Alfred Hellmuth Andersch was a German writer, publisher, and radio editor. The son of a conservative East Prussian army officer, he was born in Munich, Germany and died in Berzona, Ticino, Switzerland. Martin Andersch, his brother, was also a writer.
Natzweiler-Struthof was a Nazi concentration camp located in the Vosges Mountains close to the villages of Natzweiler and Struthof in the Gau Baden-Alsace of Germany, on territory annexed from France on a de facto basis in 1940. It operated from 21 May 1941 to September 1944, and was the only concentration camp established by the Germans in the territory of pre-war France. The camp was located in a heavily-forested and isolated area at an elevation of 800 metres (2,600 ft).
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 prisoners throughout World War II. Prominent prisoners included Joseph Stalin's oldest son, Yakov Dzhugashvili; assassin Herschel Grynszpan; Paul Reynaud, the penultimate prime minister of the French Third Republic; Francisco Largo Caballero, prime minister of the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War; the wife and children of the crown prince of Bavaria; Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera; and several enemy soldiers and political dissidents.
The Hamburg Ravensbrück trials were seven trials for war crimes during the Holocaust against camp officials from the Ravensbrück concentration camp that the British authorities held in their occupation zone in Germany in Hamburg after the end of World War II. These trials were heard before a military tribunal; the three to five judges at these trials were British officers, assisted by a lawyer. The defendants included concentration camp personnel of all levels: SS officers, camp doctors, male guards, female guards (Aufseherinnen), and a few former prisoner-functionaries who had tortured or mistreated other inmates. In total, 38 defendants were tried in these seven trials; 21 of the defendants were women. One of the defendants died during the trial. Twenty of the defendants received death sentences. One defendant was reprieved while two others committed suicide before they could be executed. The remaining 17 death sentences relating to these trials were carried out on the gallows at Hamelin Prison by British hangman Albert Pierrepoint.
Hans Loritz was an officer in the Schutzstaffel (SS) who was the commandant of several concentration camps in Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe. He committed suicide in captivity after the war.
Martin Gottfried Weiss, alternatively spelled Weiß, was the commandant of the Dachau concentration camp in 1945 at the time of his arrest. He also served from April 1940 until September 1942 as the commandant of Neuengamme concentration camp, and later, from November 1943 until May 1944, as the fourth commandant of Majdanek concentration camp. He was executed for war crimes.
A kapo or prisoner functionary was a prisoner in a Nazi camp who was assigned by the Schutzstaffel (SS) guards to supervise forced labor or carry out administrative tasks.
The Night of the Long Knives was a purge in which Adolf Hitler and the regime of Nazi Germany targeted members of the Sturmabteilung (SA), the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party, as well as past opponents of the party. At least 85 people were murdered in the purge, which took place between June 30 and July 2, 1934.
Franz Hößler, also Franz Hössler was a Nazi German SS-Obersturmführer and Schutzhaftlagerführer at the Auschwitz-Birkenau, Dora-Mittelbau and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps during World War II. Captured by the Allies at the end of the war, Hößler was charged with war crimes in the First Bergen-Belsen Trial, found guilty, and sentenced to death. He was executed by hanging at Hameln Prison in 1945.
The Esterwegen concentration camp near Esterwegen was an early Nazi concentration camp within a series of camps first established in the Emsland district of Germany. It was established in the summer of 1933 as a concentration camp for 2000 so-called political Schutzhäftlinge and was for a time the second largest concentration camp after Dachau. The camp was closed in summer of 1936. Thereafter, until 1945 it was used as a prison camp. Political prisoners and so-called Nacht und Nebel prisoners were also held there. After the war ended, Esterwegen served as a British internment camp, as a prison, and, until 2000, as a depot for the German Army.
The Concentration Camps Inspectorate (CCI) or in German, IKL was the central SS administrative and managerial authority for the concentration camps of the Third Reich. Created by Theodor Eicke, it was originally known as the "General Inspection of the Enhanced SS-Totenkopfstandarten", after Eicke's position in the SS. It was later integrated into the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office as "Amt D".
Egon Gustav Adolf Zill was a German Schutzstaffel (SS) Sturmbannführer and concentration camp commandant.
Sonnenburg concentration camp was opened on 3 April 1933 in Sonnenburg in a former prison, on the initiative of the Free State of Prussia Ministry of the Interior and Justice.
Franz Stärfl, alias Xaver Stärfel, alias Franz Stofel, was a Nazi German SS-Hauptscharführer and camp commander of the Kleinbodungen subcamp of Mittelbau-Dora during World War II. Arrested by the Allies and convicted of war crimes in the Belsen Trial, Stärfl was executed by hanging at Hamelin prison in 1945.
Anton Thumann was a member of the SS of Nazi Germany who served in various Nazi concentration camps during World War II. After the war, Thumann was arrested by British occupation forces and charged with war crimes. At the Neuengamme Camp Case No. 1 in 1946 he was found guilty, sentenced to death and executed at Hamelin Prison.
Hans Kurt Eisele was a German SS-Hauptsturmführer and concentration camp doctor.
Alexander Bernhard Hans Piorkowski was a German SS functionary during the Nazi era and commandant of Dachau concentration camp. Following the war, he was convicted and executed.
Josef Michael Hartinger was a German lawyer who worked for the Bavarian State authorities in the latter years of the Weimar Republic when the Nazis came to power. Tasked with investigating some unnatural deaths at the Dachau concentration camp near Munich, Hartinger together with his medical examiner colleague, Moritz Flamm, discovered the SS policy of summary executions and faked suicides at the camp. At great risk to his own safety, Hartinger issued an indictment of the camp authorities, which was ultimately betrayed and suppressed.
Approximately 30,000 Jews in Germany and Austria were deported within the region or the country after the Kristallnacht of 9/10 November 1938. They were deported to the concentration camps Buchenwald, Dachau and Sachsenhausen by the NSDAP organizations and the police in the days after the pogrom. This put pressure on the deportees and their relatives in order to speed up the only seemingly voluntary emigration from their homeland and to "Aryanize" Jewish assets. The vast majority of the detainees were released by the beginning of 1939. Around 500 Jews were murdered, committed suicide or died as a result of ill-treatment and refused medical treatment in the concentration camps.
Leitmeritz was the largest subcamp of the Flossenbürg concentration camp, operated by Nazi Germany in Leitmeritz, Reichsgau Sudetenland. Established on 24 March 1944 as part of an effort to disperse and increase war production, its prisoners were forced to work in the caverns Richard I and II, producing Maybach HL230 tank engines for Auto Union and preparing the second site for intended production of tungsten and molybdenum wire and sheet metal by Osram. Of the 18,000 prisoners who passed through the camp, about 4,500 died due to disease, malnutrition, and accidents caused by the disregard for safety by the SS staff who administered the camp. In the last weeks of the war, the camp became a hub for death marches. The camp operated until 8 May 1945, when it was dissolved by the German surrender.
