Albert Sauer (17 August 1898, Misdroy – 3 May 1945,

Falkensee Falkensee is a town in the Havelland district, Brandenburg, Germany. It is the most populated municipality of its district and it is situated at the western border of Berlin. History The commune Falkensee was formed in 1923 by the merger of Falk ...

) was a German commandant 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 ...

Life

Bundesarchiv Bild 192-317, KZ-Mauthausen, Steinbruch Wiener Graben

Sauer, a carpenter by trade, became a member of the

NSDAP The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported t ...

(Nazi Party) and the SS in 1931. After a period of unemployment, he became a full-time SS employee.

Wolfgang Benz Wolfgang Benz (born 9 June 1941) is a German historian from Ellwangen. He was the director of the Center for Research on Antisemitism of the Technische Universität Berlin between 1990 and 2011. Personal life Benz studied history, political ...

, Barbara Distel (ed.). ''Der Ort des Terrors: Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager, Flossenbürg, Mauthausen, Ravensbrück'', Vol. 4, Munich 2006
p. 295
/ref> A protégé of the

Inspector of Concentration Camps The Concentration Camps Inspectorate (CCI) or in German, IKL (''Inspektion der Konzentrationslager''; ) was the central SS administrative and managerial authority for the concentration camps of the Third Reich. Created by Theodor Eicke, it was or ...

Theodor Eicke Theodor Eicke (17 October 1892 – 26 February 1943) was a senior SS functionary and Waffen SS divisional commander during the Nazi era. He was one of the key figures in the development of Nazi concentration camps. Eicke served as the sec ...

, Sauer was assigned to the SS guard unit (''Wachtruppe'') of

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, mos ...

in April 1935. From 1 April 1936, he was commandant of Bad Sulza concentration camp. Between 1 August 1937 and mid-1938, Sauer was second ''

Schutzhaftlagerführer ''Schutzhaftlagerführer'' (head of the "preventive detention camp") was a paramilitary title of the SS, specific to the concentration and extermination camps '' Totenkopfverbande'' ("Death's-Head units"). A ''Schutzhaftlagerführer'' was in ch ...

'' in

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 prisoner ...

and thus belonged to '' "Wachtruppe Brandenburg"''. In the period between 1 August 1938 and 1 April 1939, he officially acted as commandant of the then-temporary

quarry A quarry is a type of open-pit mine in which dimension stone, rock, construction aggregate, riprap, sand, gravel, or slate is excavated from the ground. The operation of quarries is regulated in some jurisdictions to reduce their envir ...

''Wienergraben'', so named because of the Wienergraben Valley in which it was located, of

Granitwerke Mauthausen ''Granitwerke Mauthausen'' was one of the names used by the DEST company (''Deutsche Erd- und Steinwerke'') for its branch based in Sankt Georgen an der Gusen and which exploited the slave manpower confined in certain subcamps of the Mauthausen-Gu ...

, which relied on slave labor from the subcamps of

Mauthausen-Gusen 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 Germany ...

. Due to negligence and excessive mildness to the concentration camp inmates, Sauer was removed from the camp service in April 1939. On 9 February 1939, he was replaced as camp commandant by SS-''

Sturmbannführer __NOTOC__ ''Sturmbannführer'' (; ) was a Nazi Party paramilitary rank equivalent to major that was used in several Nazi organizations, such as the SA, SS, and the NSFK. The rank originated from German shock troop units of the First World War ...

Franz Ziereis Franz Xaver Ziereis (13 August 1905 – 24 May 1945) was the commandant of the Mauthausen concentration camp from 1939 until the camp was liberated by the American forces in 1945. Early life and SS career Ziereis was born on 13 August 1905 in M ...

. In the period of 1941-1942, he had an official position in the

RKFDV The Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationhood (german: Reichskommissar für die Festigung deutschen Volkstums, RKF, RKFDV) was an office in Nazi Germany, which was held by ''Reichsführer-SS'' Heinrich Himmler. Adolf Hitler in ...

('' Reichskommissar für die Festigung deutschen Volkstums''; Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationhood). From September 1942 to April 1943, Sauer was again ''Schutzhaftlagerführer'' in Sachsenhausen. In 1943, Sauer was involved in the destruction of the Riga Ghetto. Later, he was temporarily the commandant of

Kaiserwald concentration camp Kaiserwald (Ķeizarmežs) was a Nazi concentration camp near the Riga suburb of Mežaparks in modern-day Latvia. Kaiserwald was built in March 1943, during the period that the German army occupied Latvia. The first inmates of the camp were ...

, which was vacated in July 1944. This operation was completed in September 1944. He died of wounds received at Falkensee on 3 May 1945.The 'Final Solution' in Riga: Exploitation and Annihilation, 1941-1944 by Andrej Angrick, Peter Klein, Ray Brandon, p. 479

Bibliography

* Eberhard Jäckel et al.: ''Enzyklopädie des Holocaust'', Vol. 2, Tel Aviv * Stefan Hördler: ''Die Schlussphase des Konzentrationslagers Ravensbrück'', in: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, Book 3, 2008, p. 229, Fn 34 *

, Barbara Distel (ed.): ''Der Ort des Terrors: Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager, Flossenbürg, Mauthausen, Ravensbrück'', Vol. 4, Munich 2006,

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sauer, Albert 1898 births 1945 deaths People from Kamień County Nazi concentration camp commandants Schutzhaftlagerführer Mauthausen concentration camp personnel Sachsenhausen concentration camp personnel Kaiserwald concentration camp personnel Holocaust perpetrators in Latvia Riga Ghetto SS officers German carpenters German military personnel killed in World War II