Kurt Küttner (1907 – 1964) was an '' SS-

Oberscharführer __NOTOC__ ''Oberscharführer'' (, ) was a Nazi Party paramilitary rank that existed between 1932 and 1945. ''Oberscharführer'' was first used as a rank of the ''Sturmabteilung'' (SA) and was created due to an expansion of the enlisted positions ...

'' (Staff Sergeant) who served at

Treblinka extermination camp Treblinka () was the second-deadliest extermination camp to be built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Mas ...

, arrested and charged with war crimes at the Treblinka trials twenty years after the war ended.

Career

Before

World War II 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 ...

, Kurt (Fritz) Küttner worked for many years as a warden in the German police. During

Operation Reinhard Operation Reinhard or Operation Reinhardt ( or ; also or ) was the codename of the secret Nazi Germany, German plan in World War II to exterminate History of the Jews in Poland, Polish Jews in the General Government district of German-occupied ...

occupied Poland ' (Norwegian language, Norwegian: ') is a Norwegian political thriller TV series that premiered on TV 2 (Norway), TV2 on 5 October 2015. Based on an original idea by Jo Nesbø, the series is co-created with Karianne Lund and Erik Skjoldbjærg. ...

he was in charge of the lower camp of Treblinka II ''Totenlager'', where he became one of the most feared and hated SS officers. He would follow people around, stop them and search for money, pictures or any family mementos that the prisoners would try to hide on their person. If he caught someone carrying anything, he would beat the prisoner cruelly and send him to the ''Lazarett'', or infirmary, where the prisoner was killed. In his capacity as commander of the Lower Camp and over the Jewish prisoners, he wanted to know exactly what was going on throughout his jurisdiction. He therefore exploited the weakness or baseness of some of the prisoners and turned them into informers. He received the nickname "Kiwe" from the prisoners.

Yitzhak Arad Yitzhak Arad (; né Icchak Rudnicki; November 11, 1926 – May 6, 2021) was an Israeli historian, author, IDF brigadier general and Soviet partisan. He also served as Yad Vashem's director from 1972 to 1993, and specialised in the history of ...

(1987). ''Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps'', Bloomington: Indiana University Press, p. 191 Küttner ordered the worker Jews (''Arbeitskommando'') who worked in the ''Lazarett'' of his lower camp to wear armbands bearing the red cross emblem, so as to deceive the true nature of the "infirmary" as a killing station. Klee, Ernst, Dressen, Willi, Riess, Volker (1991). ''The Good Old Days: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders'', p. 245. . As recalled by ''SS- Unterscharführer'' (Corporal) Franz Suchomel: Küttner was also in charge of whipping prisoners at the evening roll call. Samuel Willenberg, one of the prisoners at Treblinka, recounts how this went: After Operation Reinhard ended Küttner also served in the SS in

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

. After the war, Küttner, along with ten other former SS officers from Treblinka, was arrested and charged at the Treblinka trials, but he died in 1964 before the trial began.First Treblinka Trial
at the Holocaust Research Project.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kuttner, Kurt 1907 births 1964 deaths German police officers SS non-commissioned officers Treblinka extermination camp personnel Treblinka trials