On December 22, 1947, in Krakow, Poland, the former staff of the Auschwitz concentration camp heard their sentences read aloud. After a month of gruesome testimonies, 23 of the 41 defendants were sentenced to death by hanging. Among them was Hans Aumeier, the former deputy commandant of Auschwitz, the deadliest German Nazi concentration camp.
Hans Aumeier was born on August 20, 1906, in Amberg, then part of the German Empire. Like his father, he took jobs in various rifle factories, working there for a few years at a time, apart from periods of unemployment. To survive, he even had to take summer jobs.
Like many of his Nazi fellows, Aumeier saw a solution to his unsuccessful career in joining the Nazi Party in 1929. That same year he became one of the earliest members of the SS, with SS identification number 2,700. In Munich, he soon belonged to the staff of Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS.
Before he started to work in Auschwitz, where he committed his worst crimes, Aumeier had worked in various concentration camps, including Dachau, Esterwegen, and Buchenwald. His specialties were torture, beatings, and executions.
He gave the kapos and guards far-reaching power, which led to an increase of terror in the camp. It was Aumeier who introduced the punitive standing cells in the notorious Block 11.
Inside these standing cells, the space was so cramped that prisoners could only stand upright. The entry was through a small opening at floor level, and the only source of air was a 5 x 5 cm hole. Prisoners were put into these standing cells every night, sometimes for a period of a few weeks, and still had to go to work every morning.
Aumeier also shared responsibility for mass shootings. On his order, 144 women were shot on March 19, 1942, at the execution wall in the courtyard of Blocks 10 and 11. On May 27, 1942, he was present again at a mass execution of 168 prisoners who were shot in the same way. After the failed uprising attempt in June 1942, he took part in the murder of the uprising's survivors.
Aumeier was known to all the prisoners for beating and kicking them for the slightest fault, such as failure to march to the pace and rhythm of the orchestra. He used to drink a lot and was known to shoot prisoners for no reason when he was drunk.
He was also active in the selections for the gas chambers, and after the victims were murdered, he stole their belongings, including gold. The camp's commandant, Rudolf Höss, discovered this, and as a punishment Höss sent Aumeier to Vaivara concentration camp in Estonia in mid-August 1943.
At Vaivara, Aumeier became the camp's commandant. Under his supervision, the camp's personnel carried out selections of inmates who were too old or too sick to work. They killed men, women, and children by shooting them in the nearby woods.
On January 22, 1945, he took over Grini concentration camp near Oslo in Nazi-occupied Norway. As the end of World War II approached, Hans Aumeier changed his behavior, probably because he knew he would have to face justice for all the atrocities he had committed.
He started negotiations with the Norwegian Red Cross and even let them enter the camp. On May 7, 1945, he opened the camp and let the prisoners go free.
Thanks to MI6, the British secret intelligence service, he was captured in his SS uniform by British forces on June 11, 1945. In 1946, he was extradited to Poland, where he was tried at the Auschwitz trial, which started in November 1947.
At the trial, Aumeier claimed he knew nothing about the gas chambers and that he had never killed anyone. He even stated that if he was found guilty and sentenced to death, he would "die as a scapegoat for Germany."
Nothing helped him escape justice. On December 22, 1947, a tribunal sentenced Aumeier to death by hanging. He was 41 years old when he was executed on January 28, 1948. There were no tears shed for Hans Aumeier.