Julius Ludolf (26 March 1893 – 28 May 1947) was an SS-Obersturmführer, a member of the

Waffen-SS The (, "Armed SS") was the combat branch of the Nazi Party's ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) organisation. Its formations included men from Nazi Germany, along with Waffen-SS foreign volunteers and conscripts, volunteers and conscripts from both occup ...

and commander of various satellite camps of

Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp Mauthausen was a Nazi concentration camp on a hill above the market town of Mauthausen (roughly east of Linz), Upper Austria. It was the main camp of a group with nearly 100 further subcamps located throughout Austria and southern Germa ...

Upper Austria Upper Austria (german: Oberösterreich ; bar, Obaöstareich) is one of the nine states or of Austria. Its capital is Linz. Upper Austria borders Germany and the Czech Republic, as well as the other Austrian states of Lower Austria, Styria, an ...

Concentration camp career

Julius Ludolf worked at concentration camps from January 1940 to May 1945. At first he was commander of concentration camp Loibl, a satellite camp of the Mauthusen Gusen concentration camp system in the

Karawanks The Karawanks or Karavankas or Karavanks ( sl, Karavanke; german: Karawanken, ) are a mountain range of the Southern Limestone Alps on the border between Slovenia to the south and Austria to the north. With a total length of in an east–west dir ...

. In August 1943 he took over for Karl Schöpperle in the subcamp of Großraming and starting from May 1944 the final commander of satellite camp

Melk Melk (; older spelling: ) is a city of Austria, in the federal state of Lower Austria, next to the Wachau valley along the Danube. Melk has a population of 5,257 (as of 2012). It is best known as the site of a massive baroque Benedictine monastery ...

affiliated with the Steyr-Daimler-Puch company.

After 1945

After the end of war Julius Ludolf was charged along with sixty other camp personnel in the

Mauthausen-Gusen camp trials The Mauthausen-Gusen camp trials were a set of trials of SS concentration camp personnel following World War II, heard by an American military government court at Dachau. Between March 29 and May 13, 1946, and then from August 6 to August 21, 1947, ...

held before a United States military court at Dachau (part of the Dachau Trials). Apart from overall conditions in the camps, which stood under his responsibility, Ludolf was accused of having on different occasions to have personally struck or killed Polish and Russian prisoners between October 1943 and May 1944. He was also accused of having ordered, in October 1944, that sixteen hospitalized Czech and Slovak prisoners be killed by lethal injection. He was charged with having arranged, in July 1944, the execution of Russian prisoner who was recaptured after an escape. Heard as a witness in his own case, Ludolf said he never killed a prisoner and at most took actions to enforce camp discipline. Executions of camp escapees would not have taken place on his authority. On 13 May 1946 the US court in Dachau found Ludolf guilty and condemned him to death. After his wife's plea for clemency was rejected, Julius Ludolf was executed on 28 May 1947 at

Landsberg Prison Landsberg Prison is a penal facility in the town of Landsberg am Lech in the southwest of the German state of Bavaria, about west-southwest of Munich and south of Augsburg. It is best known as the prison where Adolf Hitler was held in 1924, af ...

References

Klee, Ernst, ''Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich.'' Aktualisierte Ausgabe, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2003, .

External links

*Zeitgeschichtemuseum Ebensee
''Die Verhaftung von Kriegsverbrechern im Raum um Ebensee im Mai 1945''
Artikel von Wolfgang Quatember und Susanne Rolinek mit einem Bericht über die Verhaftung von Julius Ludolf mit Fotos (English: The arrest of war criminals in the Ebensee area in May 1945, article by Wolfgang Quatember and Susanne Rolinek with a report on the arrest of Julius Ludolf with photos.) {{DEFAULTSORT:Ludolf, Julius 1893 births 1947 deaths Mauthausen concentration camp personnel Mauthausen Trial executions SS-Obersturmführer Waffen-SS personnel