Hermann Baranowski

Hermann Baranowski (11 June 1884 in Schwerin – 5 February 1940 in Aue) was a German politician and military figure. A member of the Nazi Party, he is best known as the commandant of two German concentration camps of the SS Death's Head unit.[1]

In April 1900, at the age of fifteen, he volunteered for the navy and fought in the First World War, serving aboard the SMS Moltke. In 1912 he married August Dibbern with whom he had two children, a boy and a girl. In 1930 he was discharged as a lieutenant and then worked first as an office clerk in Kiel and later as a sales representative in Hamburg.[2]

Baranowski joined the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazi Party) in 1930. The following year he signed up for the SS (SS #24009[3]). His first appointment was as the leader of the 4th SS Standarte in Hamburg-Altona. In March 1936 Himmler appointed him commandant of the Lichtenburg concentration camp.[2] However, he was soon removed, demoted and sent as a Lagerführer (compound leader) at Dachau concentration camp.[2][4]

However, in 1938 he was promoted to Schutzhaftlagerführer at Dachau concentration camp.[4] He served as the commandant (SS-Oberführer) of Sachsenhausen concentration camp from May 1938[2] until September 1939.[citation needed] He died at Aue in 1940.

He was noted to be especially sadistic.[5][6] However, Rudolf Höss, commandant at Auschwitz, described Baranowski as:

very strict and hard, but of a scrupulous sense of fair play and fanatical sense of duty. As a very old SS leader and National Socialist he became my role model. I constantly saw in him a grander reflection of myself. He also had movements where his good nature, his soft heart revealed themselves, and yet he was hard and uncompromisingly strict in all matters of duty. So he constantly brought home to me how the hard 'must' demanded by the SS had to silence all soft stirrings.

— Höss, [7]
  1. ^ Tuchel, Johannes (1991). Konzentrationslager : Organisationsgeschichte und Funktion der "Inspektion der Konzentrationslager" 1934-1938 (in German). Boppard am Rhein: H. Boldt. p. 371. ISBN 978-3-7646-1902-2.
  2. ^ a b c d Morsch, Günter; Gabriel, Ralph (2005). Mord und Massenmord im Konzentrationslager Sachsenhausen 1936-1945 [Murder and Mass Murder in Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp 1936-1945] (in German). Berlin: Metropol. p. 83. ISBN 978-3-936411-93-5.
  3. ^ Broszat, Martin; Fröhlich-Broszat, Elke, eds. (2018). "Das Konzentrationslager Dachau: In Dachau geschulte Kommandanten der Kriegs-KL". Herrschaft und Gesellschaft im Konflikt: Teil A (in German). Berlin: Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag (Walter de Gruyter). p. 363.
  4. ^ a b Dillon, Christopher (2016). Dachau and the SS: A Schooling in Violence. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. p. 144. ISBN 978-0-19-965652-3.
  5. ^ Hett, Benjamin Carter (2008). Crossing Hitler: The Man Who Put the Nazis on the Witness Stand. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 223. ISBN 978-0-19-970859-8.
  6. ^ Zadoff, Mirjam (2018). Werner Scholem: A German Life. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 264. ISBN 978-0-8122-4969-9.
  7. ^ quoted in Koop, Volker (2021). "Höss and the SS". The Commandant of Auschwitz: Rudolf Höss. Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Frontline Books (Pen & Sword Books). p. 38. ISBN 978-1-4738-8688-9.