Ernst Zierke (6 May 1905 – 23 May 1972) was a low-ranking member in the SS who took part in the

Action T4 (German, ) was a campaign of mass murder by involuntary euthanasia in Nazi Germany. The term was first used in post-war trials against doctors who had been involved in the killings. The name T4 is an abbreviation of 4, a street address of t ...

forced euthanasia program in

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 ...

, and after the

invasion of Poland The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week aft ...

worked at Bełżec and

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 ...

s during Operation Reinhard. Zierke helped to perpetrate

the Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

. He was charged with being an accessory to the murder of 360,000 Jews at

death camps Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (german: Vernichtungslager), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocaust. The v ...

, acquitted twice, in the Belzec and Sobibór trials of 1965 on grounds of acting under duress and set free.

Career

Zierke was born on 6 May 1905 in

Köslin Koszalin (pronounced ; csb, Kòszalëno; formerly german: Köslin, ) is a city in northwestern Poland, in Western Pomerania. It is located south of the Baltic Sea coast, and intersected by the river Dzierżęcinka. Koszalin is also a county-sta ...

. His father, a railroad worker, died in 1917. Zierke 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 ...

and SA in 1930. He trained as a nurse at the

Neuruppin Neuruppin (; North Brandenburgisch: ''Reppin'') is a town in Brandenburg, Germany, the administrative seat of Ostprignitz-Ruppin district. It is the birthplace of the novelist Theodor Fontane (1819–1898) and therefore also referred to as ''Font ...

hospital and eventually received a permanent civil service appointment. In late 1939, he was recruited by

and worked as staff in the euthanasia program at both the

Grafeneck Grafeneck is a small rural village in the German municipality of Gomadingen, south of Stuttgart. World War II history Grafeneck Castle, which had previously been an asylum for crippled people, was turned by the Nazis into an extermination fa ...

and

Hadamar Hadamar is a small town in Limburg-Weilburg district in Hesse, Germany. Hadamar is known for its Clinic for Forensic Psychiatry/Centre for Social Psychiatry, lying at the edge of town, in whose outlying buildings is also found the Hadamar Mem ...

gassing centers. Zierke was transferred to Eichberg euthanasia center in late 1941. From January to March 1942, he was part of T4's

Organisation Todt Organisation Todt (OT; ) was a civil and military engineering organisation in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, named for its founder, Fritz Todt, an engineer and senior Nazi. The organisation was responsible for a huge range of engineering pr ...

in the Soviet Union, then returned to Eichberg. Henry Friedlander (1995). ''The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution'', Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, p. 242.

Death camp service

From June 1942 to March 1943 he was a member of the Bełżec extermination camp staff. At Bełżec, Zierke worked primarily on the unloading ramp of arriving transports and supervised the undressing of the victims prior to them entering the gas chambers. Klee, Ernst, Dressen, Willi, Riess, Volker. ''The Good Old Days: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders'', p. 303. . He then worked briefly at the Dorohucza transit camp, from which he was sent to

on 5 November 1943. Zierke's final task at Sobibor was to supervise the dismantling of the camp's structures. He participated in the mass murder of the last group of more than thirty commando Jews (''Arbeitsjuden'') who had dismantled the camp at Sobibor. In the hands-on killings, Zierke was aided by ''SS-Unterscharführer'' Erich Sporleder, and ''SS-Scharführer'' Robert Jührs. In December 1943 he was ordered to Italy to serve with Globocnik (his death camp superior), at

Risiera di San Sabba Risiera di San Sabba ( sl, Rižarna) is a five-storey brick-built compound located in Trieste, northern Italy, that functioned during World War II as a Nazi concentration camp for the detention and killing of political prisoners, and a transit ca ...

camp complex. After the end of the war Zierke was arrested in a POW camp and released. He became a saw mill worker.Sobibor - The Forgotten Revolt.
Internet Archive. Zierke was rearrested on 31 January 1963 in West Germany along with a group of Holocaust perpetrators facing trial. He was acquitted twice, both at the Bełżec Trial in

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...

in 1964, and at the

Sobibor Trial The Sobibor trial was a 1965–66 judicial trial in the West German prosecution of SS officers who had worked at Sobibor extermination camp; it was held in Hagen. It was one of a series of similar war crime trials held during the early and mid-196 ...

in Hagen (1965). He was released from custody a free man, and died of health complications in Celle eight years later.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Zierke, Ernst 1905 births 1972 deaths People from Koszalin Aktion T4 personnel Belzec extermination camp personnel German nurses Nazi concentration camp personnel Sturmabteilung personnel Sobibor extermination camp personnel Sobibor trial SS non-commissioned officers