Johann Niemann (4 August 1913 – 14 October 1943) was a German SS and Holocaust perpetrator who was deputy commandant of

Sobibor 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 ...

during

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 ...

. He also served as a ''Leichenverbrenner'' (corpse cremator) at Grafeneck,

Brandenburg Brandenburg (; nds, Brannenborg; dsb, Bramborska ) is a states of Germany, state in the northeast of Germany bordering the states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Saxony, as well as the country of Poland. With an ar ...

, and Bernburg during the Aktion T4, the SS "euthanasia" program. Niemann was killed during the Sobibor prisoner uprising in 1943.

SS career

Niemann 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 1931 as member number 753,836 and the SS in 1934 as member number 270,600. He first served at

Bełżec extermination camp Belzec (English: or , Polish: ) was a Nazi German extermination camp built by the SS for the purpose of implementing the secretive Operation Reinhard, the plan to murder all Polish Jews, a major part of the "Final Solution" which in total ...

, where he commanded Camp II, the extermination area. He then was transferred to

. Niemann was deputy commander of Sobibor on various occasions in 1942 before being given the position permanently in early 1943. After Heinrich Himmler's visit to Sobibor on 12 February 1943, Niemann was promoted to '' SS-Untersturmführer''.Sobibor Interviews: Biographies of SS-men
sobiborinterviews.nl; accessed 23 December 2014. Karl Frenzel, also a commandant at Sobibor, recalled how Niemann handled a particular threat of prisoner revolt within the camp:Karl Frenzel interview
On 14 October 1943, a prisoner uprising took place at the Sobibor camp. Niemann was the highest-ranking SS officer who was on duty that day, and so he was the first person targeted to be assassinated by the prisoners. During an appointment to be fitted for a leather jacket taken from a murdered Jew, Niemann was killed in the tailor's barracks with an axe to his head by Alexander Shubayev, a Jewish Red Army soldier imprisoned at Sobibor. In 2020, Niemann's wartime photo album was made public by his descendants. The collection of photographs is known as the

Sobibor perpetrator album The Sobibor perpetrator album contains sixty-two pictures of Sobibor extermination camp during its operation, taken by the SS Holocaust perpetrators employed there. It belonged to deputy commander Johann Niemann, who was killed in the Sobibor upri ...

. Niemann was played by Henry Stolow in the 1987 English film '' Escape from Sobibor'', and by Maximilian Dirr in the 2018 Russian film ''

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 ...

''. Niemann's Awards/Decorations and ranks in the SS and NSDAP (or Nazi Party) were as follows: Ranks: SS-Unterscharführer, SS-Scharführer, SS-Oberscharführer, SS-Hauptscharführer, Niemann's last promotion to the rank of SS-Untersturmführer by SS-Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler on February 12, 1943. Awards: DRL-Sports Badge in Bronze, War Merit Cross 2nd Class With Swords, Sudetenland Medal, Heer Long Service Medal.

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Niemann, Johann 1913 births 1943 deaths Holocaust perpetrators in Poland Belzec extermination camp personnel SS-Untersturmführer Axe murder People from Leer (district) Sobibor personnel killed during the Sobibor uprising