Gottlieb Hering
| Gottlieb Hering | |
|---|---|
 Gottlieb Hering |
|
| Born | June 2, 1887 Warmbronn, German Empire |
| Died | October 9, 1945 (aged 58) Stetten im Remstal, Allied-occupied Germany |
| Allegiance |  Nazi Germany |
| Service/branch |  Schutzstaffel |
| Rank | Hauptsturmführer, SS (Captain) |
| Unit |  SS-Totenkopfverbände |
| Commands held | Bełżec, end of August 1942 — June 1943 |
Gottlieb Hering (2 June 1887 — 9 October 1945) was an SS-Hauptsturmführer (Captain) who served in Action T4 and later as the second and last Commandant of Bełżec extermination camp during Operation Reinhard. Hering directly perpetrated the genocide of Jews and other peoples during The Holocaust.
Hering began his SS career as a detective in the criminal police (Kriminalpolizei, or Kripo) in Stuttgart, eventually making officer rank. While in Stuttgart, he became an acquaintance of Christian Wirth, who also worked in the Kripo. Hering was then transferred to work in the Action T4 euthanasia program at Sonnenstein Euthanasia Centre. Hering served as an assistant supervisor (as did Fritz Tauscher) to a police officer by the name of Schemel. After Sonnenstein, Hering became the office manager at Hartheim Euthanasia Centre.[1]
After Action T4, Hering was posted to Operation Reinhard in Lublin, Poland. He replaced Christian Wirth as Commandant of Bełżec extermination camp at the end of August 1942. He served as the camp's Commandant until its closure in June 1943. After Himmler was impressed by his visit to the Reinhard camps in March 1943, Hering was promoted to the rank of SS-Hauptsturmführer (Captain).[2]
SS-Scharführer Heinrich Unverhau, who served at Bełżec, testified about Hering:
Hering and Wirth were definitely wicked people, and the whole staff of the camp was afraid of them....I heard that Hering shot two Ukrainian guards who expressed their dissatisfaction with what was going on in Belzec.[3]
Rudolf Reder, one of the very few survivors of Bełżec, wrote of Hering:
He seldom was present in the camp and came only in connection with some event....Once the gassing engine stopped working. When he was informed, he arrived astride a horse, ordered the engine to be repaired and did not allow the people in the gas chambers to be removed. He let them strangle and die slowly for a few hours more. He yelled and shook with rage. In spite of the fact that he came only on rare occasions, the SS men feared him greatly. He lived alone with his Ukrainian orderly, who served him. This Ukrainian submitted to him the daily reports.[3]
Tadeusz Miziewicz, a Pole who lived in the village of Bełżec and worked at the train station, testified about Hering:
Once the major [sic], the commander of Belzec death camp, invented a new type of entertainment: he tied a Jew with a rope to his car; the Jew was forced to run behind the car and behind them ran the major's dog and bit the Jew. The major rode from the camp to the water pump, which was in Belzec on Tomaszowska Street, and back. What happened to this Jew I do not know. This event was witnessed by the people of Belzec.[3]
After the termination of Operation Reinhard and the closure of Belzec in June 1943, Hering became the commander of the Poniatowa labor camp. On 3-4 November 1943, German police killed the remaining Jews at Poniatowa during Aktion Erntefest. Hering then joined fellow SS men from the Operation Reinhard staff in Trieste, Italy.[4]
On 9 October 1945, Gottlieb Hering died of mysterious complications in the waiting room of St. Catherine's Hospital in Stetten im Remstal.[5]
[edit] References
- ^ Henry Friedlander (1995). The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, pp. 206-207. ISBN 0-8078-2208-6
- ^ Yitzhak Arad (1987). Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, p. 167
- ^ a b c Yitzhak Arad (1987). Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 187-188.
- ^ Yitzhak Arad (1987). Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 371-372
- ^ Klee, Ernst, Dressen, Willi, Riess, Volker (1991). The Good Old Days: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders, p. 294. ISBN 1-56852-133-2.
