Kurt Küttner (1907 – 1964) was an '' SS-

Oberscharführer __NOTOC__ ''Oberscharführer'' (, ) was a Nazi Party paramilitary rank that existed between 1932 and 1945. ''Oberscharführer'' was first used as a rank of the ''Sturmabteilung'' (SA) and was created due to an expansion of the enlisted positions ...

'' (Staff Sergeant) who served at

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 ...

, arrested and charged with war crimes at the Treblinka trials twenty years after the war ended.

Career

Before

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, Kurt (Fritz) Küttner worked for many years as a warden in the German police. During Operation Reinhard in

occupied Poland ' ( Norwegian: ') is a Norwegian political thriller TV series that premiered on TV2 on 5 October 2015. Based on an original idea by Jo Nesbø, the series is co-created with Karianne Lund and Erik Skjoldbjærg. Season 2 premiered on 10 Octobe ...

he was in charge of the lower camp of Treblinka II ''Totenlager'', where he became one of the most feared and hated SS officers. He would follow people around, stop them and search for money, pictures or any family mementos that the prisoners would try to hide on their person. If he caught someone carrying anything, he would beat the prisoner cruelly and send him to the ''Lazarett'', or infirmary, where the prisoner was killed. In his capacity as commander of the Lower Camp and over the Jewish prisoners, he wanted to know exactly what was going on throughout his jurisdiction. He therefore exploited the weakness or baseness of some of the prisoners and turned them into informers. He received the nickname "Kiwe" from the prisoners.

Yitzhak Arad Yitzhak Arad ( he, יצחק ארד; né Icchak Rudnicki; November 11, 1926 – May 6, 2021) was an Israeli historian, author, IDF brigadier general and Soviet partisan. He also served as Yad Vashem's director from 1972 to 1993, and specialised ...

(1987). ''Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps'', Bloomington: Indiana University Press, p. 191 Küttner ordered the worker Jews (''Arbeitskommando'') who worked in the ''Lazarett'' of his lower camp to wear armbands bearing the red cross emblem, so as to deceive the true nature of the "infirmary" as a killing station. Klee, Ernst, Dressen, Willi, Riess, Volker (1991). ''The Good Old Days: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders'', p. 245. . As recalled by ''SS-

Unterscharführer ''Unterscharführer'' (, ) was a paramilitary rank of the Nazi Party used by the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) between 1934 and 1945. The SS rank was created after the Night of the Long Knives. That event caused an SS reorganisation and the creation of ...

'' (Corporal) Franz Suchomel: Küttner was also in charge of whipping prisoners at the evening roll call. Samuel Willenberg, one of the prisoners at Treblinka, recounts how this went: After Operation Reinhard ended Küttner also served in the SS in

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

. After the war, Küttner, along with ten other former SS officers from Treblinka, was arrested and charged at the Treblinka trials, but he died in 1964 before the trial began.First Treblinka Trial
at the Holocaust Research Project.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kuttner, Kurt 1907 births 1964 deaths German police officers SS non-commissioned officers Treblinka extermination camp personnel Treblinka trials