Alfred Ittner (13 January 1907 – 3 November 1976) was an SS functionary of

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

who served at the

Sobibór extermination camp 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 a ...

. Ittner joined the

Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...

in February 1927, with the membership number 30,805. He subsequently joined the

Sturmabteilung The (; SA; literally "Storm Detachment") was the original paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party. It played a significant role in Adolf Hitler's rise to power in the 1920s and 1930s. Its primary purposes were providing protection for Nazi ral ...

in 1931. He worked on the staff of the

Gauleiter A ''Gauleiter'' () was a regional leader of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) who served as the head of a ''Administrative divisions of Nazi Germany, Gau'' or ''Reichsgau''. ''Gauleiter'' was the third-highest Ranks and insignia of the Nazi Party, rank in ...

s of

Hamburg (male), (female) en, Hamburger(s), Hamburgian(s) , timezone1 = Central (CET) , utc_offset1 = +1 , timezone1_DST = Central (CEST) , utc_offset1_DST = +2 , postal ...

and

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

from 1934 to 1939, at which point he put in for a transfer to the

Action T4 (German, ) was a campaign of mass murder by involuntary euthanasia in Nazi Germany. The term was first used in post-war trials against doctors who had been involved in the killings. The name T4 is an abbreviation of 4, a street address of ...

euthanasia programme in

. He remained in this role, serving as a bookkeeper at the T4 headquarters until 1942.

Operation Reinhard

In April 1942 Ittner was brought into the ''SS'' as part of

Operation Reinhard or ''Einsatz Reinhard'' , location = Occupied Poland , date = October 1941 – November 1943 , incident_type = Mass deportations to extermination camps , perpetrators = Odilo Globočnik, Hermann Höfle, Richard Thomalla, Erwin L ...

and sent to Sobibór.Michael Bryant, ''Eyewitness to Genocide: The Operation Reinhard Death Camp Trials, 1955-1966'', Univ. of Tennessee Press, 2014, p. 152 According to the testimony of his colleague

Kurt Bolender Heinz Kurt Bolender (21 May 1912 – 10 October 1966) was an SS sergeant during the Nazi era. In 1942, he operated the gas chambers at Sobibór extermination camp, perpetrating acts of genocide against Jews and Romani people during Operation R ...

, ''SS-

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 ...

'' Ittner served as camp accountant and one of his duties was to run the cashier's room where arriving inmates were forced to hand over their money and valuables to Ittner through a window.

Herbert Floss Herbert Floss or Herbert Floß (25 August 1912 – 22 October 1943) was an SS functionary of Nazi Germany who served as acting commander of the Sobibor extermination camp during the Holocaust in Poland. He also served as cremation expert in Camp ...

would subsequently succeed him in this role. Charged with supervising in ''Lager'' 3, close to the scene of a mass grave, Ittner found his time in this role harrowing and after four months there was, by his own request, transferred away back to the relatively less fraught surroundings of Action T4 in 1944. Ittner worked under

Franz Stangl Franz Paul Stangl (; 26 March 1908 – 28 June 1971) was an Austrian-born police officer and commandant of the Nazi extermination camps Sobibor and Treblinka. Stangl, an employee of the T-4 Euthanasia Program and an SS commander in Nazi German ...

in this role although the two had a poor relationship, with Ittner claiming that his refusal to help Stangl misappropriate funds had led to a breakdown between the two. Before long Ittner was conscripted into the army and sent to the Eastern Front, where he was taken as a

prisoner of war A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610. Belligerents hold prisoners of wa ...

by the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

.Bryant, ''Eyewitness to Genocide'', p. 153 Released in 1948, Ittner disappeared until 1964 when he was arrested in his native

Kulmbach Kulmbach () is the capital of the district of Kulmbach in Bavaria in Germany. The town is famous for Plassenburg Castle, which houses the largest tin soldier museum in the world, and for its sausages, or ''Bratwürste''. Geography Location Ku ...

, where he was found working as a manual labourer. Brought to trial in

Hagen Hagen () is the Largest cities in Germany, 41st-largest List of cities and towns in Germany, city in Germany. The municipality is located in the States of Germany, state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It is located on the south eastern edge of the R ...

in 1965 for his role at Sobibór, Ittner was one of a number of defendants in the trial found guilty, although the relatively lenient four-year prison sentence handed down was widely condemned. Ittner would state with regards to Sobibór:

The camp was a large and self-contained organization which had as its mission to kill as many Jews as quickly as possible.... The mass murder of the Jews was not carried out by one single individual, but by a multitude of SS people. Each one was a small cog in the wheel driving an extermination machine that could work only as long as all of them did. That is why, in my opinion, all the camp guards at Sobibór, regardless of their actual job, carried out the killings of the Jews. I would like to emphasize particularly that on arrival of a transport all other work was abandoned, and the camp staff all took part in the actual extermination process.Schelvis, ''Sobibor'', pp. 244-245

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ittner, Alfred 1907 births 1976 deaths Aktion T4 personnel Sobibor extermination camp personnel SS non-commissioned officers People from Kulmbach Sturmabteilung personnel German prisoners of war in World War II held by the Soviet Union