Eduard Lorenz (born February 12, 1921) was an 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 creati ...

'' (Corporal) and member of staff at

Auschwitz concentration camp Auschwitz, or Oświęcim, was a complex of over 40 Nazi concentration camps, concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) d ...

. He was prosecuted at the

Auschwitz Trial The Auschwitz trial began on November 24, 1947, in Kraków, when Poland's Supreme National Tribunal tried forty former staff of the Auschwitz concentration camps. The trials ended on December 22, 1947. The best-known defendants were Arthur Lie ...

. Born in Neudorf (

Sudetenland The Sudetenland ( , ; Czech and ) is a German name for the northern, southern, and western areas of former Czechoslovakia which were inhabited primarily by Sudeten Germans. These German speakers had predominated in the border districts of Bohe ...

), Lorenz was German by nationality with

Czechoslovakia Czechoslovakia ( ; Czech language, Czech and , ''Česko-Slovensko'') was a landlocked country in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland beca ...

n citizenship. He was a farmer. After the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the

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

, he joined the SS and was sent to the front. Due to injury, he was unfit for further frontline service and was dispatched to Auschwitz at the end of January 1942. In August 1942, he worked as a guard, and then worked as a driver distributing food in the camp. Lorenz was tried by the

Supreme National Tribunal The Supreme National Tribunal (; NTN) was a war crime, war-crime tribunal active in Polish People's Republic, communist-era Poland from 1946 to 1948. Its aims and purpose were defined by the State National Council in decrees of 22 January and 17 Oc ...

Kraków , officially the Royal Capital City of Kraków, is the List of cities and towns in Poland, second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city has a population of 804,237 ...

and received a 15-year prison sentence for abusing prisoners. He was acquitted of murder. Due to an amnesty, he was released from prison early, on December 18, 1955.

Bibliography

* Cyprian T., Sawicki J., ''Siedem wyroków Najwyższego Trybunału Narodowego'', Poznań 1962

References

1921 births SS non-commissioned officers People convicted in the Auschwitz trial Possibly living people 20th-century German farmers Sudeten German people {{Germany-mil-bio-stub