'' SS-Oberscharführer'' Karl Pötzinger (1908–1944) born in

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...

, Germany, was a

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; ...

perpetrator who began his World War II career as 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 ...

“burner” at the

Brandenburg Euthanasia Centre The Brandenburg Euthanasia Centre (german: NS-Tötungsanstalt Brandenburg), officially known as the Brandenburg an der Havel State Welfare Institute (''Landes-Pflegeanstalt Brandenburg a. H.''), was a killing centre established in 1939 as part of t ...

and at the

Bernburg Euthanasia Centre The Nazi Euthanasia Centre at Bernburg (german: NS-Tötungsanstalt Bernburg) operated from 21 November 1940 to 30 July 1943 in a separate wing of the State Sanatorium and Mental Hospital (''Landes-Heil- und Pflegeanstalt'') in Bernburg on the River ...

with the rank of Staff Sergeant in the SA. Pötzinger was a career policeman at the outbreak of war. He was transferred to

Treblinka extermination camp Treblinka () was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The camp ...

at the onset of Operation Reinhard of 1942 along with other gassing specialists. Pötzinger became Deputy Commandant of Treblinka II under ''SS-Scharführer'' Heinrich Matthes, supervising the gas chambers and later, serving as head of the cremation command in the ''Totenlager'' as soon as the covering up Nazi crimes became paramount to the Nazi leadership notably to

Heinrich Himmler Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...

himself during his visit to Treblinka in 1943. Treblinka was built as part of the most deadly phase of the

Final Solution The Final Solution (german: die Endlösung, ) or the Final Solution to the Jewish Question (german: Endlösung der Judenfrage, ) was a Nazi plan for the genocide of individuals they defined as Jews during World War II. The "Final Solution to th ...

, known as ''

Aktion 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, Erwi ...

'', and operated between and .Treblinka Death Camp Day-by-Day
Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team, H.E.A.R.T. Retrieved August 11, 2013. During this time, more than 800,000

Jews Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

– men, women, and children – were murdered there, with other estimates exceeding 1,000,000 victims.Donat, Alexander, ed. ''The Death Camp Treblinka: A Documentary.'' New York: Holocaust Library, 1979. LOC 79-53471 Franciszek Ząbecki, ''Wspomnienia dawne i nowe'',

PAX Association The PAX Association () was a pro-communist Catholic organization created in 1947 in the People's Republic of Poland at the onset of the Stalinist period. The association published the ''Słowo Powszechne'' daily for almost fifty years between 19 ...

Publishing, Warsaw 1977. Karl Pötzinger was transferred from Treblinka to

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 ...

temporarily before being posted to Italy. He died on 22 December 1944 from the shrapnel wound sustained in an air-raid. He is buried at the German Military Cemetery in Costermano near

Verona Verona ( , ; vec, Verona or ) is a city on the Adige River in Veneto, Italy, with 258,031 inhabitants. It is one of the seven provincial capitals of the region. It is the largest city municipality in the region and the second largest in nor ...

, Italy.

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Potzinger, Karl SS non-commissioned officers Treblinka extermination camp personnel Sobibor extermination camp personnel 1908 births 1944 deaths Military personnel from Leipzig Deaths by airstrike during World War II German military personnel killed in World War II

See also

Notes