of committing atrocities in Flossenbürg concentration camp, and sentenced to life in prison. However, Muhsfeldt was then extradited to Poland, where the full extent of his war crimes was revealed due to new evidence. He was retried by the Supreme National Tribunal at the Auschwitz Trial in Kraków, and found guilty of crimes against humanity. Muhsfeldt was sentenced to death by hanging in December 1947, and executed on 24 January 1948. Pre-war and personal life Erich Muhsfeldt was born on 18 February 1913 in Berkenbrück, Brandenburg, Germany. His father worked as a labourer at the State Water Administration in Fürstenwalde. In 1927, Muhsfeldt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gustav Wagner
Gustav Franz Wagner (18 July 1911 – 3 October 1980) was an Austrian member of the ''Schutzstaffel, SS'' with the rank of Staff sergeant (''Oberscharführer''). Wagner was a deputy commander of Sobibor extermination camp in General Government, German-occupied Poland, where 200,000-250,000 Jews were murdered in the camp's gas chambers during Operation Reinhard. Due to his brutality, he was known as "The Beast" and "Wolf". Biography Wagner was born in Vienna, Austria and joined the Nazi Party in 1931 as member number 443,217. After being arrested for proscribed National Socialist agitation, he fled to Germany, where he joined the Sturmabteilung, SA and later the ''Schutzstaffel'' in the late 1930s.Christian Zentner, Friedemann Bedürftig. ''The Encyclopedia of the Third Reich'', p. 1,014. Macmillan, New York, 1991. In May 1940, Wagner was part of the Action T4 euthanasia program at Hartheim Euthanasia Centre, Hartheim with administrative functions. Due to his experience in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Auschwitz
Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschwitz I, the main camp (''Stammlager'') in Oświęcim; Auschwitz II-Birkenau, a concentration and extermination camp with gas chambers; Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a labor camp for the chemical conglomerate IG Farben; and dozens of subcamps. The camps became a major site of the Nazis' final solution to the Jewish question. After Germany sparked World War II by invading Poland in September 1939, the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) converted Auschwitz I, an army barracks, into a prisoner-of-war camp. The initial transport of political detainees to Auschwitz consisted almost solely of Poles for whom the camp was initially established. The bulk of inmates were Polish for the first two years. In May 1940, German criminals brought to t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sobibor
Sobibor (, Polish: ) was an extermination camp built and operated by Nazi Germany as part of Operation Reinhard. It was located in the forest near the village of Żłobek Duży in the General Government region of German-occupied Poland. As an extermination camp rather than a concentration camp, Sobibor existed for the sole purpose of murdering Jews. The vast majority of prisoners were gassed within hours of arrival. Those not killed immediately were forced to assist in the operation of the camp, and few survived more than a few months. In total, some 170,000 to 250,000 people were murdered at Sobibor, making it the fourth-deadliest Nazi camp after Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Belzec. The camp ceased operations after a prisoner revolt which took place on 14 October 1943. The plan for the revolt involved two phases. In the first phase, teams of prisoners were to discreetly assassinate each of the SS officers. In the second phase, all 600 prisoners would assemble for evening roll ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
