Hans Kammler: A Forgotten Nazi Henchman

Hans Kammler was a high-ranking SS officer who by the end of the Second World War had elevated to the highest ranks of Hitler’s Third Reich. Unlike most of his peers the war crimes he committed were unmentioned in the trials that followed the war, but he played a significant role in the running of the Nazi war effort and in facilitating the final solution.

Kammler was equally as ruthless as his other Nazi peers. He was a driven, ambitious career Nazi and ranks amongst one of the worst of Hitlers henchmen. Kammler’s committed suicide in 1945 which meant he avoided capture and justice.

Steve Prout explains.

A 1930s photo of Hans Kammler.

Who was Hans Kammler?

Hans Kammler was born in 1901 in Stettin, Germany. He was too young to serve during World War One but shortly after the war he saw limited action serving in the Rossbach Freikorps in 1919 during the post war chaos that spread in Germany. This was an extreme right wing anti-communist organisation led by Gerhard Rossbach which was active in the Baltic. Between 1919 and 1923, he studied civil engineering at the Technische Hochschule der Freien Stadt in Danzig and Munich. In November 1932 he was awarded a doctorate in engineering (Dr. Ing.). It was his association with the Nazis would take his career down a dark path and earn him a more dubious notoriety.

Joining the Nazi Party and Military Career

Kammler joined the Nazi Party in its initial stages in 1931 already being a firm believer in Nazi ideology and its doctrines. He saw the party as a vehicle to further his career which eventually elevated him to the very top of the Third Reich hierarchy. He started in a position as head of the Aviation Ministry's building department where he oversaw construction projects.

A year later, in 1933, he joined the SS, and his first assignment was to lead an innocuous department titledReichsbund der Kleingärtner und Kleinsiedler (The Third Reich's federation of allotment gardeners and small homeowners). He would be trusted with other roles later in same that year when he was also appointed to the Board of Directors for Homeland Building and Housing Co-operative and simultaneously serving as an advisor in SS Main Economic and Administrative Office (WVHA), where is role was to act as a consultant for the SS Race and Settlement Office. The later position was a strange fit for a civil engineer, but it was ideologically compatible for Kammler.

In 1941 Kammler was moved the Waffen SS after being identified by Henrich Himmler as the driving force to implement the ambitious construction plans of the SS. His role involved the construction and design of the concentration camps to facilitate the Nazi’s extermination program for their policy of racial cleansing. Kammler was unperturbed by his new role and in fact applied himself with his blend of cruelty, barbarity, and lack of empathy when he applied these to his assignments. These were character traits that made some the most prominent and notorious Nazi’s wary if not frightened of him. By his own admission Albert Speer who was Hitler’s alleged closest confidant was one of those senior party members wary of Kammler and his ambition. Speer himself was no innocent party in utilizing slave labour for his own and his party’s needs.

The Concentration Camps and the Final Solution

Although Hans Kammler was not the architect of the final solution, he was according to historian Nikolaus Wachsmann "intimately involved in all the major building projects in Auschwitz". He was as equally culpable as his peers for the war crimes and assisting the mass exterminations in those camps. In September 1941 Kammler oversaw the expansion of the Auschwitz concentration camp. He had in recent months built a similar facility at Majdanek which eventually morphed from a labour camp to an extermination camp much like others. It is estimated eighty thousand people were murdered there at Majdanek but far worse was to come at Auschwitz.

Kammler’s redesign of the camps crematoriums made it possible to dispose of one hundred and twenty thousand bodies a month enabling the Nazi’s to accelerate their genocidal policies and in vain attempts later to try and disguise their war crimes. Over one million people would be exterminated in Auschwitz alone and doubt Kammler was undeniably complicit in all of this if only as a cold Nazi facilitator.

He would participate in further atrocities when in 1943 he was assigned the task of building the Warschau concentration camp after the Warsaw Ghetto was demolished. The Ghetto was an area that the Nazi’s designated to contain over four hundred thousand Polish Jews under crowded and insanitary conditions. The Germans planned to liquidate this area but the inhabitants, after learning of these plans, began an unsuccessful uprising. The Polish inhabitants were poorly equipped and no match for the opposing German forces and they were spared no mercy as the army crushed the small resistance.

Himmler then instructed that the territory had to be raised and flattened. The entire Jewish presence was to be erased as Himmler wanted to conceal the atrocities the Germans committed during the massacre and plunder the valuables he believed that the Jewish population kept concealed. The operation was expedited with ruthless zeal for Kammler’s to then clear the ghetto, flatten the former part of the city and construct a new prison camp where the Ghetto once existed. Although this new facility was not on the same scale as Auschwitz, nevertheless over twenty-five thousand people would die there before the war ended.

Kammler also constructed the prison camp at Mittelbau-Dora which supplied him with the slave labour resources that he required for his assignments. It is estimated that twenty thousand inmates from this camp met their deaths due to the conditions Kammler forced them to work under. Kammler's attitude towards the prisoners was one of utter indifference and cruel expediency. In one instance he once said, "Don't worry about the victims. The work must proceed ahead in the shortest time possible". His contribution to the murderous Nazi death toll certainly ranks one of the worst and cruelest. The claims that “the Holocaust would not been as efficient were it not for Kammler “and that he was “integral to the evolution of mass murder” seem fair assessments. As stated he was not the architect of the Holocaust he did play an undeniably significant role in the in the brutality of the Nazi regime.

Another reference to Kammler perfectly summed him up was that he recognized “no contradiction between notions of blood and soil and the methods of modern organization and technology.”  Or to put it another way, human life was cheap, expedient and its only value was to serve the interests of himself and the Third Reich.

The Secret Weapons Projects

Kammler was assigned later the task of overseeing the Germans special weapons project. This was primarily focused on the construction and development of the V1, V2 and ME-262 jet aircraft. This was Hitlers last hope as the tide of the war was turning against the Germans and the allied air force was dominating the Nazi occupied airspace. The frequency and intensity of the Allied bombings were severely disrupting German war production. Albert Speer suggested that German production be moved to safe underground facilities over Europe. This task was given to Kammler, and he achieved this using slave labour from the concentration camps. Over twenty thousand slaves would work and die in the most horrific of conditions.

The Myths

There have been many outlandish stories concerning the activities about the Nazi regime that were cultivated in the post-war period. Kammler’s involvement in the special weapons projects attracts its own bizarre tales, although most are implausible, taking his role in the special weapons project and blowing it out of all proportion. These stories, that are far from historical fact, have been repeated in various horror and science fiction films, yet some take them seriously. Such examples are outlandish stories related to a captured UFO that was reverse engineered to create a gravity defying atomic weapon known as the Glocke (otherwise known as the Bell). Naturally, this unlikely device also came complete with a Secret Nazi Society that protected its existence. This article will not be distracted by such inanities, but any reader can explore this the two books found in the sources (hopefully just for amusement only). The real horror story lies in the truth not fiction and that can be measured in the number of prison inmates who died because of Kammler.

Kammler’s Fate

We can be certain that Kammler died by committing suicide in May 1945 despite what alternative and tenuous theories suggest. There are slight variations to the exact date and place from the few witnesses, but they do not vary significantly and only by a few days, but this appears to have created the uncertainty as to his true fate. These slight variations would be easily explained by the panic and confusion caused during the Nazi retreat from the advancing allied armies. There are, however, other fanciful theories.

There are some accounts that claim Kammler did not commit suicide and survived. In this version of events, he was identified as an important asset purposefully sought by the Americans, then to be located and transported back to the United States where he could trade his knowledge concerning the special weapons facilities in return for a new identity and immunity from prosecution. Two historians in a documentary on this story both use unverified secondhand sources. One of these sources is an account from the son of a Donald Richardson who was a counterintelligence officer and close confident of President Eisenhower. What he had to offer exactly or what was the extent and value of his technological knowledge was unclear.

Other versions of this story get vague and veer off into conspiracy theory circles which this article will not get wrapped up in. Operation Paperclip as we know was the extraction of selected German scientists who could promote the USA efforts in technology and weapons advancement. Kammler was no physicist and nor was he a scientist. To lend weight to this a British Intelligence report compiled at the time the allies were identifying Nazi assets recognized that Kammler’s knowledge was secondhand and of limited value unlike the other scientists that they extracted. This statement makes more sense and makes this alternative version of events implausible.

His involvement in the development of modern technology however would have been limited to no more than his construction projects, supply of slave labour and administrative supervision. Had he have been captured he would have more likely been interrogated and handed over for trial which would have made more sense.

Conclusion

Kammler had all the prerequisites and mindset required to climb the Nazi ranks successfully. His cold impassionate attitude was perfectly summed up in the following quote in that he recognized “no contradiction between notions of blood and soil and the methods of modern organization and technology.” In other words, he regarded human life as cheap and expendable in serving the interests of himself and the Third Reich.

As a Civil Engineer Kammler was no more exceptional than any other within his profession. The only thing that was exceptional was his cruelty and his fanatical dedication to Nazi ideals. He knew his criminal deeds would catch up with him as the Third Reich’s control on the continent was disintegrating. The Allies were closing in on all fronts and he knew that he could not escape justice so rather than face the justice he deserved he committed suicide. In Nuremburg he was barely referenced; however thanks to the efforts of a few investigators his murderous role in the history of the Third Reich and the Holocaust will never be entirely forgotten or lost.

Do you want to read more history articles? If so, join us for free by clicking here.

Sources

Brotherhood of the Bell – Joesph P Farrell – Adventures Unlimited Press 2006

Reich of The Black Sun - Joesph P Farrell – Adventures Unlimited Press 2004

The Hidden Nazi: The Untold Story of America's Deal with the Devil (World War II Collection) – Dean Reuter, Colm Lowry, and Keith Chester - Regnery History; Reprint edition (25 Nov. 2021)

Satan’s Henchmen: Whatever became of SS General Hans Kammler 0- Robert Huddleston – self-published.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopaedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945, Volume I

The Horrific Nazi Treatment of the LGBTI Community

The Nazis treated many groups they saw as different terribly – and the LGBTI community was no exception. Here, Kim Barrett starts by considering Dr Magnus Hirschfield, who founded the world’s first gay rights organization in the decades prior to the Nazis taking power in Germany, and then looks at how the Nazis treated the LGBTI community.

Students organized by the Nazi Party parade in front of the Institute for Sexual research in Berlin in 1933.

Beneath the paving stones in Bebelplatz in Berlin is an inaccessible, empty library with enough space on its shelves for 20,000 books. At this site at the start of May 1933, those symbolically missing books were burnt by the Nazis. Among them were books by Jewish people, socialist and communist writings, as well as works advocating for women and disabled rights.

The fire also consumed the entire library and archives of the Institute for Sexual Research (Institut für Sexualwissenschaft): the pinnacle of Magnus Hirschfeld’s life’s work.

 

Dr Magnus Hirschfeld

Dr Magnus Hirschfeld was a prominent gay Jewish man born in Poland in 1868. He founded the world’s first gay rights organization in 1897, the Scientific Humanitarian Committee (Wissenschaftlich-humanitäres Komitee). He moved to Berlin at the end of the 19th century and, in 1904, he wrote Berlin’s Third Sex (Berlin’s Drittes Geschlecht), a book about LGBTI people. He also co-wrote and appeared in the silent film Different From the Others(Anders als die Andern) released in June 1919. The film was the first to positively portray same-sex relationships but also addresses some of the problems gay men faced: the main character is blackmailed and arrested as a result of his sexuality.

Specific sex acts between men had been illegal since the unification of Germany in 1871, under a provision in the German Criminal Code known as Paragraph 175. Magnus Hirschfeld opposed and campaigned against this law. He believed that same-sex attraction was a natural variation. He considered it a mild form of “sexual intermediary” or “third sex”, which also included cross-dressing, intersex and transgender people. He thought up to 20% of people were “third sex”.

In Weimar-era Berlin, Paragraph 175 was only sporadically enforced and there were bars, clubs and balls where “third sex” people could socialize (mostly) safe from the law. However, the police often arrested people who cross-dressed, although cross-dressing itself was not specifically illegal. Magnus Hirschfeld lobbied the police to stop this practice and, in 1909, “transvestite passes” were created. The police could issue a pass to someone if a doctor believed they would be at risk of harm if they were not allowed to cross-dress.

The Institute for Sexual Research

In July 1919, Magnus Hirschfeld founded the Institute for Sexual Research (Institut für Sexualwissenschaft) in Berlin, which researched gender and sexuality. It also provided sexual health clinics and offered marriage and sex counseling. In its heyday, the Institute employed over 40 people, many of them “third sex” themselves.

Magnus Hirschfeld coined the term “transsexualism” to refer to people who would now be called transgender. He provided some primitive hormone therapies, which changed people’s bodies to align with their genders.

The Institute also performed some of the first gender reassignment surgeries. Karl Baer was a women’s rights activist, who was probably born intersex but assigned female at birth. In 1906, he medically transitioned with the help of Magnus Hirschfeld. The following year he received an updated birth certificate that designated him as a man, which allowed him to marry his girlfriend. Lili Elbe was a Danish painter, who Magnus Hirschfeld assisted in the removal of her testes in 1930. She died the following year from complications from a uterine transplant.

On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany. In February 1933, three decrees were enacted forcing most of the LGBT-friendly bars and publications in Germany to close. In March 1933, the first Nazi concentration camp was opened.

Kurt Hiller, a gay socialist writer who worked closely with Magnus Hirschfeld, was arrested in Berlin in April 1933 and later sent to a concentration camp. The Institute for Sexual Research was attacked in May 1933 by a Nazi student group assisted by the SA. Its books, journals, images and museum of sexual artifacts were all destroyed in a ceremonial book burning attended by 40,000 people.

Magnus Hirschfeld was lecturing abroad at the time and never returned to Germany. Two years later he died of a heart attack. His peers continued researching the spectrum of sexuality and gender. The Institute for Sex Research in Indiana, USA was opened in 1947 by Alfred Kinsey, the creator of the Kinsey Scale used to describe sexual orientation.

Under Nazi rule

In 1935, Paragraph 175, the law criminalizing sex between men, was extended to include any action between men intended to “excite sexual desire”. Those convicted were sent to prison or to a concentration camp for up to five years. 

In the concentration camps, a system of symbols was used to identify groups of people. Men who were attracted to men (as well as people who would likely now identify as transwomen) wore a down-facing pink triangle. This symbol has since been reclaimed in its inverted form by gay men. Women who were attracted to women wore a black triangle used to denote asocial (asozial) people, a group that also included prostitutes, pacifists and mentally ill people.

As well as being forced to perform hard labor (known as “extermination through labor”), some LGBTI people were shot as target practice or given dangerous jobs working with explosives. They were also tortured and “experiments” were performed on them, including castration and implanting testosterone devices in their testes.

The Nazis believed that same-sex attraction could be spread to other people, so anyone wearing a pink triangle was kept separate from other prisoners. It was seen as preferable to execute people rather than house them with the gay men in case they also “turned gay”.

Unlike Jewish people or others targeted by the Nazis because of their race, same-sex attraction or cross-dressing was seen by some Nazis as something to be “cured”. Men arrested under Paragraph 175 could sometimes convince their guards to release them by being observed having sex with women prostitutes.

Towards the end of the war, concentration camp detainees wearing a pink triangle were given minimal military training and sent into battle as cannon fodder. An estimated 60% of prisoners wearing a pink triangle died before their release.

Paragraph 175

At the end of the war, some of the LGBTI people who were freed from the concentration camps were sent to prison to complete their sentences, and many were convicted again later under the same law.

In East Germany, the extended version of Paragraph 175 was removed in 1950 and sex between men was decriminalized in 1957. However, in West Germany, the Nazi-era version of Paragraph 175 remained on the books until 1969.

LGBTI people were not officially considered victims of the Nazis until May 2002 when Nazi-era convictions under Paragraph 175 were pardoned and compensation was offered. In June 2017, everyone ever convicted under Paragraph 175 had their convictions annulled.

Everyone who was sent to a concentration camp because of their sexuality is believed to have now died. The last known person was Rudolf Brazda, who died in 2011 aged 98.

Berlin has now reclaimed its title as one of the most LGBTI-friendly cities in Europe, boasting several gay districts. Its annual Pride march, commemorating the Stonewall Riots in New York, USA, is one of the largest in the world. It also houses a memorial to the gay and lesbian victims of the Nazis.

Kim Barrett is a freelance writer – more information is available here.

Nazi Propaganda and its Unfortunate Link with Emotion

Highly evocative and worryingly effective, Nazi propaganda targeted its viewers in a very specific way. By targeting the viewer’s emotions, Goebbels and his underlings turned many of the German populace into a nation of followers in the National Socialist agenda from when the Nazis took power in 1933. Emotions were key to the entire apparatus, from hate of the ‘other’ to joy of the German rebirth. Maddison Nichol explains the troubling Nazi propaganda machine.

Adolf Hitler speaking in 1933. Source: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-1987-0703-506 / Unknown / CC-BY-SA 3.0, available here.

It was in Mein Kampf, that now infamous political manifesto of the National Socialists, that Hitler wrote:

Particularly the broad masses of the people can be moved only by the power of speech. And all great movements are popular movements, volcanic eruptions of human passions and emotional sentiments, stirred either by the cruel Goddess of Distress or by the firebrand of the word hurled among the masses; they are not the lemonade-like outpourings of literary aesthetics and drawing room heroes.[1]

 To simplify, Mein Kampf would never create a populace of believers. Nonetheless, Nazi propagandists worked tirelessly to create new forms of propaganda to evoke that emotional response from the viewer and realign the German masses with the ideals of the Nazis.

Films

Films were an important way to move the people in line with the ideology of the Nazis. Two films used two very different emotions to try to create a populace of believers in the Nazi cause, or at least a populace willing to follow Hitler. The first was the Triumph of the Wills.

The opening of Triumph of the Wills is a black screen with a small caption of text. It reads: “On 5 September 1934, 20 years after the outbreak of the World War, 16 years after the beginning of German suffering, 19 months after the beginning of the German rebirth, Adolf Hitler flew once again to Nuremberg to review the columns of faithful followers.”[2] By prefacing the film in this light, German citizens watching the film were reminded of their once dire situation, now being improved by Hitler. The film then launches into a scene with throngs of eager people waving, smiling, and cheering as their Führer drives past them, waving as he goes.

The people here are seen as being overjoyed by the arrival of Hitler because of the supposed improvements he had made since taking power in 1933. By showing the enthusiasm of the Germans in Nuremburg to a wider audience in Germany, Triumph of the Wills succeeded in creating an emotional response from the viewers. For the first time since the outbreak of WWI, the German people were led to be proud of their nation and their leader. Hitler was reviving Germany from its ill state under the Weimar Republic and the people could see it. That was the point of the film, to show an overjoyed populace where previously there was only uncertainty.

Alternatively, at the other end of the spectrum of emotions, hate films were conceived to rile up the German people against the ‘other’ that was supposed to be poisoning pure German blood. Jew Süss was such a film. The film briefly documents the fall of an honorable German duke in the Middle Ages by listening to a Jewish advisor. By tricking the duke into heavily taxing his people, Süss created an environment ripe for uprisings and revolt. The film goes on to show more vile sides to Süss and the other Jews who enter the city, depicted as a horde of dirty, unsavoury vagabonds marching into a pristine German city. The depiction of the Jews in Jew Süss is in line with previous Nazi anti-Semitism to drive the point home to the viewers that Jews were the creatures depicted in the film. Ultimately, the film ends with the downfall of the duke, and the Jews are exiled from the city.

Jew Süss was seen as being successful in creating an atmosphere of hatred towards the Jews and it was shown to the SS at times before a mission against Jews.[3] That’s a startling thought. The film was shown to everyone who had access to a cinema, including youth, especially youth. The central idea here is that the once honorable German duke was tricked by an evil Jewish man to betray his loving people. In Nazi propaganda, Jews were depicted as doing just that, twisting the righteous and corrupting them. [4] Through Jew Süss and other similar films, the Nazis encouraged anti-Semitism in the German populace.[5]

Nazi films used emotion just like modern films do, but in a politically charged way. By evoking emotions like hatred and pride, Nazi propaganda films wanted to create a population of believers motivated by National Socialism and loyalty to Hitler. To an extent, they succeeded, but by 1945 many Germans despised Hitler and the Nazis for the horrors of war they brought upon the German people.

Oration

Historian Felicity Rash quoted Hitler by saying that spoken word is better to replace one’s hatred with your own.[6] This was an important feature of Nazi propaganda as speeches and oration were given as frequently as possible. Cheap radios were manufactured so all Germans could tune into a speech given by Hitler or a member of the Nazis. We’ve all heard people speak in such a way that moves us into action, be it at a protest or listening to an inspirational speech like Charlie Chaplin’s famous The Dictator speech. Oration, when used well, moves people into action.

Hitler was infamously good at it. His speeches moved much of a nation to rally behind him and work towards his version of a brighter future. In a speech, Hitler once said:

“When someone says, ‘You’re a dreamer’, I can only answer ‘You idiot…. If I weren’t a dreamer, where would we be today? I’ve always believed in Germany. You said I was a dreamer. I’ve always believed in the rise of the Reich. You said I was a fool. I’ve always believed in our return to power. You said I was mad. I’ve always believed in an end to poverty! You said that was utopian! Who was right? You or me?! I was right!’”[7]

Unfortunately, people ate this stuff up. According to Goebbels, the task of propaganda was to mobilize the mind and spirit of the people for National Socialism.[8] By using oration powerfully and constantly, the people were mobilized to support Hitler and the Nazis. All of this was done through emotion. By reading the above quote we can see some semblance of an emotional response, but by listening to it you can feel it. Reading doesn’t really have the same effect as listening to someone passionately proclaiming it from balconies and from stages.

In the end, to create an emotional response from the viewer, you need to show them an emotional reaction yourself. Nazi propaganda was skilled at that, more so than most propaganda in WW2. By evoking emotions from the viewers, Nazism went from a radical fringe party to the radical ruling party of an industrial powerhouse in the middle of Europe. People flocked to the cinemas to see the latest propaganda film and the rallies. They listened to their leader speak on the radio in a highly provocative manner just to evoke an emotional response from the masses.

Emotion was key to Nazi propaganda because Hitler did not seek acquiescence or even acceptance from the German masses. He craved a nation of believers in the Nazi cause. Only through emotion would that happen. By showing people the supposed improvements since 1933 both politically and economically, people felt joy and pride. By harping on slogans and oration, people rallied behind Hitler. It was only at the beginning of the end of the German war effort that propaganda became less effective.

But that’s a whole other story.

What do you think of this article? Let us know below.

[1] Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans. Ralph Manheim, (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1971), 107.

[2] Leni Riefenstahl, Triumph of the Will, directed by Leni Riefenstahl, YouTube, Germany: (Universum Film AG,

1935), Viewed on YouTube, 12/04/2018.

[3] Eric Rentschler, The Ministry of Illusion, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), 150.

[4] Andreas Musolff, Metaphor, Nation and the Holocaust: The Concept of the Body Politic, (New York, Routledge, 2010), 37.

[5] Ibid, 43.

[6] Felicity Rash, Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2006), 47.

[7] Der Souverän, “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer [ENG Sub], published December 2016, YouTube video, 2:35.

[8] David Welch, “Nazi Propaganda and the Volksgemeinschaft: Constructing a People’s Community”, Journal of Contemporary History 39, No. 2 (April 2004), 217.

The Real Love story between a Nazi SS guard and Jewish prisoner at Auschw

The Holocaust has left its mark as one of the darkest moments in history. However, even during the darkest of times, there was still love. Here, we tell you about a love story between a Nazi concentration camp prisoner and an SS Guard at Auschwitz.

Helena Citronova (left) and Franz Wunsch (right) fell in love at Auschwitz.

In September 1935, the Reichstag (the parliament during the Third Reich) voted unanimously to for the passing of the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor, otherwise known as the Nuremberg Laws that not only excluded German Jews from Reich citizenship but from marrying or having sexual relations with people of “German or related blood.”

Persons accused of having sexual relations with non-Aryans faced public humiliation and those convicted were “typically sentenced to prison terms, and (subsequent to 8 March 1938) upon completing their sentences were re-arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Nazi concentration camps.”

Even with the punishments for forbidden affection severe, especially for Nazi soldiers, that was not enough to stop Auschwitz SS officer Franz Wunsch from falling in love with a Jewish Slovakian prisoner named Helena Citronova. Across the world, Auschwitz concentration camp has become a symbol of genocide, terror, war, and the Holocaust.

However, after 70 years, PBS in America as well as an Israeli television brought to life the forbidden romance story between an SS guard and a Jewish prisoner at Auschwitz that highlighted the complexity of human relationships in the most horrifying of world events.

In 1942, Franz Wunsch was serving as a 20-year old SS guard in charge of the gas chambers of Auschwitz. On his birthday, March 21, his Nazi comrades brought in a Jewish girl, Helena Citronova, to sing him birthday songs. Helena was imprisoned at Auschwitz from Slovakia and was forced to sort all of the incoming prisoners’ belongings before they were shipped to Berlin to fuel the Nazi war efforts.

Helena and her sister Rozinka had both been sentenced to die in the gas chambers earlier that very day so Helena attempted to sing the very best she could, melting the heart of the SS guard. When Wunsch realized she wouldn’t be alive the next day, he hurried and managed to postpone the execution of both sisters.

Helena would say years later in Israel, “When he came into the barracks where I was working, he threw me that note. I destroyed it right there and then, but I did see the word "love" — "I fell in love with you". I thought I'd rather be dead than be involved with an SS man. For a long time afterwards there was just hatred. I couldn't even look at him.”

Over time, though unclear of exactly when, Helena succumbed to her feelings for Franz, especially after her SS devotee rushed to prevent her sister and her sister’s children from being sent to the gas chambers.

“'So he said to me, "Tell me quickly what your sister's name is before I'm too late." So I said, "You won't be able to. She came with two little children." Helena later recalled.

'He replied, "Children, that's different. Children can't live here." So he ran to the crematorium and found my sister.'

Helena admitted she had slept with her rescuer and at times had even forgotten who he was and came to terms with the romance. Wunsch would provide Helena with food, clothing, and protection. Though their relationship would not develop any further, Helena would repay him years later for risking his life to protect a Jewish prisoner on the pain of death.

When the war ended, the SS guards fled the Allied advance, even destroying parts of the concentration camps to cover their war crimes. Helena and her sister Rozinka attempted to return home with other displaced people through an Eastern Europe that contained violent and raping Soviet soldiers. Both sisters avoided being raped when Rozinka claimed to be Helena’s mother and defended her. Following the founding of Israel in 1948, Helena moved there while Franz returned to Austria.

Thirty years following Nazi Germany’s defeat and the end of World War II, in 1972, Wunsch was put on trial in Vienna, accused of being cruel towards prisoners by beating men and women alike and operated at the gas chambers to insert the lethal gas. Testimonies include camp survivors describing Wunsch as a “natural Jew hater” and sometimes participated in the selection of inmates all over occupied Europe to live or die. With more than enough evidence for the guilty verdict, life imprisonment and death most likely would have awaited him.

In a twist of events, Helena and her sister defended Wunsch at his trial. Even with ‘an overwhelming evidence of guilt’ as the judge commented in Wunsch’s participation in the Nazi’s largest concentration camp’s mass murder, Wunsch was acquitted of all charges due to the statute of limitations over war crimes in Austria.

“Desire changed my brutal behavior,” Wunsch said. “I fell in love with Helena Citronova and that changed me. I changed into another person because of her influence.”

Citronova died in 2005. Wunsch died in 2009.

Share your thoughts on this article below…

Sources

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3193520/Read-real-life-story-Auschwitz-prisoner-Helena-Citronova-falling-love-SS-guard-Franz-Wunsch-amid-controversy-Kate-Breslin-novel-Time.html

https://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/auschwitz-love-story.html

https://newswire.net/newsroom/pr/00090219-forbidden-love-saved-their-lives.html

http://ww2awartobewon.com/wwii-articles/auschwitz-forbidden-romance-story/

Were the Nazis punished enough? The Nuremberg Trials

Samantha Jones looks at the Nuremberg Trials in a modern context. These trials took place in the aftermath of World War II and sought to condemn those Nazis who had committed some of the most heinous crimes in the history of the world.

A Nazi parade.

Politics tells us justice is blind, and that it is justice that is fundamentally right in our society. Yet history shows us this may not be true. In the aftermath of World War II, the Western world’s form of justice was put to the test. And looking back we are troubled with the question: did democracy fail?

As Nazi leaders were confronted with their crimes against humanity in front of an international military tribunal, the entire world learned the truth behind The Final Solution, Concentration Camps, medical experiments, and the extent of Nazi genocide. These war crimes shined a spotlight onto a new and modern form of warfare, where civilians became targets and war no longer had to be declared upon a country to invade it. It was no easy feat to punish the Nazis, as the victorious Allied Powers had to question and convict those they had caught, as well as deter future nationalists from committing such crimes again. But that is what the Nuremberg Trials attempted to do.

It is said the infamous Nuremberg Trials marked the end of the Third Reich and Hitler’s Nazi Empire. Indeed, despite the Soviet Army storming Berlin, Nazi uprisings were still a threat to the triumphant Allies. So it was decided that to ‘clean up’ Europe legally and politically, the Allies were to hold a series of trials in order to fully understand and punish Nazi criminals in a democratic setting. The trials were held from November 20 1945 to October 1 1946, in the German city of Nuremberg. This site was chosen because of the somewhat intact Palace of Justice, a suitable building for the event, and the symbolism attached to Nuremberg, after the passing of the Nuremberg Laws against the Jews in 1935.

One prosecutor, one judge and one alternative judge from the Allied Powers oversaw the trial. Those that were caught included 23 high ranking Nazi officials, including the notorious Goering, Speer and Hess. Of course the highest Nazis such as Hitler, Himmler and Goebbels were not present, as they had escaped punishment through suicide before capture.

But as the news of the devastation of the war in Europe spread to the corners of the globe, interest and attraction into the Nazis grew enormously. Because of this, the Nuremberg Trials were filmed and covered by the global media, something that was to follow in other major world events.

HOW MIGHT THE TRAILS BE DIFFERENT TODAY?

The Nuremberg Trials are a small sliver of history, particularly among the World War Two era, yet this event marks the beginning of several major practices and institutions. For example, the power and dominance of democracy, the involvement of the media, and the use of knowledge and education as a deterrent were present during the Nuremberg Trials. However, looking back, would the trails be undertaken differently today?

One theme that needs to be addressed is the arguable leniency upon the Nazi prisoners. For example, even today it is debated whether it was unjust that Albert Speer, Hitler’s architect, was sentenced to merely twenty years in prison and lived the rest of his life a free man. Despite being sentenced to death, Hermann Goering, Hitler’s successor, escaped justice by committing suicide in his cell. It remains a mystery how this was able to happen. And Rudolf Hess, Hitler`s Deputy Fuhrer, was sentenced to prison where he too committed suicide. Discussing these awful things in such a dismissive tone is not my intention. But remember the graphic pictures of the Holocaust victims and the Concentration Camps that still stand today because of these men. Just under half of those charged at Nuremberg were sentenced to death, yet it was these Nazi men that were committed to gassing, killing and removing an entire people from the face of the earth. Perhaps justice was not served, but nor was revenge.

Aside from this somewhat macabre observation, the Nuremberg Trials did make advances. The organization of evidence and the methods used to explain the Nazi occupation helped the world to understand what actually happened. The Trials also contributed to the development of international legal institutions that attempt to seek justice in global crimes, such as the United Nations and the Genocide Convention. Of course it is debated whether these institutions are successful, yet the message they stand for began in Nuremberg.

History has and will repeat itself though. Crimes against humanity have been committed on an unimaginable scale quite recently, as seen in Rwanda and with Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge. Unfortunately, with these events in mind, it is hard to argue whether or not justice can remain democratic or if can it be transformed into a form of revenge.

It is easy for our generation to look back upon Nuremberg and judge those in charge for their leniency or their harshness. But equally, as time pushes the deep dark crimes of the Nazis further back into history, I wonder how future generations will judge us on what we do. Perhaps justice will be served then.

You can read about how the radical Freikorps were one of the pre-cursors to the Nazis in issue 3 of History is Now Magazine. The magazine is available for iPad and iPhone and is free for at least one month when you try the magazine on a subscription. Click here for more information!