None of Hitler's plan would have come to fruition if he did not have willing minions to carry it out. Below are the people we know of who were paid to eliminate "useless eaters" from the Third Reich.
Killing Center Director
Irmfried Georg Rolf Eberl was born on September 8, 1910, in Bregenz, Austria. His parents were adherents to the racist theories of Georg Ritter von Schonerer, leader of the German nationalist movement in Austria who even merited a mention by Hitler in Mein Kampf. Eberl’s two older brothers were ardent supporters of NSDAP (the Nazi Party, known by the initials which stood for Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei).
In 1928, Eberl started his medical studies in Innsbruck, Austria, and in December 1931, he joined the NSDAP. In 1935, he graduated after repeating his final medical examinations, and in 1936 he moved to Germany, first to Dresden, then to Dessau where he served as the head of public health after which he transferred to the main health office in Berlin.
Irmfried Eberl - Photo in the Public Domain.
In 1939, Eberl was appointed head of the Brandenburg Facility and it was there, on February 1, 1940, at the age of 30, Eberl began to coordinate the Aktion T4 program. In June 1940, Eberl weighed in on the draft law on ‘extermination of those incapable of living’ to the Reich Commissioner:
“Every inmate of an asylum who has been institutionalized for more than three … years and for whom discharge is not imminent must be reported to the Reich Commissioner on a prescribed form.”
When the Brandenburg operation was moved to Bernburg as described in my last post, Eberl also moved and continued his role as medical director. The 1940 pocket diary of Irmfried Eberl survived the war. All killings and transports were neatly and obsessively recorded in Eberl’s pocket diary.
Unfortunately for my research, Eberl’s diary ends on January 21, 1941, so it does not list Ruth’s transport on March 31, 1941, but many other transports are listed, including others from Altscherbitz (written with the alternative spacing of ‘Alt Scherbitz’), Uchtspringe, Neuruppin, and Jerichow. Besides these four intermediate hospitals, Bernburg also received patients from Görden and Teupitz in the Brandenburg Province and Königslutter in the Braunschweig Province.
Pages from Eberl’s diary noting arrival of "transports".
Eberl noted the arrival of transports for gassing, often listed the number of victims and usually listing the composition by using the capital letter “M” for men (Mӓnner), “F” for women (Frauen), and “J” for Jews.
Following his ‘extraordinary’ success in Brandenburg, in 1940 Eberl was appointed head of the psychiatric hospital in Bernburg with the task of implementing and managing a similar gassing operation. On 21 November 1940 the gassing of the mentally ill in the Bernburg hospital commenced under his direction. … During the course of the T4 euthanasia program, 9,772 patients at Brandenburg and 8,601 [the number now stands at 9,385 patients] at Bernburg were killed.
Eberl would be promoted in April 1942 for the job of establishing Treblinka Killing Center for the sole purpose of exterminating Jews. His experiences at Brandenburg and Bernburg made him sought-after for the role.
The ‘euthanasia’ program had initiated systematic mass murder by the Nazis. Aktion T4 had selected the personnel and developed the techniques for the murder of thousands of human beings with maximum efficiency. Many of those personnel and their techniques were transferred to deal with an even larger problem: the murder not of thousands but of millions – the ‘final solution' of the Jewish question.
Eberl killed so many people so quickly starting on July 23, 1942, that the cremation ovens could not keep up and the stench of Treblinka is documented, even by Nazi personnel, as being able to be smelled from six miles away.
“Within the approximately 6 weeks of Eberl’s command, it is believed that up to 280,000 people were murdered” at Treblinka. This was “the ‘highest killing rate’ of any site in the Holocaust.”
(Saul Friedlӓnder sets the total at 312,000 Jews.) Eberl was replaced in his Treblinka position by Franz Stangl from Hartheim. Stangl was brought in at Treblinka to put a stop to such practices as "having naked Jewesses dancing on tables for the delectation of Eberl and his men." Eberl’s ‘incompetence’ was compounded by widespread corruption: the money and valuables carried by the victims found their way into the camp staff’s pockets and also into those of the commandant’s euthanasia colleagues in Berlin.
Because of his sloppiness and overall mismanagement of the killing of thousands of Jews, Eberl was demoted back to Bernburg until it closed its killing center in 1943. Eberl was captured by the U.S. Army in 1944, but they did not realize who he was and, so, he was released from prisoner of war status on July 6, 1945. He did not bother to hide his identity after the war, even renewing his medical license. Karma caught up to him on January 8, 1948 when he was arrested. He hung himself in his jail cell on February 15, 1948, never facing justice for his crimes, at least not in this world.
Eberl holds a particularly egregious place in WWII history. Among the hundreds of thousands of people he was responsible for killing was my great aunt; and he most probably never even knew her name. Her name was Ruth Rosa Luise Mühlmann. He did not succeed in killing the memory of her.
This blog is testament to Ruth's existence.
Eberl obviously didn’t carry out Aktion T4 by himself at Bernburg. The role of Bernburg employees may have been hidden for decades but their employment history by one of the six euthanasia centers in Germany during WWII has slowly been revealed and is in the public domain.
How did they justify their actions to themselves? According to Olga Ulrich’s testimony at the doctors’ trial, she was content working at Bernburg. The pay was good and the work was not hard; after all, patients were dispatched the day they arrived. Oftentimes, Bernburg employees stayed up nights until 3 am drinking and singing the popular song, Kornblumenblau. Employees included four married couples working together there and a mother and daughter team.
And Olga had no moral qualms about her employment at Bernburg. By her own admission after the war, “I never gave another thought to the people killed there.”
And they cannot act as if they were unaware of what was taking place.
Albert Geis, a Bernburg employee, stated the following in his postwar testimony: “Dr. Eberl asked if I was an allotment gardener and when I said that I understood some of it, he said that I knew then that weeds had to be destroyed. The same thing happens to them, unworthy of life should disappear. We had to watch the first gassing that took place when we arrived.”
At the end of this blog post there is a list of names that I've been able to reconstruct of the employees at Bernburg at the time of Ruth’s death in the gas chamber. But here are four employees for which I have found greater documentation:
Kurt Arndt
Kurt Arndt was a mental hospital nurse in Neuruppin. The hospital loaned “at least three members of the local nursing staff (Erwin Braatz, Heinz Unverhau, and Kurt Arndt)…[for] Aktion T4. They organized the ambulance transports (Gekrat Buses) to the southwestern German gasification centers of Grafeneck and Hadamar.” Arndt would be a transport attendant in Grafeneck, Bernburg, Hadamar, and possibly Treblinka. When Arndt was at Hadamar, he was arrested along with two other male nurses for openly discussing at a pub in town what was going on at that Euthanasia Centre. Arndt was sent to a concentration camp for a time for this infraction of disobeying orders. His whereabouts after the war are unknown.
Hans and Margot Räder-Grossman
Hans and Margot Räder-Grossman, a husband and wife team, were administrators of the gassing facility at Bernburg. Hans and Margot may have had Black Market connections as well. On June 19, 1943, Friedrich Mennecke, an Aktion T4 "consultant" doctor mentioned in the Dec. 15, 2023, blog post, wrote to his wife, “My dearest Mommy! … Cigarettes are gradually becoming scarce; I hope Räder-Grossman sends some more.”
Christian Wirth
Christian Wirth made his reputation among the ruthless at Grafeneck Killing Center for being exceptionally ruthless in his support of the killing program and in his enforcement of the rules. He was selected to be the main inspector (something akin to a crisis manager) at all six euthanasia killing sites. After Aktion T4 was completed, Wirth would reemploy many of the euthanasia staff to work at Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibor. Wirth was killed by partisans in Trieste, Italy in 1944.
Henry Friedlander explained the connection between the euthanasia centers and the killing centers:
“The killers who learned their trade in the euthanasia killing centers of:
Brandenburg, Grafeneck, Hartheim, Sonnenstein, Bernburg, and Hadamar
also staffed the killing centers of Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka.”
After the war, during questioning, Aktion T4 employees would tearfully describe how they suffered at the time. They recounted talks of nervous breakdowns and of suicide attempts. However, Holocaust Researcher Ernst Klee recounts how the daughter of a doctor at Bernburg Euthanasia Center documented the everyday life of the T4 personnel from her personal experience:
“[We had an] Official apartment on an institutional level. About us originally a closed men's department. There were the offices of the T4 company. At certain intervals there were parties with music and singing until late at night. Bottles were later thrown against radiators. Around three in the morning, they came down the stairs and moved into the separated part. Certain [song] hits were always played, e.g. Cornflower Blue. The T4 staff seemed to be more urban, brisker than the Bernburg staff. Secretaries with manicured fingernails. Joyful!”
[Author’s translation]
List of Employees At Bernburg
NAME | JOB | BIRTH YEAR | NOTES |
Apel, Edith | |||
Arndt, Kurt | Transport Attendant | 1912 | Mental hospital nurse in Neuruppin. Worked as transport attendant in Grafeneck, Bernburg, Hadamar, and possibly Treblinka. 1 |
Baer, Rudi | Corpse Burner | 1906 | |
Bastanier, Käthe | Administration | 1917 | Married to Paul Weber. |
Bauch, Johannes | Corpse Burner | 1908 | |
Beelitz, Willi | |||
Bischkopf, Erich | |||
Borm, Kurt | Assistant Physician | Acquitted by West German Court on June 6, 1972. | |
Borowski, Günter | Cook | 1919 | |
Borowski, Werner | Administrative Manager | 1913 | |
Braatz, Erwin | Transport Attendant | 1911 | Grafeneck and Bernburg SA Rottenführer |
Bunke, Heinrich | Assistant Physician | 1914 | |
Dalades, Christel | Married to fellow employee, Edith Dalades | ||
Dalades, Edith | Married to fellow employee, Christel Dalades | ||
Dittmann, Ursula | Administration | 1888 | |
Drehmel, Karl | |||
Dubois, Werner | Corpse Burner and Bus Driver | 1913 | Married fellow employee Edith Fischer. Would go on to be supervisor of Jewish Work Units at Belzer and Sobibor.2 |
Eberl, Irmfried | Director | 1910 | Committed suicide in 1948. |
Eberle, Lydia | Kitchen Help | 1919 | |
Eckardt, Lydia | Administration | 1890 | |
Falkowski, Kurt | Photographer | 1908 | |
Fischer, Edith | Typist | 1920 | Married fellow employee Werner Dupois. Her mother worked with her as well. |
Fischer, Erna | Typist | 1890 | Edith Fischer’s mother. |
Floss, Herbert | Corpse Burner | 1912 | |
Frenzel, Karl | Corpse Burner | 1911 | Would go on to be the supervisor of the killing process at Sobibor.3 |
Freudenberg, Elise | Office Management | 1900 | |
Fromm, Franz | Head Nurse | 1895 | Grafeneck and Hadamar |
Fuchs, Erich | Driver | 1902 | |
Gäbler, Fritz | Corpse Burner, Transport | 1900 | |
Geis, Albert | Facility Manager | 1900 | |
Godenschweig, Gerhard | Legal Assistant and Registry Office | 1901 | |
Graetschus, Siegfried | Corpse Burner | 1916 | |
Hackbarth, Käthe | Waitress | 1896 | She was employed during the time of liquidation of the “Euthanasia”-Inst. Bernburg |
Hackel, Hedwig | Typist | 1916 | Married to Emil Hackel, corpse burner at Sonnenstein |
Hartmann, Mathilde | Consolation Letter Writer | 1909 | |
Hebold, Otto | Doctor | 1896 |
Heck, Franz | Oberscharführer/Guard | 1914 | |
Heinrich, Hedwig | Nurse | 1896 | |
Hengst, August | Cook | 1905 | |
Hering, Gottlieb | Administration | 1887 | |
Hirche, Fritz | Office Manager | 1893 | Later was Kripo, committed suicide. |
Holten, Elfriede von | Consolation Letter Writer | 1917 | She wrote on selection trips for Dr. Steinmeyer. 1942 – Jan. She married fellow employee Oberhauser, May. Got an abortion. 1949 – divorced and became a teacher. |
Holzschuh, Hermann | Office Manager | 1907 | Chief Registrar from Feb. – April 1941.4 |
Ittner, Alfred | Administration | 1907 | |
Jäckel, Anneliese | Main Typist | 1920 | Office was located directly over the gas chamber. |
Kainer, Erwin | Nurse, Transport | 1910 | |
Kalisch, Herbert | Electrician | 1914 | Installer and maintenance of the gas chamber and crematorium at Bernburg and Sonnenstein.5 |
Kneissler, Pauline | Nurse | 1900 | Also worked at Kaufbeuren-Irsee where they killed children. |
Kobuch, Rudolf | Nurse | 1910 | |
Kochan, Bruno | 1907 | Male nurse for dissections | |
Kōhler, August | Driver and Corpse Burner | 1906 | |
Kohnert, Lothar | Corpse Burner | 1908 | |
Kolanowski, Wanda von | Head Nurse | unknown | Committed suicide 1945. |
Kollruss, Paul | Corpse Burner | 1912 | |
Kreischer, Oskar | Transport Attendant | 1910 | |
Kroll, Herbert | Corpse Burner | 1906 | |
Küpper, Egmont | Transport Manager | 1906 | |
Kurth, Erwin | Transport Attendant | 1908 | |
Lambert, Erwin | Construction Worker | 199 | Built the gas chambers at the 6 euthanasia centers including Bernburg. Died Oct. 15, 1976.6 |
Laudert, Hedwig | Transport | 1905 | |
Lehmann, Paul | Gatekeeper | 1906 | |
Lichtenstein, Frieda | Nurse and Transport Attendant | 1913 | |
Liedtke, Annemarie | Administration | 1911 | Worked there after Ruth’s time. Married to fellow employee, Arthur Liedtke. |
Liedtke, Arthur | Security Guard Gatekeeper and Driver | 1910 | Married to fellow employee Annemarie Liedtke. |
Lōffler, Ilse | Consultation Letter Writer and keeper of Urn Book | 1918 | |
Lokatis, Wilhelm | Nurse | 1903 | |
Mätzig, Willi | Watchman and Security Guard | 1910 | |
Mennecke, Friedrich | Assessor | 1904 | |
Michel, Hermann | Corpse Cremator and Dissector of Bodies | 1909 | |
Mielke, Hildegard | Office | 1921 | |
Mietzner, Dorothea | Bus office | 1918 | Sister of Helga. |
Mietzner, Helga | Office worker | Sister of Dorothea. Eliminated in early summer 1942. | |
Nickel, Richard | Civil Registry Officeand deputy office mgr | 1879 | Called Papa Nickel. |
Niemann, Johann (Jonny) | Corpse Burner | 1913 | Killed by an axe to the head at Sobibor ‘43. |
Oberhauser, Josef | Corpse Burner | 1915 | |
Peters, Irmgard | Office | 1919 | Wrote brain research report for Bunke |
Pōtzinger, Karl | Corpse Burner | 1908 | |
Räder-Großmann, Hans | Business Manager | 1905 | Married to fellow employee Margot Räder- Großmann |
Räder-Großmann, Margot | Mental Hospital Nurse | 1904 | Married to fellow employee Hans Räder-Großmann |
Rank, Hildegard | Research | 1911 |
Rapp, Martha | Typist | 1913 | |
Rost, Karl Paul | Transport | 1904 | |
Rothmann, Charlotte | Typist | 1917 | Married to fellow employee Franz Heck. |
Rehwald, Wenzel | Corpse Burner | unknown | |
Reuter, Otto | Mental Hospital Nurse | 1909 | |
Richter, Edith | Transport Assistant | 1914 | |
Rittler, Albert | Office worker | 1910 | Married to fellow employee Olga Ullrich. |
Sauer, Hildegard | Transport Assistant | 1921 | |
Schmalz, Hermann | Mental Hospital Nurse | 1909 | |
Schmidt, Fritz | Transport Assistant | 1906 | |
Schmidt, Otto | Transport Assistant and Corpse Burner | 1903 | |
Schmieder, Friedrich, Dr. | Photographer | Scientific photographer of euthanasia victims. | |
Schrōder, Erika | Consolation Letter Writer | 1912 | |
Schütt, Karl Heinz | Administration | 1908 | |
Schwarz, Erna | Transport Assistant | 1917 | Married to fellow employee Gottfried Schwarz.7 |
Schwarz, Gottfried | Corpse Burner | 1913 | Married to fellow employee Erna Schwarz. |
Seibert, Inge | Administration | 1911 | |
Simon, Gerhard | Administration | 1904 | Married to Gertrud Heimann. |
Spengler, Karl | Office Manager | 1907 | |
Sporleder, Erich | Security Guard | 1908 | |
Stadie, Otto | Dissector | 1887 | |
Stangl, Franz | Office Manager | 1908 | 8 |
Steinhardt, Emil | Administration | 1889 | |
Stephan, Walter | Bus Driver | 1914 | |
Stōrmer, Frieda | Transport Attendant | 1916 | |
Stoffel, Heinrich | Card Indexing | 1909 | |
Stuhl, Lothar | Head Nurse | 1894 | |
Thiel, Erich | Chief Police Officer and Driver | 1907 | |
Trautwein, Heinrich | Management | 1903 | |
Ulrich, Olga | Transport Attendant | 1901 | Married to fellow employee Albert Rittler.9 |
Wagner, Klara | Transport | Married to fellow employee Walter Wanka. | |
Wanka, Walter | Management | Married to fellow employee Klara Wagner. | |
Weber, Paul | Management | 1904 | Married to fellow employee Käthe Bastanier |
Weiland, Christel | Transport Attendant | 1888 | |
Wuttke, Willi | Transport Attendant | 1908 | |
Zachow, Minna | Mental Hospital Nurse | 1895 | |
Zielinski, Gustav | Courier | 1906 | |
Zielke, Christel | Nurse | 1913 |
1 Aly, p. 70 and Klee, p. 544, 2 Friedlander, p. 241 and Knittel, p. 305, 3 Knittel, p. 305. 4 Evans, p. 130. 7 Klee, Euthanasie, p. 517. 8 Evans, p. 103.
Quotes from ‘Nurses Writing about Psychiatric Nurses’ Involvement in Killings during the Nazi Era: A Preliminary Discourse Analysis’. These are great quotes on nurses and reasons they participated in the killings.
There are a variety of reasons that nurses participated in the killings, including:
“they were afraid of being punished by the Nazi authorities (e.g. being sent to a prison camp, being de-registered as a nurse, or losing career prospects);
they were simply obeying doctors’ orders in a culture in which strict obedience was an inculcated virtue;
they were simply obeying the Nazi authorities, and the Führer himself;
it was the ultimate expression of care for incurable patients, and nurses could at least provide a caring hand when the end was near, and help minimize distress - it was done to relieve patients’ suffering;
they did it for extra pay and the expectation of rewards from the regime;
they were committed to, and believed in, a psychiatric ideology which, as part of a biopolitical system, subsumes the notion that ‘euthanasia’ is the last treatment option for incurable and unresponsive patients;
nursing was too poorly organized and lacked a professional body to regulate practice and enforce standards, so nurses made ethical decisions in isolation;
they believed that mental disorders were incurable, accepted eugenical arguments and believed they were helping to protect the Aryan gene pool;
they accepted the argument that the country simply could not afford to continue paying for care for ‘useless eaters’, a view that was exacerbated when the war created fresh demands on dwindling resources;
they saw themselves as good servants of a country at war who strove to contribute to the national war efforts; and,
nursing’s concern became oriented towards the health of the community, rather than caring for individuals.”
SOURCES:
Strous, Rael. “Dr. Irmfried Eberl (1910-1948): mass murdering MD.” Isr Med Assoc J. 2009 Apr;11(4):216-8. PMID: 19603594, p. 216.
Friedlander, Henry, The Origins of Nazi Genocide, p. 278.
Noakes and Pridham, “The ‘Euthanasia Programme 1939-1945”, p. 1048.
Robertson, Ley, and Light, The First Into the Dark, p. 87.
Friedländer, Saul. The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945, HarperCollins Publishers, 2007, p. 433
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