Arnold Büscher (16 December 1899 – 2 August 1949) was a German SS officer. Holding the rank of SS-''

Obersturmführer __NOTOC__ (, ; short: ''Ostuf'') was a Nazi Germany paramilitary ranks, Nazi Germany paramilitary rank that was used in several Nazi organisations, such as the Sturmabteilung, SA, Schutzstaffel, SS, National Socialist Motor Corps, NSKK and the ...

'', he served as a commandant of the

Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp Płaszów () or Kraków-Płaszów was a Nazi concentration camp operated by the SS in Płaszów, a southern suburb of Kraków, in the General Governorate of German-occupied Poland. Most of the prisoners were Polish Jews who were targeted f ...

, succeeding

Amon Göth Amon Leopold Göth (; 11 December 1908 – 13 September 1946) was an Austrian SS functionary and war criminal. He served as the commandant of the Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp in Płaszów in German-occupied Poland for most of th ...

, from September 1944 until January 1945.

Life

Büscher was born on 16 December 1899 in

Bad Oeynhausen Bad Oeynhausen () is a spa town on the southern edge of the Wiehengebirge in the district of Minden-Lübbecke in the Ostwestfalen-Lippe, East-Westphalia-Lippe region of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The closest larger towns are Bielefeld (39 ki ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

. Büscher became a member of the

Schutzstaffel The ''Schutzstaffel'' (; ; SS; also stylised with SS runes as ''ᛋᛋ'') was a major paramilitary organisation under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II. It beg ...

(SS) in 1931. After the outbreak of the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, he worked at many

Nazi concentration camps From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps (), including subcamp (SS), subcamps on its own territory and in parts of German-occupied Europe. The first camps were established in March 1933 immediately af ...

, including Flossenbürg,

Buchenwald Buchenwald (; 'beech forest') was a German Nazi concentration camp established on Ettersberg hill near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within the Altreich (Old Reich) territori ...

, Sachsenhausen and Neuengamme. Büscher succeeded Amon Göth as the commandant of the Płaszów concentration camp after the latter was arrested on 13 September 1944. Büscher resisted

Oskar Schindler Oskar Schindler (; 28 April 1908 – 9 October 1974) was a German industrialist, humanitarian, and member of the Nazi Party who is credited with saving the lives of 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust by employing them in his enamelware and amm ...

's efforts to include 300 Jewish women on his list of ''

Schindlerjuden The ', literally translated from German as "Schindler Jews", were a group of roughly 1,200 Jews saved by Oskar Schindler during the Holocaust. They survived the years of the Nazi regime primarily through the intervention of Schindler, who affor ...

'' for work at Schindler's new

factory A factory, manufacturing plant or production plant is an industrial facility, often a complex consisting of several buildings filled with machinery, where workers manufacture items or operate machines which process each item into another. Th ...

in Brněnec, instead sending them with other Jews from Płaszów to Auschwitz I. Furthermore, Büscher, perhaps out of spite for Schindler, requested of Auschwitz I commandant Richard Baer that 300 different Jewish women be sent to Schindler's factory. However, Schindler was able to

bribe Bribery is the corrupt solicitation, payment, or acceptance of a private favor (a bribe) in exchange for official action. The purpose of a bribe is to influence the actions of the recipient, a person in charge of an official duty, to act contrar ...

Baer to send him the original 300 female ''Schindlerjuden''. On 23 January 1948, Büscher was

sentenced to death Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty and formerly called judicial homicide, is the state-sanctioned killing of a person as punishment for actual or supposed misconduct. The sentence ordering that an offender be punished in s ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

for his crimes at Płaszów. Benz, Wolfgang
''Der Ort des Terrors. Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager. (The Place of Terror. History of Nazi Concentration Camps.)''
C.H. Beck, Munich, 2005, 3-406-57237-1, p. 272. He was executed by

hanging Hanging is killing a person by suspending them from the neck with a noose or ligature strangulation, ligature. Hanging has been a standard method of capital punishment since the Middle Ages, and has been the primary execution method in numerou ...

on 2 August 1949.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Büscher, Arnold 1899 births 1949 deaths Buchenwald concentration camp personnel Executed German mass murderers Executed Nazi concentration camp commandants Flossenbürg concentration camp personnel Holocaust perpetrators in Poland Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp personnel Nazis executed by Poland by hanging Neuengamme concentration camp personnel Oskar Schindler People from Bad Oeynhausen Sachsenhausen concentration camp personnel SS-Obersturmführer