Siegfried Graetschus
| Siegfried Graetschus | |
|---|---|
 Siegfried Graetschus | |
| Born |
9 June 1916 Tilsit, German Empire |
| Died |
14 October 1943 (aged 27) Sobibor, German-occupied Poland |
| Allegiance |
.svg.png){kind=small} Nazi Germany |
| Service/branch |
 Schutzstaffel |
| Years of service | 1935—1943 |
| Rank |
 SS-Oberscharführer (Staff Sergeant) |
| Unit | Sobibor |
Siegfried Graetschus (9 June 1916 – 14 October 1943) was a German SS-Oberscharführer (Staff Sergeant) at Sobibor extermination camp in World War II during the deadliest phase of the Holocaust in occupied Poland. He was promoted to the rank of Untersturmfuhrer (Junior Storm Leader) during his time at Sobibor. Graetschus was a Nazi perpetrator of the genocide of the Jews in the implementation of Operation Reinhard. He was assassinated by a Sonderkommando prisoner during the Sobibor uprising.[1]
Life
Graetschus joined the SS in 1935 and the Nazi Party in 1936. He served at Bernburg Euthanasia Centre and Treblinka extermination camp before being posted to Sobibor in August 1942. He succeeded Erich Lachmann as commander of the approximately 200 Ukrainian Trawniki guards at Sobibor.[2][3]
Siegfried Graetschus was killed in the shoemaker's barracks with an axe to his head by Arkady Moiseyevich Vaispapir, a Jewish Russian Red Army soldier who had been imprisoned at Sobibor as a prisoner of war at the time of the Sobibor revolt on October 14, 1943.[4][5][6]
References
- ↑ Sobibor: A History of a Nazi Death Camp, Schelvis, Jules. 2007, p. 162
- ↑ Sobibor - The Forgotten Revolt
- ↑ Sobibor Interviews: Biographies of SS-men
- ↑ BBC History of World War II. Auschwitz; Inside the Nazi State. Part 4, Corruption.
- ↑ Yitzhak Arad. Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps. Indiana University Press, 1987.
- ↑ Blatt, Thomas Toivi (1997). From the ashes of Sobibor: a story of survival. p. 146.