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Anyone who was imprisoned in a concentration camp as a Jew, a communist or for other supposed reasons saw himself at the mercy of total arbitrariness: he could be punished, tortured or killed at any time and for no reason.

On the other hand, any form of enrichment of individual SS men was strictly forbidden, at least officially.

"I gave a strict order, which SS-Obergruppenführer Pohl carried out, that these riches would of course be completely transferred to the Reich," said SS chief Heinrich Himmler, summarizing his instructions on how to deal with the property of deported Jews and other concentration camp inmates.

One has to remain “decent”.

Heinrich Himmler inspects the Dachau concentration camp in 1936

Source: picture alliance / akg-images

And he added in his idiosyncratic usage: “We didn't take any of it.

Individuals who have made a mistake will be punished according to an order I gave at the beginning, which threatened: Whoever takes even a mark from it is death.

A number of SS men - there are not very many - have made a mistake and they will die, mercilessly. "

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But that wasn't even remotely true.

In reality, the camp SS enriched itself continuously and at all levels in the property of the prisoners while they were (still) alive and also after their death.

In the "effects chambers" of the concentration camps and extermination camps, there was often self-service, usually before formal registration - what officially did not exist could not be embezzled.

Higher batches also let inmates work for themselves privately.

Roll call in Buchenwald, around 1943. In the background on the left the crematorium of the concentration camp is smoking

Source: Getty Images

Problems only arose when such corruption became too obvious.

Then the main office of the SS court could (but did not have to) come into play.

Since 1939 it exercised disciplinary power for the entire service area of ​​the "Reichsführer SS" - and therefore extended to the police too, because Himmler had been their chief boss since 1936.

Only fragments of the files of this SS department have survived.

Nevertheless, the 2832 events that can be viewed in Berlin today are significant: "The NS 7 inventory gives an idea of ​​how many of the original events must have been lost," writes the Federal Archives.

Only a small part of the surviving files concerns cases of corruption by SS men in the concentration camps, but enough individual cases are known to get an impression of the ubiquitous self-enrichment.

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The most well-known case is that of Karl Otto Koch, one after the other in command of the Hohnstein, Sachsenburg, Columbia-Haus (in Berlin), Esterwegen, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald and finally Majdanek concentration camps.

The SS judge Konrad Morgen (1909–1982) determined against him for corruption, which in 1943 led to Koch's removal.

During searches, large sums of cash, jewelry and lumps of gold from the teeth of murdered inmates were seized.

The “investigation result” of the morning against Koch has been handed down.

According to this, the concentration camp commandant had at least 70,000 Reichsmark inexplicable asset growth during his time in Buchenwald;

According to the values ​​at that time, around 25 annual salaries, i.e. converted to more than one million euros today.

And that was just the amount in his official bank accounts - he also kept “black accounts” and did other business.

The accusation was "the most severe war pushing".

Former SS judge Konrad Morgen when he testified in the main Buchenwald trial in 1947

Source: Wikimedia / Public Domain

Because of this and also because of “unjustified” killings of prisoners, Koch was sentenced to death in December 1944 and shot himself on April 5, 1945 in Buchenwald.

From the SS point of view, the problem with the killings was of course not that they had taken place, but that Koch had carried out them on his own initiative and had incorrectly declared them to the inspection of the concentration camps, his superiors.

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Of course, Karl Otto Koch was by far not the only concentration camp commandant who was being investigated for corruption.

Hermann Florstedt, commandant of Majdanek, was also sentenced to death for the same charge;

it is unclear whether he was actually executed or was able to go into hiding - perhaps he was still living under an assumed name in 1975.

Hans Loritz was replaced as a concentration camp commandant for corruption

Source: Wikimedia / Public Domain

Hans Loritz, commandant of Sachsenhausen, was transferred in 1942 for corruption;

he committed suicide in British custody after the war because he was threatened with extradition to the Soviet Union.

The first commandant of the Flossenbürg concentration camp, Jacob Weiseborn, committed suicide in early 1939 because he was to be prosecuted for corruption in Buchenwald;

his successor Karl Künstler was dismissed in 1942 for “dissolute lifestyle”, which is just another term for corruption;

he died in April 1945 in the fighting for Nuremberg and was formally declared dead four years later.

Alexander Piorkowski, commandant of the Dachau concentration camp, lost his post in 1942 due to self-enrichment.

He stood before a US military tribunal in 1947, was sentenced to death and hanged in late 1948.

Of course, the corruption was not limited to the commanders of the concentration camps.

For example, an SS man had sent his wife a packet of dental gold from the crematoria by field post from Birkenau, which had attracted attention because of its weight compared to its size - he was apparently transferred to the front for this.

Just one of the many Auschwitz SS men who got rich.

Maximilian Grabner (first row on the left) as a defendant in the Kraków Auschwitz Trial

Source: picture-alliance / PAP

For example, Maximilian Grabner, head of the camp Gestapo in Auschwitz, was charged in 1943 with self-enrichment and unauthorized murders.

Again, the latter allegation was just a pretense, it was mainly about corruption.

Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller (1900–1945) prevented a judgment, Grabner was transferred to other Gestapo offices.

He was on trial in Krakow after 1945, sentenced to death and executed in early 1948.

In any case, the question of whether corruption had consequences in a concentration camp only depended on whose protection the accused was under - or who was intriguing against him.

Konrad Morgen was able to hunt down Karl Otto Koch because SS-Obergruppenführer Josias zu Waldeck and Pyrmont (1896–1967) personally hated and fought the concentration camp commanders.

He had already arrested Koch at the end of 1941, but had to release him on Himmler's instructions.

Thousands of watches that were removed from prisoners arriving in the Buchenwald concentration camp

Source: Getty Images

A year and a half later, Koch had taken it too wild and lost the protection from Berlin.

In Himmler's detailed service calendar for the years 1943 to 1945 there is no reference to the now former Buchenwald commandant.

On November 2, 1943, Himmler officially instructed the main office of the SS court to pass harder judgments than before in cases of enrichment, "so that there is no corruption in the SS and police".

But he undermined this order himself. For example, he allowed SS Oberführer Julian Scherner, who had been transferred to Dachau for appropriating valuables from the Plaszow concentration camp and against whom an investigation was ongoing for corruption, to prove himself in the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising.

At the end of April 1945 Scherner apparently committed suicide;

he was never punished.

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The actual extent of corruption and self-enrichment in the concentration camps and extermination camps cannot even begin to be estimated.

Countless statements from surviving inmates indicate that most of the SS men deployed there were more or less involved.

That went with the absolute power that they wielded here.

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