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 an ...
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
Grafeneck is a small rural village in the German municipality of Gomadingen, south of Stuttgart.
World War II history
Grafeneck Castle, which had previously been an asylum for crippled people, was turned by the Nazis into an extermination fa ...
,
Brandenburg
Brandenburg (; nds, Brannenborg; dsb, Bramborska ) is a 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 area of 29,480 squ ...
Aktion 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 o ...
Nazi Party
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 ...
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 tota ...
, where he commanded Camp II, the extermination area. He then was transferred to
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 an ...
. Niemann was deputy commander of Sobibor on various occasions in 1942 before being given the position permanently in early 1943. After
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...
Karl Frenzel
Karl August Wilhelm Frenzel (20 August 1911 – 2 September 1996) was an 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
''Escape from Sobibor'' is a 1987 British television film which aired on ITV and CBS. It is the story of the mass escape from the Nazi extermination camp at Sobibor, the most successful uprising by Jewish prisoners of German extermination ...
'', and by Maximilian Dirr in the 2018 Russian film '' Sobibor''.
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.