Alfred Ittner (13 January 1907 – 3 November 1976) was an SS functionary of

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

who served at the

Sobibór extermination camp Sobibor (, Polish: ) was an extermination camp built and operated by Nazi Germany as part of Operation Reinhard. It was located in the forest near the village of Żłobek Duży in the General Government region of German-occupied Poland. As a ...

. Ittner joined the

Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported t ...

in February 1927, with the membership number 30,805. He subsequently joined the

Sturmabteilung The (; SA; literally "Storm Detachment") was the original paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party. It played a significant role in Adolf Hitler's rise to power in the 1920s and 1930s. Its primary purposes were providing protection for Nazi ralli ...

in 1931. He worked on the staff of the

Gauleiter A ''Gauleiter'' () was a regional leader of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) who served as the head of a '' Gau'' or '' Reichsgau''. ''Gauleiter'' was the third-highest rank in the Nazi political leadership, subordinate only to '' Reichsleiter'' and to ...

s of

Hamburg Hamburg (, ; nds, label=Hamburg German, Low Saxon, Hamborg ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg (german: Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg; nds, label=Low Saxon, Friee un Hansestadt Hamborg),. is the List of cities in Germany by popul ...

and

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitu ...

from 1934 to 1939, at which point he put in for a transfer to the Action T4 euthanasia programme in

. He remained in this role, serving as a bookkeeper at the T4 headquarters until 1942.

Operation Reinhard

In April 1942 Ittner was brought into the ''SS'' as part of

Operation Reinhard or ''Einsatz Reinhard'' , location = Occupied Poland , date = October 1941 – November 1943 , incident_type = Mass deportations to extermination camps , perpetrators = Odilo Globočnik, Hermann Höfle, Richard Thomalla, Erwin L ...

and sent to Sobibór.Michael Bryant, ''Eyewitness to Genocide: The Operation Reinhard Death Camp Trials, 1955-1966'', Univ. of Tennessee Press, 2014, p. 152 According to the testimony of his colleague Kurt Bolender, ''SS- Oberscharführer'' Ittner served as camp accountant and one of his duties was to run the cashier's room where arriving inmates were forced to hand over their money and valuables to Ittner through a window. Herbert Floss would subsequently succeed him in this role. Charged with supervising in ''Lager'' 3, close to the scene of a mass grave, Ittner found his time in this role harrowing and after four months there was, by his own request, transferred away back to the relatively less fraught surroundings of Action T4 in 1944. Ittner worked under Franz Stangl in this role although the two had a poor relationship, with Ittner claiming that his refusal to help Stangl misappropriate funds had led to a breakdown between the two. Before long Ittner was conscripted into the army and sent to the Eastern Front, where he was taken as a

prisoner of war A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610. Belligerents hold prisoners of ...

by the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

.Bryant, ''Eyewitness to Genocide'', p. 153 Released in 1948, Ittner disappeared until 1964 when he was arrested in his native

Kulmbach Kulmbach () is the capital of the district of Kulmbach in Bavaria in Germany. The town is famous for Plassenburg Castle, which houses the largest tin soldier museum in the world, and for its sausages, or '' Bratwürste''. Geography Location ...

, where he was found working as a manual labourer. Brought to trial in

Hagen Hagen () is the 41st-largest city in Germany. The municipality is located in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It is located on the south eastern edge of the Ruhr area, 15 km south of Dortmund, where the rivers Lenne and Volme (me ...

in 1965 for his role at Sobibór, Ittner was one of a number of defendants in the trial found guilty, although the relatively lenient four-year prison sentence handed down was widely condemned. Ittner would state with regards to Sobibór:

The camp was a large and self-contained organization which had as its mission to kill as many Jews as quickly as possible.... The mass murder of the Jews was not carried out by one single individual, but by a multitude of SS people. Each one was a small cog in the wheel driving an extermination machine that could work only as long as all of them did. That is why, in my opinion, all the camp guards at Sobibór, regardless of their actual job, carried out the killings of the Jews. I would like to emphasize particularly that on arrival of a transport all other work was abandoned, and the camp staff all took part in the actual extermination process.Schelvis, ''Sobibor'', pp. 244-245

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ittner, Alfred 1907 births 1976 deaths Aktion T4 personnel Sobibor extermination camp personnel SS non-commissioned officers People from Kulmbach Sturmabteilung personnel German prisoners of war in World War II held by the Soviet Union