Career
Albert Ganzenmüller had taken part in the Munich Beer Hall Putsch in November 1923 while still atInvolvement in deportations
Ganzenmüller was immediately involved in the organization of trains for deportation. He collaborated in the transportation scheme for elderly German Jews toA train carrying 5,000 Jews has run daily since 22 July from Warsaw toKarl Wolff thanked him on 13 August 1942 in a personal letter: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 cam ...via Malkinia; furthermore, another train has run twice a week with 5,000 Jews from Przemysl to Belzec. The senior management of the eastern division of the railways, ‘Gedob’ (Generaldirektion der Ostbahnen), is in constant touch with the security service (Sicherheitsdienst ' (, ''Security Service''), full title ' (Security Service of the '' Reichsführer-SS''), or SD, was the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. Established in 1931, the SD was the first Nazi intelligence organization ...) in Krakau. The latter is in agreement that transport from Warsaw to Sobibor via Lublin should continue while the reconstruction work on this stretch renders such movements impossible ( ntilapproximately October 1942).
… I note with particular pleasure from your communication that a train with 5,000 members of the chosen race has been running daily for 14 days and that we are accordingly in a position to continue with this population movement at an accelerated pace. /blockquote> At the beginning of 1943, Himmler approached Ganzenmüller directly in order to ensure the pending “removal of Jews” to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Most of the victims were carried to their deaths byReichsbahn The ''Deutsche Reichsbahn'', also known as the German National Railway, the German State Railway, German Reich Railway, and the German Imperial Railway, was the German national railway system created after the end of World War I from the regiona ...trains in locked and windowless cattle wagons, with few sanitary arrangements and little or nothing in the way of water or food. The wagons were supposed to carry just 50 persons but were normally packed with 100 to 150 victims, the overcrowding making sitting impossible and increasing their distress. TheHolocaust trains Holocaust trains were railway transports run by the '' Deutsche Reichsbahn'' national railway system under the control of Nazi Germany and its allies, for the purpose of forcible deportation of the Jews, as well as other victims of the Holocau ...were hired by Adolf Eichmann, and theReichsbahn The ''Deutsche Reichsbahn'', also known as the German National Railway, the German State Railway, German Reich Railway, and the German Imperial Railway, was the German national railway system created after the end of World War I from the regiona ...demanded one-way fares be paid by the victims, although children below the age of four were allowed free travel to their deaths. The trains traveled to localdeath camps 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 v ...in Poland at Chelmno, Belzec,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 cam ...,Majdanek 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, a ...and Auschwitz-Birkenau, but the early trains in 1939 and 1940 also traveled toNazi ghettos Beginning with the invasion of Poland during World War II, the Nazi regime set up ghettos across German-occupied Eastern Europe in order to segregate and confine Jews, and sometimes Romani people, into small sections of towns and cities further ...in the east, and the victims were usually murdered there by '' Einsatzgruppen'' organized byReinhard Heydrich Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich ( ; ; 7 March 1904 – 4 June 1942) was a high-ranking German SS and police official during the Nazi era and a principal architect of the Holocaust. He was chief of the Reich Security Main Office (inclu .... Conditions on the Holocaust trains were so bad that many passengers died en route to the death camps especially as it often took many days to reach their destinations. The cattle cars in which the victims were carried were completely unheated in winter and unventilated in hot weather and so the passengers were exposed to eitherhypothermia Hypothermia is defined as a body core temperature below in humans. Symptoms depend on the temperature. In mild hypothermia, there is shivering and mental confusion. In moderate hypothermia, shivering stops and confusion increases. In severe ...orheat stroke Heat stroke or heatstroke, also known as sun stroke, is a severe heat illness that results in a body temperature greater than , along with red skin, headache, dizziness, and confusion. Sweating is generally present in exertional heatstroke, .... Deaths among the elderly, children, and sick were common. To maintain the deception, some passengers were given postcards by the guards to send to their relatives with dictated words about their successful "resettlement". That deception continued even to the death camps, such as with a bogus station atTreblinka 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 cam ...andSobibor 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 ...camps that was complete with signs and flower tubs to reassure the victims who debouched there.
Postwar
Ganzenmüller escaped to Argentina via Italy from the interrogation camp in 1945. His denazification process was delayed, and in 1952 an amnesty led to the ending of the case against him. He returned to Germany in 1955 and was employed as a planning engineer for transport matters byHoesch AG Hoesch AG was an important steel and mining company with locations in the Ruhr area and Siegen. In 1871, Hoesch was founded by Leopold Hoesch. In 1938, Hoesch employed 30,000 people. In 1972, the prominent steel producer merged with the Dutch .... The public prosecutor's office continued to investigate him after 1957, as the exchange of correspondence with Wolff and Himmler had been discovered and published by the historian Gerald Reitlinger. Ganzenmüller remained on remand for ten weeks but the investigations led only to a preferred charge. In 1973 a case was brought by the regional court at Düsseldorf. The charge was that by organising transport the 68-year-old Ganzenmüller had aided and abetted the murder of millions of Jewish men, women and children whose wrongful detention had resulted in death. The case was provisionally halted in 1973 because of his inability to follow the case and then terminated altogether in 1977.
Awards and decorations
* Knight's Cross of the War Merit Cross with Swords (19 September 1943) * Blood Order number 1411933 (1933)
See also
*Julius Dorpmüller Julius Heinrich Dorpmueller (24 July 1869 – 5 July 1945) was general manager of Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft from 1926 to 1945, a Nazi politician and the Reich Minister for Transport from 1937 to 1945. Life Dorpmueller was the son of ..., Reich Transport Minister in 1945 * Sonderzüge in den Tod, a touring exhibition, 2008 *Holocaust trains Holocaust trains were railway transports run by the '' Deutsche Reichsbahn'' national railway system under the control of Nazi Germany and its allies, for the purpose of forcible deportation of the Jews, as well as other victims of the Holocau ...
References
Bibliography
*Raul Hilberg Raul Hilberg (June 2, 1926 – August 4, 2007) was a Jewish Austrian-born American political scientist and historian. He was widely considered to be the preeminent scholar on the Holocaust. Christopher R. Browning has called him the founding fath ...: ''Sonderzüge nach Auschwitz.'' Mainz 1981, * Heiner Lichtenstein: ''Mit der Reichsbahn in den Tod: Massentransporte in den Holocaust 1941–1945''. Köln 1985, (Prozess S. 120–130) * Alfred Gottwaldt, Diana Schulle: ''„Juden ist die Benutzung von Speisewagen untersagt“: Die antijüdische Politik des Reichsverkehrsministeriums zwischen 1933 und 1945; Forschungsgutachten''. Teetz 2007, (bes. S. 105–112)
External links
KZ-Züge auf der Heidebahn, Kapitel 14
* This is a translation of the article on the German Wikipedia at :de:Albert Ganzenmüller {{DEFAULTSORT:Ganzenmueller, Albert 1905 births 1996 deaths People from Passau Sturmabteilung officers Holocaust perpetrators in Czechoslovakia Technical University of Munich alumni Recipients of the Knights Cross of the War Merit Cross People from the Kingdom of Bavaria Romani genocide perpetrators Holocaust perpetrators in Poland Nazis in South America Nazis who participated in the Beer Hall Putsch