December 22, 1947, Krakow, Poland. The former staff of Auschwitz - the
deadliest German Nazi concentration camp – hears their sentences read.
After a month of gruesome testimonies, 23 defendants out of the 41 are sentenced to
death by hanging. One of them is the former Auschwitz deputy commandant Hans Aumeier.
Hans Aumeier was born on August 20, 1906 in Amberg, then part of the German Empire.
Like his father, he took jobs in various rifle factories where he worked for a few years apart
from the periods when he was unemployed. In order to survive, he even had to take summer jobs and
like many of his Nazi fellows, he saw a solution for his unsuccessful career in joining the Nazi
Party in 1929. The same year he became one of the earliest members of the SS with SS identification
number 2,700 and in Munich he soon belonged to the staff of Heinrich Himmler - the head of the SS.
Before he started to work in Auschwitz where he committed his worst crimes,
he had worked in various concentration camps such as Dachau, Esterwegen and Buchenwald. His
specialties were torture, beatings and executions. He gave the kapos and guards far-reaching power
which led to an increase of the terror in the camp. It was Aumeier who introduced the punitive
standing cells in the notorious Block 11. Inside these standing cells the space was so cramped
that prisoners could only stand upright inside. The entry was through a small opening at floor
level and the only source of air was a 5 x 5 cm hole. The prisoners were put into these standing
cells every night, sometimes for a period of a few weeks and had to go to work every morning.
Aumeier also shared responsibility for mass shootings.
On his order, 144 women were shot on 19 March 1942, at the execution wall in the courtyard
of Blocks 10 and 11. On 27 May 1942, he was present again at a mass execution
of 168 prisoners who were shot in the same way. After the failed uprising attempt in June 1942,
he took part in the murder of the uprising’s survivors.
Aumeier was known to all the prisoners for beating and kicking them for the slightest
fault – for example, failure to march to the pace and rhythm of the orchestra.
He used to drink a lot and was known to shoot a few prisoners for no reason when he was drunk.
He was also active in the selections for gas chambers and after the victims were murdered,
he stole their belongings including gold. The camp’s commandant Rudolf Höss discovered this
and as a punishment Höss sent Aumeier to Vaivara concentration camp in Estonia in mid-August 1943.
Here Aumeier became the camp’s commandant and under his supervision the camp’s personnel
carried out selections of the inmates who were too old or too sick to work. They killed men,
women and children by shooting them in the nearby woods.
On January 22, 1945 he took over Grini concentration
camp near Oslo in Nazi-occupied Norway. As the end of the WW2 was approaching,
Hans Aumeier changed his behavior. It was probably because he knew he would have to face justice for
all the atrocities he had committed. He started negotiations with the Norwegian Red Cross and
even let them enter the camp. On May 7, 1945 he opened the camp and let the prisoners go free.
Thanks to MI6, the British secret intelligent service,
he was captured in his SS uniform by the British forces on June 11, 1945. In 1946, he
was extradited to Poland where he was tried at the Auschwitz trial which started in November 1947.
At the trial he claimed he knew nothing about the gas chambers and that he had never killed
anyone. He even stated that if he was found guilty and sentenced to death,
he would "die as a scapegoat for Germany". However, nothing helped him to escape justice.
On December 22, 1947 a tribunal sentenced Aumeier to death by hanging.
He was 41 years old when he was executed on the 28 January 1948.
There were no tears shed for Hans Aumeier.
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