What Became Of Most Nazi Concentration Camp Commandants After The War? (WW2, crimes)

[Six Foot Three]

I've read that there were some 60 concentration and labor camps spread all about Europe during WWII and so i'm curious as to what happened to alot of the Commandants who ran them when the war ended. I assume all or most were arrested by the allies and some were even executed correct?

List of German-Nazi Concentration Camps - Wikipedia

[Indurain]

Many of them were executed : the camp commander depicted in Schindlers List Amon Goeth for example was executed in Poland not far from the prison camp that he ran.

[Six Foot Three]

Originally Posted by Indurain

Many of them were executed : the camp commander depicted in Schindlers List Amon Goeth for example was executed in Poland not far from the prison camp that he ran.

Yeap i do remember that from watching the movie and so i assume many of the others were also executed although all i've ever heard about are the Nuremberg War Trials of the Nazi and Military High Command.

[BlueWillowPlate]

It's interesting how long things could take.
We visted Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp a few years ago.
There was a lot of staff but the kommandant listed is Fritz Hartjenstein.
He stood trial for a variety of crimes and died in October 1954 awaiting execution.

[chilaili]

And a great many were released after just a few years in prison and allowed to return to their lives, even emigrating to the US and living to a ripe old age

[Cali BassMan]

War is Hell, and only the Loser commits War Crimes...........

[TonyT]

Originally Posted by 6 FOOT 3

Yeap i do remember that from watching the movie and so i assume many of the others were also executed although all i've ever heard about are the Nuremberg War Trials of the Nazi and Military High Command.

The Nuremberg Trials that we are all familiar with were held before the "International Military Tribunal". A series of trials took place after the main trial and were conducted solely by U.S. military courts. Some of these (Doctor's Trial, Pohl Trial, Einsatzgruppen Trial, and RuSHA Trial) covered certain elements of the apparatus used to conduct the Final Solution.

A separate set of trials known collectively as "The Dachau Trials" were held by the U.S. military between 1945 and 1948 on the grounds of Dachau itself. These were specifically set up to try for war crimes those individuals that oversaw and worked at the following concentration camps: Dachau, Buchenwald, Flossenburg, Mauthausen, Muhldorf, and Nordhausen. A total of 1,941 people were charged in these proceedings, with 1,517 of them being convicted. Of those convicted, 324 were sentenced to death with 278 of those actually being executed.

The British military also conducted similar tribunals in their zone of occupation. In this instance, 1,085 people were tried, with 240 sentenced to death. It fell to the British to try the commandant of Bergen-Belsen, Josef Kramer, and 44 members of the camp staff. Kramer and several of his key staff were found guilty and executed. In all, the Allies convicted 5,025 people of war crimes between 1945 and 1949, with 806 of those being sentenced to death, and of that number 486 were executed. The remainder were given prison terms of various lengths.

Richard Baer, the last commandant of both Auschwitz and Birkenau, evaded authorities until 1960 when he was finally arrested by West German officials. He died in jail in 1963 while awaiting trial. Two of the commandants of Majdanek, Karl Otto Koch and Hermann Florstedt, were actually arrested by the Reich Criminal Police and put on trial. Koch was tried, convicted, and executed for ordering the death of two prisoners while he was commandant of Buchenwald. Florstedt was convicted and executed for theft. Amon Goeth was also set to be tried by the Nazis but the war ended before it could take place. And as already mentioned, he was tried and executed by order of the Supreme People's Court in Poland along with Majdanek's last commandant, Arthur Liebehenschel. Franz Stangl, who served as commandant at both Sobibor and Treblinka, escaped to Italy, then to Syria, and finally Brazil, where he remained until 1970. He was extradited to West Germany, tried, and sentenced to life imprisonment. He died in jail in 1971. His deputy at Sobibor, Gustav Wagner, also ended up in Brazil. Requests for extradition from Israel, Poland, Austria and West Germany were all rejected by Brazilian authorities. Wagner was found dead of an apparent self inflicted knife wound in 1980.

Some of those who served as concentration commandants left those posts and became involved with the Waffen SS. Hilmar Wackerle, the first commandant of Dachau, was shot and killed by a Russian sniper while serving as commander of Dutch Waffen-SS volunteers during the opening weeks of Operation Barbarossa. Theodore Eicke, the man who succeeded Wackerle at Dachau and the person credited with creating the model for all the concentration camps that followed, died in 1943 when his plane was shot down on the Russian Front. Berthold Maack, also a former Dachau commandant, was captured by the Soviets, along with a portion of his command of Estonian Waffen SS men, and executed. Others like Hans Loritz and Wilhelm Weiter committed suicide rather than face trial for war crimes. The last man to technically hold the title of commandant of Dachau was 2nd Lt. Heinrich Wicker. He held the post for a single day and only because he was the highest ranking officer still left at the camp. At the urging of a Swiss Red Cross representative, Wicker remained behind with a contingent of SS men to secure the camp until it could be surrendered to the approaching Americans. After turning the camp over, Wicker is believed to have been killed either by American troops or by inmates that had been given weapons by the Americans. His death was a prelude to the so-called “Dachau Massacre” in which an unknown number of SS guards and Waffen–SS troops from a training camp located next to the Dachau camp, were executed by American troops after surrendering.

While I can’t account for the fate of every concentration camp commandant, it seems fairly clear that the vast majority of them were in fact tried and executed by the Allies, or in some cases, by the governments of formerly occupied countries such as Poland and Yugoslavia. And though it is true that many SS guards escaped prosecution and likely execution, I can find no instance of individuals that commanded at a concentration camp being given a light sentence or ever being released from prison other than through the act of dying.

[Robhu]

There might be one commandant's assistant still alive.
His name is Demyanyouk or something like that. I know that isn't the correct spelling.
He ended up in Cleveland Ohio and worked and retired from Ford Motor Co.
He has been charged with being a Nazis guard and executioner several times over the years but never convicted.
Last spring he was finaly deported to stand trial for war crimes. He is like 86 yrs old.
The picture of him when he was a supposed Nazis guard and then a later picture of him in Cleveland is pretty much identical except for aging.
In a way I kind of had some sympathy for him as an old sick man that had lived and worked for years, raised a family, and never caused any trouble in the community.
But if he is who he is accused of being and committed the atrocities that he is charged with, then my sympathy for him is no more.
My Dad was in WWII assigned to Pattons 3rd Army division. He was with the group that went in to liberate the Dachau prison camp. When they got there the Germans had left because they had found out the Americans were coming. My Dad's company found railroad box cars full of dead bodys. My Mom still has the pictures that Dad brought back from the war. He said he brought them back because without them no one would have believed what went on over there. I've seen those pictures many times. They are real. They are not Hollywood. They are factual.
They found one live body at the top of the dead human stack of bodys. My Dad's 1st Sargeant carried the man out of the boxcar. He was just barely alive. He did survive. He was just a barely alive corpse when he was carried off the train.
There is an old war movie with a short, grainy, video clip of a soldier carrying a living skeleton out of a boxcar. That was the real clip of what my Mom still has a picture of that my Dad brought back.
I wish I could remember the name of the movie. I haven't seen it in many years.
The pictures my Dad brought back might be worth a lot of money. But we won't sell them. They are of a time and place in history of agony that should never be subjected to monetary reward.
Besides, they are family heirlooms obtained by a brave soldier who survived 4 years of combat and the Battle of the Bulge.
He lived to be 83. He brought back pictures. But he never talked about it. He couldn't, without shedding tears. He didn't want us to see him cry. He was too proud for that.

[TKramar]

This is something I've heard. I can't say how many of these Germans might have been concentration camp commandants...but the U.S. hired Nazis after the war to operate against the Russian Communists.

[Six Foot Three]

I appreciate everybodies answers and Tony T you really did a GREAT job answering that as it was alot of info that i've learned for the first time as you always kickbutt on WW2.

6/3