Richard Baer
Richard Baer (9 September 1911 – 17 June 1963) was a German SS officer who, among other assignments, was the commandant of Auschwitz I concentration camp from May 1944 to January 1945, and right after, from February to April 1945, commandant of Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. Following the war, Baer lived under an assumed name to avoid prosecution but was recognized and arrested in December 1960. He died in detention before he could stand trial. Life Born in Floss, Bavaria in 1911, Baer grew up in a Protestant family. In 1925, he moved to Weiden in der Oberpfalz, where he performed a three-year apprenticeship to become a pastry chef. After completing his vocational training, Baer toured Bavaria for several years as a journeyman. Eventually, in winter of 1932, he returned to the pastry company of his apprenticeship and worked there until he resigned in March 1933. Baer signed on with the Nazi Party in 1930, and on 1 July 1932 he became a member of the General SS. In ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Floß
Floß is a municipality in the district of Neustadt an der Waldnaab in Bavaria, Germany. Geography Town subdivision The civil parish Floß is composed of 35 official named districts.: Characteristics History The origin of settlement goes back to friars. The first mention is found in 948: "Occisio paganorum ad flozzun", which is translated as "the Hungarians were conquered by the duke near Floß". The town was in possession of House of Hohenstaufen and was awarded market town status by its sovereigns, Markgraf Friedrich von Brandenburg and Pfalzgraf Johann, in 1421. Since 1438/39 the market town was under control of Wittelsbacher. In 1556, Protestantism is first mentioned, and in 1648, a Jewish community. Subsequently it was part of Duchy of the Wittelsbacher Pfalz-Sulzbach, which belonged since 1777 to Kingdom of Bavaria. It has its own market tribunal with municipal rights. Between 1802 and 1809, Floß lost most of its rights in the course of diverse land reforms. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Martin Gottfried Weiss
Martin Gottfried Weiss, alternatively spelled Weiß ( – 29 May 1946), was the commandant of the Dachau concentration camp in 1945 at the time of his arrest. He also served from April 1940 until September 1942 as the commandant of Neuengamme concentration camp, and later, from November 1943 until May 1944, as the fourth commandant of Majdanek concentration camp. He was executed for war crimes. Life Weiss was born in Weiden in der Oberpfalz. His father worked for the Royal Bavarian State Railways. He had two sisters and was raised as a Catholic. After school he continued his education at a mechanical engineering school in Landshut. He finished school in 1924 and worked as intern in an ironworks. Later he worked for about three and a half years for the Upper Palatine electric company. In the summer of 1926 he joined the Nazi Party and founded a chapter of the SA and of the HJ with two friends in Weiden. Later he studied electrical engineering in Bad Frankenhausen, finishing ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Subcamp
Subcamps (german: KZ-Außenlager), also translated as satellite camps, were outlying detention centres (''Haftstätten'') that came under the command of a main concentration camp run by the SS in Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe. The Nazis distinguished between the main camps (or ''Stammlager'') and the subcamps (''Außenlager'' or ''Außenkommandos'') subordinated to them. Survival conditions in the subcamps were, in many cases, poorer for the prisoners than those in the main camps. Emergence of the concept Within a concentration camp prisoners had to carry out various tasks. They were not supposed to be idle whilst interned. The work could even be pointless and vexatious, without any useful output. Based on military language the SS designated such prisoner task forces as "details" or ''Kommandos''; the generic term being the "works details" (''Arbeitskommandos'') of a camp. For example, in Dachau concentration camp there was a "Crematorium Works Detail" (''Arbeitsko ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Neuengamme Concentration Camp
Neuengamme was a network of Nazi concentration camps in Northern Germany that consisted of the main camp, Neuengamme, and more than 85 satellite camps. Established in 1938 near the village of Neuengamme in the Bergedorf district of Hamburg, the Neuengamme camp became the largest concentration camp in Northwest Germany. Over 100,000 prisoners came through Neuengamme and its subcamps, 24 of which were for women. The verified death toll is 42,900: 14,000 in the main camp, 12,800 in the subcamps, and 16,100 in the death marches and bombings during the final weeks of World War II. Following Germany's defeat in 1945, the British Army used the site as an internment camp for SS and other Nazi officials. In 1948, the British transferred the land to the Free Hanseatic City of Hamburg, which summarily demolished the camp's wooden barracks and built in its stead a prison cell block, converting the former concentration camp site into two state prisons operated by the Hamburg authorities f ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Untersturmführer
(, ; short: ''Ustuf'') was a paramilitary rank of the German ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) first created in July 1934. The rank can trace its origins to the older SA rank of ''Sturmführer'' which had existed since the founding of the SA in 1921. The rank of ''Untersturmführer'' was senior to ''Hauptscharführer'' (or '' Sturmscharführer'' in the Waffen-SS) and junior to the rank of ''Obersturmführer''. Overview ''Untersturmführer'' was the first commissioned SS officer rank, equivalent to a second lieutenant in other military organizations. The insignia consisted of a three silver pip collar patch with the shoulder boards of an army lieutenant. Because of the emphasis the SS placed on the leadership of their organization, obtaining the rank of ''Untersturmführer'' required a screening and training process different from the standard promotion system in the enlisted ranks. In the early days of the SS, promotion to ''Untersturmführer'' was simply a matter of course as an SS ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Second Lieutenant
Second lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer military rank in many armed forces, comparable to NATO OF-1 rank. Australia The rank of second lieutenant existed in the military forces of the Australian colonies and Australian Army until 1986. In the colonial forces, which closely followed the practices of the British military, the rank of second lieutenant began to replace ranks such as ensign and cornet from 1871. New appointments to the rank of second lieutenant ceased in the regular army in 1986. Immediately prior to this change, the rank had been effectively reserved for new graduates from the Officer Cadet School, Portsea which closed in 1985. (Graduates of the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) and the Royal Military College, Duntroon (RMC-D) are commissioned as lieutenants.). The rank of second lieutenant is only appointed to officers in special appointments such as training institutions, university regiments and while under probation during training. Trai ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Buchenwald Concentration Camp
Buchenwald (; literally 'beech forest') was a Nazi concentration camp established on hill near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within Germany's 1937 borders. Many actual or suspected communists were among the first internees. Prisoners came from all over Europe and the Soviet Union—Jews, Poles and other Slavs, the mentally ill and physically disabled, political prisoners, Romani people, Freemasons, and prisoners of war. There were also ordinary criminals and sexual "deviants". All prisoners worked primarily as forced labor in local armaments factories. The insufficient food and poor conditions, as well as deliberate executions, led to 56,545 deaths at Buchenwald of the 280,000 prisoners who passed through the camp and its 139 subcamps. The camp gained notoriety when it was liberated by the United States Army in April 1945; Allied commander Dwight D. Eisenhower visited one of its subcamps. From August 194 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Oranienburg Concentration Camp
Oranienburg was an early Nazi concentration camp, one of the first detention facilities established by the Nazis in the state of Prussia when they gained power in 1933. It held the political opponents of Nazi Party from the Berlin region, mostly members of the Communist Party of Germany and social-democrats, as well as a number of homosexual men and scores of the so-called undesirables. It was established in the center of the town of Oranienburg on the main road to Berlin when the SA took over a disused brewery grounds. Passers-by were able to look inside the prison perimeter. Prisoners were marched through the town to perform forced labour on behalf of the local council. The prison was taken over by the '' SS'' on 4 July 1934, when the SA was suppressed by the regime. It was closed and subsequently replaced in the area by Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1936. At closure, the prison had held over 3,000 inmates, of whom 16 had died. See also * List of Nazi-German conc ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp
Sachsenhausen () or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a German Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used from 1936 until April 1945, shortly before the defeat of Nazi Germany in May later that year. It mainly held political prisoners throughout World War II. Prominent prisoners included Joseph Stalin's oldest son, Yakov Dzhugashvili; assassin Herschel Grynszpan; Paul Reynaud, the penultimate Prime Minister of France; Francisco Largo Caballero, Prime Minister of the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War; the wife and children of the Crown Prince of Bavaria; Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera; and several enemy soldiers and political dissidents. Sachsenhausen was a labor camp, outfitted with several subcamps, a gas chamber, and a medical experimentation area. Prisoners were treated inhumanely, fed inadequately, and killed openly. After World War II, when Oranienburg was in the Soviet Occupation Zone, the structure was used by the NKVD as NKVD ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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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]   |
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Columbia Concentration Camp
Columbia concentration camp (also known as Columbia-Haus) was a Nazi concentration camp situated in the Tempelhof area of Berlin. It was one of the first such institutions established by the regime. Development Originally called ''Strafgefängnis Tempelhofer Feld'' the building, which contained 134 cells, 10 interrogation rooms and a guardroom, had been built as a military police station but fell empty in 1929.David Pascoe, ''Airspaces'', Reaktion Books, 2001, p. 177 However as soon as the Nazi Party came to power the building, which by then was known as Columbia-Haus, was made into a prison, with 400 inmates held by September 1933. The prison, initially staffed by both Schutzstaffel and Sturmabteilung members, was largely unregulated until 1934 when it was placed under the command of Walter Gerlach and his adjutant Arthur Liebehenschel. Run as a prison by the Gestapo, it was notorious in the city for the torture meted out to its detainees, most of whom were Communists, Social De ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Gestapo
The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one organisation. On 20 April 1934, oversight of the Gestapo passed to the head of the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS), Heinrich Himmler, who was also appointed Chief of German Police by Hitler in 1936. Instead of being exclusively a Prussian state agency, the Gestapo became a national one as a sub-office of the (SiPo; Security Police). From 27 September 1939, it was administered by the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA). It became known as (Dept) 4 of the RSHA and was considered a sister organisation to the (SD; Security Service). During World War II, the Gestapo played a key role in the Holocaust. After the war ended, the Gestapo was declared a criminal organisation by the International Military Tribunal (IMT) at the Nuremberg trials. History After Adol ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |