Ernst Zierke

Ernst Zierke ( 6 of maypole of 1905 - Celle , 1972 ) was a Unterscharführer of the SS who participated in the program Action T4 undertaken by Nazi Germany and subsequently worked in the death camps Belzec and Sobibor during Operation Reinhard .

His father, a railroad worker, died in 1917. Ernst attended a public school eight years before beginning to work as a woodcutter in several states. By 1930 , Zierke was unemployed and became a member of the Nazi Party and the SA . He trained as a nurse at the hospital in Neuruppin , after which he received a permanent civil service position.

At the end of 1939 , he was recruited to join the Aktion T4 , where he worked as a nurse in the euthanasia program at the Grafeneck and Hadamar gassing centers . At the end of 1941 , he was transferred to the hospital of Eichberg . From January to March 1942 , he was part of the Todt Organization in Russia and then returned to Eichberg. ¹ From June 1942 to March 1943 , he was a member of the Belzec extermination camp team . In Bełżec, Zierke worked mainly on the unloading ramp of incoming transport wagons and oversaw the process of undressing the victims before they were allowed into the gas chambers. ²

Then he was stationed briefly in the field of Dorohucza , where he was sent to the extermination camp Sobibor the 5 of November of 1943 . The task assigned to Zierke at Sobibor was to supervise the dismantling of the field structures. Zierke participated in the mass murder of the last group of more than thirty “Jewish workers” ( Arbeitsjuden ) who had dismantled the camp. Zierke was acquitted at the Bełżec trial, held in Munich in 1964 , and was released during the Sobibor trial in The Hague for health reasons.

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