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

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

who served at the

Sobibór extermination camp Sobibor ( ; ) 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 an ext ...

. Ittner joined the

Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party ( or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor ...

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

Sturmabteilung The (; SA; or 'Storm Troopers') was the original paramilitary organisation under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party of Germany. It played a significant role in Adolf Hitler's rise to power, Hitler's rise to power in the 1920s and early 1930s. I ...

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 ''Administrative divisions of Nazi Germany, Gau'' or ''Reichsgau''. ''Gauleiter'' was the third-highest Ranks and insignia of the Nazi Party, rank in ...

s of

Hamburg Hamburg (, ; ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg,. is the List of cities in Germany by population, second-largest city in Germany after Berlin and List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, 7th-lar ...

and

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

from 1934 to 1939, at which point he put in for a transfer to the

Action T4 (German, ) was a campaign of Homicide#By state actors, mass murder by involuntary euthanasia which targeted Disability, people with disabilities and the mentally ill in Nazi Germany. The term was first used in post-WWII, war trials against d ...

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 Operation Reinhard or Operation Reinhardt ( or ; also or ) was the codename of the secret Nazi Germany, German plan in World War II to exterminate History of the Jews in Poland, Polish Jews in the General Government district of German-occupied ...

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 Heinz Kurt Bolender (21 May 1912 – 10 October 1966) was an SS sergeant during the Nazi era. In 1942, he operated the gas chambers at Sobibór extermination camp, perpetrating acts of genocide against Jews and Romani people during Operation R ...

, ''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 ...

'' 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 Franz Paul Stangl (; 26 March 1908 – 28 June 1971) was an Austrian police officer and commandant of the Nazi extermination camps Sobibor and Treblinka in World War II. Stangl, an employee of the T-4 Euthanasia Program and an SS commander ...

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 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 war for a ...

by the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

.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, once a stronghold of the Principality of Bayreuth, is renowned for its University of Life Sciences, a branch of the University of Bayreuth, the massive Plasse ...

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

Hagen Hagen () is a city in the States of Germany, state of North Rhine-Westphalia, in western Germany, on the southeastern edge of the Ruhr area, 15 km south of Dortmund, where the rivers Lenne and Volme meet the Ruhr (river), Ruhr. In 2023, the ...

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 People convicted in the Sobibor trial