Following the Second World War, there were many nazi war criminals who were condemned
to death, but many of them were executed in public in front of large crowds.
Following the liberation of Stutthof Concentration Camps, former guards including a number of
women were brought in front of 200,000 people and were executed on a huge gallows.
But there were other acts of reprisals carried out after different German occupied areas
were liberated, and one man who met a brutal end was a Nazi commandant of a transit labour
camp in Poland, Adolf Wilhelm’s.
is a rather brutal image of Wilhelm’s standing above his grave, but what is the story of
his execution?
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Throughout the Second World War, the Nazis would use transit camps where prisoners were
held for a brief period and were detained before they were deported to other concentration
camps.
The Nazis would at the start of the Second World War invade many different countries
and lands, and whilst there they would implement their brutal policies towards the population,
and they would establish transit camps as a way of holding people and interrogating
them, before ultimately sending them to their deaths.
The conditions inside of the transit camps were similar to the concentration camps, and
they were terrible and overcrowded, and there was poor sanitation.
Many died inside of the camps awaiting their transportation, and they were sent up all
across occupied Europe.
But not all transit camps were run by the SS, some were also run by the Wehrmacht and
by local collaborators who worked with the Nazis.
For example Drancy camp in France near to Paris was staffed by collaborators.
But there were forced labour camps also where workers were made to work very hard and conduct
brutal back breaking work.
Some prisoners were made to produce supplies for the war effort and the economy, and the
conditions in these forced labour camps were also brutal and barbaric.
Prisoners had insufficient food, equipment and medicine and they were also not given
appropriate clothing for the time of the year.
There was no rest for them as they were forced to work all year around, and the death rates
inside of the labour camps were very high.
Little is know about Adolf Wilhelm’s, but he was a commandant of a transit labour camp,
and it was his job to ensure the imprisonment of prisoners inside of a bayer factory in
Poland.
It is known that he was the man who was in charge of the Bayer factory near to Lodz,
and this was a company that became part of the IG Farben chemical conglomerate that would
be involved in producing drugs that would be injected into prisoners inside of the concentration
camps.
They would pass chemicals to doctors who then caused a huge amount of suffering inside camps
such as Buchenwald, dachau and Auschwitz.
The factory that Wilhelm oversaw was brutal and the conditions there were shocking, and
the prisoners who were forced to work there incredibly hard.
For this, Wilhelm’s got a reputation for being a brutal commandant.
The town of Lodz near where to where Adolf Wilhelm’s worked suffered greatly during
the Second World War, and a large ghetto was set up there and inside of this were 163,000
residents, but its believed that only around 10,000 jews of Lodz lived to see out the Second
World War, and many more people were sent there as its believed that there were 210,000
victims of the ghetto.
The people inside of the ghetto would be forced to work 12 hour days inside of brutal factories
and establishments and it was inside one of these factories that Adolf Wilhelm’s would
oversee the work forces.
The guards would impose brutal sanctions also for those who were considered rule breakers.
But Adolf Wilhelms became known for bering an executioner, but at the end of the Second
World War he was captured.
In the city of Lodz he was brought in front of a huge crowd made up of men, women and
also children and he was guarded by a number of polish officials.
Some interestingly had German weapons and they would oversee his final moments.
He was stood above his grave, and was paraded in front of the civilian population, holding
a sign saying ‘I was the executioner of Poles at the Bayer factory in 1939.’
It’s assumed that he was then shot by a firing squad shortly after in front of the
crowd.
The image of Adolf Wilhelm in his final moments is haunting, and it was in a sense revenge
for what the Germans did to the polish population.
They would carry out executions similar in which placards were used to tell people the
crimes that these people committed.
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