Gottlieb Hering
Gottlieb Hering | |
|---|---|
| File:Hering, Gottlieb.jpg Gottlieb Hering | |
| Born | June 2, 1887Expression error: Unrecognized word "june". Warmbronn, German Empire |
| Died | October 9, 1945 (aged 58) Stetten im Remstal, Allied-occupied Germany |
| Allegiance |  Nazi Germany |
| Service |  Schutzstaffel |
| Rank | Hauptsturmführer, SS (Captain) |
| Unit |  SS-Totenkopfverbände |
| Commands | Bełżec, end of August 1942—June 1943 |
Gottlieb Hering (June 2, 1887 — October 9, 1945) was an SS-Hauptsturmführer (Captain) who served in Action T4 and later as the second and last Commandant of Bełżec extermination camp during Operation Reinhard. Hering directly pepetrated the genocide of Jews and other peoples during The Holocaust.
Hering began his SS career as an officer in the criminal police in Stuttgart. While in Stuttgart, he became an acquaintance of Christian Wirth, who also worked in the criminal police. Hering worked in the Action T4 euthanasia program, and later replaced Wirth as Commandant of Bełżec extermination camp at the end of August 1942, during Operation Reinhard. He served as the camp's Commandant until its closure in June 1943.
SS-Scharführer Heinrich Unverhau, who served at Bełżec, testified about Hering:
Hering and Wirth were definitely wicked people, and the whole staff of the camp was afraid of them....I heard that Hering shot two Ukrainian guards who expressed their dissatisfaction with what was going on in Belzec.[1]
Rudolf Reder, one of the very few survivors of Bełżec, wrote of Hering:
He seldom was present in the camp and came only in connection with some event....Once the gassing engine stopped working. When he was informed, he arrived astride a horse, ordered the engine to be repaired and did not allow the people in the gas chambers to be removed. He let them strangle and die slowly for a few hours more. He yelled and shook with rage. In spite of the fact that he came only on rare occasions, the SS men feared him greatly. He lived alone with his Ukrainian orderly, who served him. This Ukrainian submitted to him the daily reports.[2]
Tadeusz Miziewicz, a Pole who lived in the village of Bełżec and worked at the train station, testified about Hering:
Once the major [sic], the commander of Belzec death camp, invented a new type of entertainment: he tied a Jew with a rope to his car; the Jew was forced to run behind the car and behind them ran the major's dog and bit the Jew. The major rode from the camp to the water pump, which was in Belzec on Tomaszowska Street, and back. What happened to this Jew I do not know. This event was witnessed by the people of Belzec.[3]
On October 9, 1945, Gottlieb Hering died of mysterious complications in the waiting room of St. Catherine's Hospital in Stetten im Remstal.
References
- ^ Arad, Yitzhak: Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: the Operation Reinhard death camps. Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1987, p. 187.
- ^ Arad, Yitzhak: Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: the Operation Reinhard death camps. Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1987, p. 187-188.
- ^ Arad, Yitzhak: Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: the Operation Reinhard death camps. Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1987, p. 188.