Inside of Buchenwald Concentration Camp, over 55000 prisoners and inmates never made it
out alive.
Buchenwald was considered one of the largesst camps set up inside of the Third Reich, and
it was a place of great execution, torture and cruelty.
Over 280,000 prisoners passed through the barbed wire fences, and many succumbed to
the horrific conditions upheld by the SS guards who were trained in imposing a reign of terror.
The Commandant of Buchenwald, Karl Otto Koch was even found guilty of embezzling money
from the Nazis along with his wife, the Witch of Buchenwald Ilse Koch.
Karl Koch was later taken back to the camp where he once oversaw and he was executed
by guards there.
It was a place where death lurked around ever corner, and many of the kilings were never
even recorded on the camps books, as a neck shooting facility dispatched around 8000 Soviet
POWs who were killed in secret at the camp.
This was a fake medical facility which tricked prisoners to measure their height as an executioner
stood behind them armed with a pistol hidden in a secret compartment.
But there was one many who was considered one of the most feared and savage guards of
the whole of the concentration camp system.
Walter Gerhard Martin Sommer was considered the Hangman of Buchenwald, and he was considered
a depraved sadist.
But what did he do?
Join us today as we look at the disgusting crimes of the hangman of Buchenwald, and remember
to support our channel, please make sure to subscribe.
Martin Sommer was born on the 8th February 1915, and he was a master sergeant in the
SS.
He rose to the rank of SS Hauptscharfuhrer and was known for serving as a guard at Dachau
and also Buchenwald.
As mentioned he was considered a shocking SS guard, and his conduct mostly circled around
what he specifically did at Buchenwald.
In 1943, Heinrich Himmler the Head of the SS ordered an SS Judge named Georg Konrad
Morgen to look at possible charges of corruption and cruelty that occurred at Buchenwald.
As mentioned the Commandant and his wife were arrested and were brought to trial, but stories
emerged also of Martin Sommer’s conduct.
The judge found evidence that alleged that Sommer had a secret compartment underneath
the floor of his office in which he kept many instruments of torture.
It was believed that inside this chamber he had a number of needles which he used to kill
victims of his torture by injecting them with carbolic acid after he had done with them.
He also possibly may have injected air into their veins which caused prisoners and victims
to have an embolism.
It was alleged that late into the night Martin Sommer would torture the inmates of Buchenwald,
and that after he had killed them he would hid the bodies of his victim’s under his
bed, and then in the morning he would dispose of them in the crematoria or that they would
be dumped elsewhere.
He was linked to being a man who often whipped prisoners sometimes to death.
Floggings and whippings were known to be administered inside many different concentration camps
to deal with people who were considered rule breakers.
It was said at the whipping block, Sommer forced prisoners to count aloud the strikes
of the whip he gave them, or when he beat them with a heavy stick.
If a prisoner lost count, then Sommer would begin the punishment all over again.
It was known that if 25 lashes or hits were given, a prisoner could survive this, but
any more could easily result in death.
One man was sentenced to 25 stokes, and Sommer then gave 60 lashes to him.
This man it was said was killed on the spot, and Sommer later would admit the beastings,
and he even at trial built a cardboard model showing what the whipping block looked like.
He said that, ‘I can’t claim to have hit the last strokes as hard as the first, You
always get a little tired.’
But it seemed his antics at the whipping post were just some of the less shocking crimes
he committed.
There were allegations that Sommer was seen inside of Buchenwald beating a pastor from
Weimar to a bloody pulp.
He then hanged him outside and then threw buckets of cold water on him, and then he
left him to freeze to death in the cold.
But the testimony about the Hangman of Buchenwald would get worse when he was met with the evidence
that he killed two Austrian priests in a completely barbaric attack inside of a forest near to
the camp.
The forest nearby became known as the singing forest as it was here where Sommer would hang
many people by their wrists to trees, and they would scream long into the night and
would suffer.
In the winter these people would freeze to death and die from exposure.
Otto Neururer and Matthias Spannlang were priests who had been sent to Buchenwald for
actions that were deemed in opposition to the Nazis ideas and beliefs.
Neururer for example was sent to a concentration camp as he advised a woman not to marry a
Nazi man who had questionable morals, and for this was sent to Dachau before he was
then sent to Buchewnald.
At Buchenwald he was brutally tortured by Sommer, and he was sadistically killed inside
of the camp.
He was tortured for information following allegedly performing a banned baptism, and
was subject to being hanged upside down naked by Martin Sommer.
The Hangman whilst he was hanged upside down beat him, and for 34 hours Neururer was forced
to undergo this, until he then succumbed to his ordeal and died from his torture and the
hands of Sommer.
Also Matthias Spannlang underwent the same torture and was killed in this same way, and
the two Austrian priests were killed by Sommer’s thirst for torture and violence.
The pair were crucified upside down, and one witness saw the events and said that Neururer
did not complain once as he faced his death.
Sommer was also accused of beating a Catholic priest to death who performed the Sacrament
of Penance on an inmate.
Inside the nearby forests he carried out more hangings.
He would be seen often leading a group of prisoners out to the nearby woods, and once
in there he would tie their hands behind their backs, and then would hang them one by one
from the trees there.
They were hanged with their hands behind them and their full weight on their shoulders could
easily cause dislocations and this would be excruciating for the prisoners.
Their feet were suspended around 18 inches above the ground, and the prisoners were often
left here for hours and their cries would echo across the camp.
His crimes were compared to looking into Dante’s inferno, and there were accusations that his
desk was lit from a candle inside of a skull of one of his victims.
He as mentioned also administered lethal injections, and would beat confessions out of prisoners
to a savage extent.
He allegedly also one time placed the head of a prisoner inside an iron clamp and screwed
it until the prisoner’s skull cracked under the pressure.
Now as mentioned Heinrich Himmler had assigned a SS judge to look into the brutality and
barbarism at Buchenwald as well as the improper treatment of prisoners.
Himmler’s man learned all about Sommer’s treatment, and he was considered too much
of a sadist and a brute for even the most harrowing of SS soldiers.
He was for this reduced in his rank, and was then forced to serve inside of a penal fighting
battalion on the Eastern Front, and he was later wounded in a tank explosion where he
lost his right leg and his left arm.
He was taken as a POW by the Red Army, and was then considered a war criminal in 1950,
before he was then released by the Soviets in 1955.
He then went back to West Germany and married and had a child, and was considered a disabled
war veteran receiving a pension.
However he was later brought to trial for the deaths of 101 concentration camp prisoners,
and in 1958 he was convicted of being responsible for the deaths of 25 prisoners, and for this
was given a sentence of life imprisonment.
For the rest of his life Sommer spent life either behind bars or inside hospital or a
nursing home.
Martin Sommer the Hangman of Buchenwald was the concentration camp guard who’s crimes
even appalled Heinrich Himmler, the man responsible for the holocaust.
His activities inside of Buchenwald were deemed as bringing the SS into disrepute and were
considered too brutal for even the SS.
He was a depraved and sick killer who was known for hanging victims in the forests nearby,
and for also crucifying priests as well as killing his torture victims with his own hands.
He was a brute and a man considered one of the most evil war criminals of the Second
World War.
Many of Martin Sommer’s crimes today remain untold.
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