Heinz Baumkötter (7 February 1912 – 22 April 2001) was an SS-''
Hauptsturmführer
__NOTOC__
(, ; short: ''Hstuf'') was a Nazi Party paramilitary rank that was used in several Nazi organizations such as the SS, NSKK and the NSFK. The rank of ''Hauptsturmführer'' was a mid-level commander and had equivalent seniority to a ...
'' and concentration camp medical doctor in
Mauthausen
Mauthausen was a German Nazi concentration camp on a hill above the market town of Mauthausen (roughly east of Linz), Upper Austria. It was the main camp of a group with nearly 100 further subcamps located throughout Austria and southern ...
,
Natzweiler-Struthof
Natzweiler-Struthof was a Nazi concentration camp located in the Vosges Mountains close to the villages of Natzweiler and Struthof in the Gau Baden-Alsace of Germany, on territory annexed from France on a basis in 1940. It operated from 21 Ma ...
and
Sachsenhausen, who conducted medical experiments on concentration camp inmates.
["Those Were the Days": The Holocaust Through the Eyes of the Perpetrators and Bystanders, by Ernst Klee, London, Hamish Hamilton, 1991; published in the USA under the title "The Good Old Days": The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders, Old Saybrook, CT, Konecky and Konecky, 1991 ]
Baumkötter was tried in the Sachsenhausen trials by a Soviet military tribunal in 1947 in a trial held in the former city hall in
Berlin-Pankow. Among his co-defendants were the former commandant of Sachsenhausen
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 ...
, the record keeper
Gustav Sorge and the ''Blockfuhrer'' of the punishment block
Kurt Eccarius.
At the trial Baumkötter was asked what his duties were at the trial:
Baumkötter was found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to 25 years in prison with hard labor, which he served in the coal mines of
Vorkuta Gulag
The Vorkuta Corrective Labor Camp (), commonly known as Vorkutlag (Воркутлаг), was a major Gulag labor camp in the Soviet Union located in Vorkuta, Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. ...
. He was released early in 1956, when the Soviet Union released remaining German POWs. He was re-arrested by the West German police in July the same year, and was held in custody until November 1959. On 19 February 1962, a court sentenced him to eight years in prison. The court took into consideration his stint in the Gulag as sufficient punishment and released him.
References
1912 births
2001 deaths
Holocaust perpetrators in Germany
People from Steinfurt
SS-Hauptsturmführer
People from the Province of Westphalia
Mauthausen concentration camp personnel
Sachsenhausen concentration camp personnel
Waffen-SS personnel
German Gulag detainees
Prisoners and detainees of Germany
Prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment by the Soviet Union
{{nazi-stub
People convicted in the Nazi concentration camp trials