Hans Koch (SS man)
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Hans Koch (August 13, 1912 – July 14, 1955) was an SS-'' Unterscharführer'' and member of staff at
Auschwitz concentration camp Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...
. He was prosecuted at the Auschwitz Trial. Koch was born in Tangerhütte,
German Empire The German Empire (),Herbert Tuttle wrote in September 1881 that the term "Reich" does not literally connote an empire as has been commonly assumed by English-speaking people. The term literally denotes an empire – particularly a hereditary ...
. He worked as a laboratory assistant. He 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 1937. A member of the SS, he was at Auschwitz from 1940 to 1945. On the basis of his professional background, he worked in the medical department dealing with disinfection. One of his responsibilities (along with SS-'' Oberscharführer'' Josef Klehr among others) was to insert the Zyklon B into the gas chambers. Koch later said that after participating in a gassing, he was unable to sleep without drinking large quantities of alcohol beforehand. During the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials in the 1960s, Edward Pys, a survivor of Auschwitz, recounted a gassing done by Koch:
"When Koch and Theuer began filling the gas tank, the engine of a car parked in front of the crematorium was started and ran at full speed for about a quarter of an hour. Although the crematorium was almost airtight, the noise of the engines could not drown out the screams of the people in the gas room. I heard almost animal screams that no longer had anything human about them. If I hadn't known that there were people in the crematorium, I would never have believed that those screams were made by people. These terrible screams lasted a few minutes."
Pys also said, "Since I know German very well, I often heard Koch complain to his friends that he had had a very busy night, because he had to gas a large number of prisoners at the Birkenau crematoria." After the war, Koch was arrested by U.S. authorities in
Allied-occupied Germany Germany was already de facto occupied by the Allies from the real fall of Nazi Germany in World War II on 8 May 1945 to the establishment of the East Germany on 7 October 1949. The Allies (United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union, and France ...
, after which he was extradited to Poland on May 3, 1947. He was tried by the Supreme National Tribunal at the Auschwitz Trial in
Kraków Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland until 1596 ...
and was found guilty of perpetrating the genocide of the Jews. However, the court sentenced him to life imprisonment as opposed to
death Death is the irreversible cessation of all biological functions that sustain an organism. For organisms with a brain, death can also be defined as the irreversible cessation of functioning of the whole brain, including brainstem, and brain ...
, citing the orders given to him as attenuating circumstances. He died in prison in
Gdańsk Gdańsk ( , also ; ; csb, Gduńsk;Stefan Ramułt, ''Słownik języka pomorskiego, czyli kaszubskiego'', Kraków 1893, Gdańsk 2003, ISBN 83-87408-64-6. , Johann Georg Theodor Grässe, ''Orbis latinus oder Verzeichniss der lateinischen Benen ...
in 1955. It was noted that unlike many of his codefendants, Koch did not go out of his way to torture and kill prisoners, which was presumably why he was spared execution. During sentencing, the court said that those who received death sentences had gone beyond what their orders had called for. In the view of the court, this meant they were sadists who enjoyed what they were doing, and thus deserved no mercy in return.


References


Bibliography

* Cyprian T., Sawicki J., ''Siedem wyroków Najwyższego Trybunału Narodowego'', Poznań 1962 * Świebocki, Henryk., Iwaszko, Tadeusz., Długoborski, Wacław., Piper, Franciszek., Lasik, Aleksander., Brand, William.,: ''Auschwitz, 1940-1945: central issues in the history of the camp'', Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, 2000, {{DEFAULTSORT:Koch, Hans 1912 births 1955 deaths German military personnel of World War II German people convicted of crimes against humanity German people imprisoned abroad German prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment German prisoners of war in World War II held by the United States Holocaust perpetrators in Poland Romani genocide perpetrators People convicted in the Auschwitz trial Prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment by Poland Prisoners who died in Polish People's Republic detention SS non-commissioned officers People extradited to Poland Nazis who died in prison custody