Johann Niemann ( 4 of August of 1913 - 14 of October of 1943 ) was an SS - Untersturmführer (second lieutenant) and provisional commander of the Sobibor extermination camp . Niemann directly perpetrated the Holocaust in Sobibor during Operation Reinhard . 1
Niemann joined the Nazi Party in 1931 with the number 753.836 and enrolled in the SS in 1934 with the number 270,600. Niemann served first in the extermination camp Belzec , with the rank of SS-Oberscharführer where commanded Camp II, the extermination area. 2 He was then transferred to the Sobibor extermination camp . Niemann was Sobibor’s deputy commander on several occasions in 1942 , before being permanently appointed to the post in early 1943 . After the visit of Heinrich Himmler to Sobibor on 12 of February of 1943 , Niemann was promoted to Untersturmführer . 3
Karl Frenzel , also commander in Sobibor, recalled how Niemann tried a threatened revolt of prisoners in the camp: “A kapo Polish told me that some Dutch Jews were organizing an escape, information communicated to substitute commander Niemann. He ordered the 72 Jews to be executed. ” 4 5
The 14 of October of 1943 , a revolt of the prisoners broke out along the extermination camp, Niemann was the SS officer of higher rank who was working in the field that day, so was the first person destined To be killed by inmates. Johann Niemann was killed in one of the barracks with an ax in the head by Alexander Shubayev , a soldier Belorussian Jew the Red Army , who had been imprisoned in Sobibor as a prisoner of war . 6
References
- Back to top↑ Sobibor - The Forgotten Revolt
- Back to top↑ Yitzhak 1987, p. 28.
- Back to top↑ Sobibor Interviews: Biographies of SS-men
- Back to top↑ Blatt, Thomas (1997). From the Ashes of Sobibor , pp. 235-242. Northwestern University Press.
- Back to top↑ Interview with Karl Frenzel
- Back to top↑ Yitzhak 1987, p. 326.
Bibliography
- Arad, Yitzhak (1987). Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps . Bloomington: Indiana University Press,