Richard Baer
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Richard Baer (9 September 1911 – 17 June 1963) was a German SS officer who, among other assignments, was the final commandant of Auschwitz I concentration camp from May 1944 to January 1945, and right after, from February to April 1945, commandant of Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. Following the war, Baer lived under an assumed name to avoid prosecution but was recognized and arrested in December 1960. He died in detention before he could stand trial.


Life

Born in Floss,
Bavaria Bavaria, officially the Free State of Bavaria, is a States of Germany, state in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the list of German states by area, largest German state by land area, comprising approximately 1/5 of the total l ...
in 1911, Baer grew up in a Protestant family. In 1925, he moved to Weiden in der Oberpfalz, where he performed a three-year apprenticeship to become a pastry chef. After completing his vocational training, Baer toured Bavaria for several years as a journeyman. Eventually, in the winter of 1932, he returned to the pastry company of his apprenticeship and worked there until he resigned in March 1933. Baer 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 1930, and on 1 July 1932, he became a member of the Allgemeine SS. In the local SS post in Weiden, he met the future concentration camp commandant Martin Gottfried Weiss. Under the direction of Weiss, a small SS gang offered protection to speakers at weekend public meetings of the Nazi Party in the surrounding villages. Baer later stated that he had joined the Allgemeine SS because he liked the "soldier discipline" and the "joy of playing soldiers". After the Nazis came to power, most of the SS men in Weiden served as auxiliary police officers locally and, as early as mid-April 1933, they were assigned as guards to the Dachau concentration camp, where Baer was subject to military drills,
Nazi Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...
ideological indoctrination, and hard training in systematic techniques for the terrorisation of prisoners. His teacher was Theodor Eicke, the camp commandant since June 1933 and shaper of the so-called "Dachau Model" of the Nazi concentration camp system. Baer described the training for guard duty in Dachau as being "very strict" and "sharply polished": "The more we were polished, the more proud we were of it".During interrogations after his arrest, quoted in From December 1934 to end-March 1935, Baer performed guard duty at the infamous
Gestapo The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...
prison '' Columbia-Haus'' in Berlin. He was later assigned to the ''
SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV; or 'SS Death's Head Battalions') was a major branch of the Nazi Party's paramilitary (SS) organisation. It was responsible for administering the Nazi concentration camps, concentration camps and extermination camps of Nazi Germany ...
'' (SS-TV) 2nd regiment ''Brandenburg'', which in 1936 was involved in the build up of the
Sachsenhausen concentration camp Sachsenhausen () or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a German Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used from 1936 until April 1945, shortly before the defeat of Nazi Germany in May later that year. It mainly held political prisoners t ...
. After taking a platoon commander course in
Oranienburg concentration camp Oranienburg was an early Nazi concentration camp, one of the first concentration camp, detention facilities established by the Nazis in the Free State of Prussia, state of Prussia when they Hitler's rise to power#Seizure of control .281931 - 1933 ...
, Baer served from March to September 1938 with the SS-TV 3rd regiment ''Thuringen'' in
Buchenwald concentration camp Buchenwald (; 'beech forest') was a German Nazi concentration camp established on Ettersberg hill near Weimar, Nazi Germany, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within the Altreich (pre-1938 ...
. In September 1938, Baer was promoted to SS-'' Untersturmführer'' (second lieutenant) and, at the end of the same year, he headed the first group of guards in the newly established
Neuengamme concentration camp Neuengamme was a network of Nazi concentration camps in northern Germany that consisted of the main camp, Neuengamme, and List of subcamps of Neuengamme, more than 85 satellite camps. Established in 1938 near the village of Neuengamme, Hamburg, N ...
, then still a sub-camp of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. In September 1940, he became a commando overseer. At the end of 1940, Baer asked to join the front line and, after completing a course to become a company commander, he was sent to the Eastern front. In December 1941, as a result of a wound, he was transferred back to Neuengamme concentration camp. In 1942, Baer was appointed adjutant to the commandant of the Neuengamme concentration camp. At Neuengamme, he participated in the killing of Soviet prisoners-of-war in a special
gas chamber A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing humans or animals with gas, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a poisonous or asphyxiant gas is introduced. Poisonous agents used include hydrogen cyanide and carbon monoxide. History Donatie ...
and in the selection of prisoners for the so-called Operation 14f13 in the T4 Euthanasia Program. From November 1942 to May 1944, Baer was adjutant to Oswald Pohl, then chief of the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office. In November 1943, he took over the office DI (Central Office) in the Department D "Concentration camps Inspectorate". He succeeded Arthur Liebehenschel, considered by Himmler to be too "soft" with the prisoners, as the third and final commandant of Auschwitz I from 11 May 1944, until the final dissolution of the camp in early 1945. From November 1943 until the end of 1944, Fritz Hartjenstein and Josef Kramer were responsible for the extermination camp in Auschwitz II-Birkenau, so Baer was only Commandant of that part of the camp from the end of 1944 until February 1945. Near the end of the war, having replaced Otto Förschner as commandant of the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp in Nordhausen, Baer was responsible for the mass execution of Soviet prisoners by hanging. His final rank was SS Major.


Post-war

Baer returned to his home county at the end of the war and eventually settled near
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 ...
, living as Karl Egon Neumann, a forestry worker. In the course of investigation during the
Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials The Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, known in German language, German as , was a series of three trials running from 20 December 1963 to 14 June 1968, charging 25 defendants under German criminal law for their roles in the Holocaust as mid- to lower- ...
, a warrant for his arrest was issued in October 1960 and his photograph was printed in newspapers. The story of Baer's arrest is vividly recounted by Devin Pendas in his book ''The Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial''. After seeing a wanted picture in the tabloid newspaper '' Bild-Zeitung'', a co-worker on ''Fürst'' von Bismarck's estate reported that Baer was working as a forester there. When officials confronted "Neumann" on the early morning of 20 December 1960, he at first denied everything. Having already addressed Baer as her "husband", the woman in the house subsequently gave her name as "Frau Baer", but still claimed that Baer was named "Neumann". However, Baer finally admitted his true identity. On the advice of his lawyer, Baer refused to testify. He died of a heart attack while in pre-trial detention in 1963.


See also

* Höcker Album


Notes


References

* * * * * * * *


External links


Richard Baer
on the
Jewish Virtual Library The Jewish Virtual Library (JVL, formerly known as JSOURCE) is an online encyclopedia published by the American foreign policy analyst Mitchell Bard's non-profit organization American–Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE). It is a website cove ...
*
''Picturing Auschwitz''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Baer, Richard 1911 births 1963 deaths Auschwitz concentration camp personnel German mass murderers Holocaust perpetrators in Germany Holocaust perpetrators in Poland Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp personnel Nazi concentration camp commandants who died in prison custody Neuengamme concentration camp personnel People from Neustadt an der Waldnaab (district) People from the Kingdom of Bavaria Prisoners who died in German detention SS-Sturmbannführer