Gustav Hermann Sorge (24 April 1911 – 3 October 1978), nicknamed "''Der eiserne Gustav''" ("Iron Gustav") for his brutality, was an SS senior NCO (''

Hauptscharführer __NOTOC__ ''Hauptscharführer'' ( ) was a Nazi paramilitary rank which was used by the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) between the years of 1934 and 1945. The rank was the highest enlisted rank of the SS, with the exception of the special Waffen-SS rank ...

''). He was initially a guard at

Esterwegen Esterwegen is a municipality in the Emsland district, in Lower Saxony, Germany. Geography Esterwegen lies in northwest Germany, less than from the Dutch border and about from the sea. Demographics In 2015 the population was 5,280. Government ...

concentration camp in the

Emsland Landkreis Emsland () is a district in Lower Saxony, Germany named after the river Ems. It is bounded by (from the north and clockwise) the districts of Leer, Cloppenburg and Osnabrück, the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (district of Steinf ...

region of Germany. Later on, he was assigned to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

Career

Among the many people who were murdered at Sachsenhausen by Sorge was Leon Sternbach, a professor of classical philology at the Jagiellonian University and the paternal uncle of famed chemist, Leo Sternbach. Sorge became a prisoner of war of the

USSR The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...

after the war. He was tried as a war criminal by the Soviet Union in the Sachsenhausen trial held in the former city hall of Berlin-Pankow in 1947, along with Sachsenhausen commandant,

Anton Kaindl Anton Kaindl (14 July 1902 – 31 August 1948) was an SS-''Standartenführer'' and commandant of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp from 1943-1945. Kaindl joined the army during the Weimar Republic in May 1920 and served until May 1932, leav ...

, prison block director, Kurt Eccarius and others. He was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Retrial

Sorge was repatriated to

West Germany West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...

in 1956 on the condition that he continue to serve the life sentence imposed by the Soviets. He was put on trial with fellow SS guard, Wilhelm Schubert, in

Bonn The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ru ...

for the 1941 murders of over 13,000 Soviet prisoners of war, many of whom were invalided, at Sachsenhausen concentration camp. The murders were carried out on a daily basis for six weeks. The retrial was ordered by the Federal Ministry of Justice of Germany to assuage public concern that the original verdicts in 1947 were indeed warranted. He was convicted of 67 individual murders and numerous counts of

manslaughter Manslaughter is a common law legal term for homicide considered by law as less culpable than murder. The distinction between murder and manslaughter is sometimes said to have first been made by the ancient Athenian lawmaker Draco in the 7th ...

and re-sentenced to a life term. He was sent to Rheinbach prison near Bonn,The SS: Alibi of a Nation, 1922–1945 Publisher: Da Capo Press (21 March 1989) Language: English where he died in 1978.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sorge, Gustav 1911 births 1978 deaths Holocaust perpetrators in Germany SS non-commissioned officers Sachsenhausen concentration camp personnel People from Leszno County People from the Province of Posen Kaiserwald concentration camp personnel 20th-century Freikorps personnel People convicted of murder by Germany German people convicted of murder German prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment Prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment by Germany Prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment by the Soviet Union Prisoners who died in German detention Nazis who died in prison custody German prisoners of war in World War II held by the Soviet Union People convicted in the Nazi concentration camp trials

Career

Retrial

See also

References