German SS officer and Holocaust perpetrator
Heinrich Schwarz
(14 June 1906 ? 20 March 1947) was an
SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer
(captain) and
concentration camp
officer who served as commandant of
Auschwitz III-Monowitz
in
Nazi-occupied Poland
and
Natzweiler-Struthof
in
Alsace-Lorraine
.
Early life
[
edit
]
Schwarz was born in
Munich
on 14 June 1906 and originally worked as a
book printer
. He joined both the
Nazi Party
and the
Schutzstaffel
(SS) in November 1931. Following the outbreak of
World War II
, Schwarz served with the
Waffen-SS
on the
Western Front
until October 1940, when he was transferred to the
SS-Concentration Camps Inspectorate
. He was stationed at both the
Mauthausen
and
Sachsenhausen
concentration camps during 1940-1941.
Auschwitz concentration camp
[
edit
]
In September 1941 Schwarz was transferred to
Poland
and posted to the administrative office of the
Auschwitz concentration camp
. His initial duties included working as
adjutant
to the camp's
commandant
,
Rudolf Hoß
. Schwarz also served as director of the camp's Work Assignment Department (Abt. IIIa) and held the position of
Lagerfuhrer
(camp leader) for Auschwitz's central administration area.
In November 1943,
Hoß
was appointed assistant director of Office Group D for the
SS Economic and Administrative Main Office
in
Berlin
. Following his departure, the
Auschwitz
camp system was reorganized by the
high command of the SS
and divided into three semi-autonomous administrative units:
Auschwitz I
,
Auschwitz II-Birkenau
and the
Auschwitz III-Monowitz
labour camp
. Under this new arrangement Schwarz was given command of
Auschwitz III-Monowitz
in December 1943.
Central to the role Schwarz played as commandant was the provision of
slave-labourers
to the nearby
Buna Werke
, a
synthetic rubber
factory owned by the German chemical company
IG Farben
. Other German corporations, such as
Siemens
and
Krupp
, also received slave labour from Monowitz. The brutal working conditions which prevailed at Monowitz during the period Schwarz served as commandant resulted in a large number of deaths among the inmate population, with estimates ranging between 10,000 and 35,000 prisoners who were believed to have died in the
labour camp
itself or in the
gas chambers
located at neighbouring
Auschwitz-Birkenau
.
Following the evacuation of Auschwitz complex on 18 January 1945, Schwarz was initially slated to take over command of the
Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp
and the associated
V-weapons
production facility of
Mittelwerk
, but was passed over for this post in favour of
Richard Baer
. Instead, Schwarz was appointed commandant of the concentration camp of
Natzweiler-Struthof
, serving there until the
end of the war
.
War crimes trial
[
edit
]
After the German defeat, Schwarz was tried and convicted of
war crimes
and
crimes against humanity
by
French occupation
authorities in
Rastatt
; in connection with atrocities committed during his brief tenure as commandant of
Natzweiler-Struthof
. He was
sentenced to death
and subsequently shot by a
firing squad
near
Baden-Baden
on 20 March 1947.
[1]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Today's Best Military Writing: The Finest Articles on the Past, Present, and Future of the U.S. Military by Walter J. Boyne Publisher: Forge Books; 1st edition (26 August 2004) Language: English
ISBN
0-7653-0887-8
ISBN
9780765308870
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