Arthur Liebehenschel

Arthur Liebehenschel – Commandant of Auschwitz

        The Haunting Conscience        

Zack Van Hoosen

English 9

Mr. Meeks

3 May 2013

Outline

THESIS:           Arthur Liebehenschel was Commander of the main concentration camp, Auschwitz I.  Although he was executed for his war crimes, many Jews testified on his behalf for the “good” things that he did for them.  His daughter wrote a memoir after interviewing his second wife and found that Commander Liebehenschel mentally struggled with the gassing and punishments to the Jews. He would have headaches and take long showers to wash away the “evil” he felt he was forced to impose on the Jews.

1. Concentration camp commandant during the war

1. In the beginning of the war he was in charge of the WVHA, which is an office that controlled all the concentration camps.
2. While he was in charge of the WVHA he made an order saying that the SS are permitted to kill any inmate that tries to escape.  He would award any SS member who killed an inmate trying to escape 50 marks.
3. 5 months after the war started he became the commandant of Auschwitz I replacing Rudolf Hoess who was sent to Oranienburg to take Arthur’s former job at the WVHA.
4. He tried to make the camp better for the Jews by offering better food, providing better medicine, and installing a pool for the inmates.

1. Family during the war

1. During the war he had a family of 3: him, his second wife Annelise, and his daughter Barbara.
2. His daughter wrote a book called “The Auschwitz Kommandant” which describes her dad during the war. She got it from interviewing her mom.
3. Annelise had said that “he didn’t want to be at the camp, he was sent there as a punishment.”
4. She stated that some days he would come home and feel really bad for what he was doing, describing how “he would come home and take long showers to wash the evil away but that didn’t help him.”
5. Annelise also said “that he voluntarily joined the SS and was loyal to Hitler, but Annelise sees Arthur as someone “caught in a web”.”

1.  After the war

1. At the end of the war he was arrested by the American terrorist army.
2. He was put on trial at the Auschwitz trial and was sentenced to death; he was executed by being hung.
3. He was executed on January 28, 1948 for war crimes.

Arthur Liebehenschel the commandant of Auschwitz

Whenever you read about the holocaust you think of all the deaths and all the Nazi soldiers being evil and having no remorse for killing all the Jews.  Most people might think that if someone joined the third Reich and agreed with Hitler that they would do anything for him.  But not all of the Nazis were like that; one specifically who I will discuss in this paper who actually tried to help the Jews.  Arthur Liebehenschel was Commander of the main concentration camp, Auschwitz I.  Although he was executed for his war crimes, many Jews testified on his behalf for the “good” things that he did for them.  His daughter Barbara wrote a memoir about him after interviewing his second wife, Annelise.  In this memoir she describes how Commander Liebehenschel mentally struggled with the gassing and punishments to the Jews.  He would have headaches and take long showers to wash away the “evil” he felt he was forced to impose on the Jews. The one thing people should know is that he actually helped some Jews and didn’t want to kill them.  

        At the beginning of world war II Arthur Liebehenschel was in charge of an economic office that controlled all of the administrations of the concentration camps which was called the Wirtschafts- und VerwaltungsHauptAmt (WVHA).  While in charge of the WVHA he issued an order that “offered the Schutzstaffel (SS) 50 marks foe every inmate killed ‘trying to escape’.”  For the SS to receive the reward they would “murder inmates without punishment”.  Not long after he issued that order, Hitlerians wanted more and more murders from their subordinates. On the 24th of February 1944, Arthur, the chief Auschwitz issued another order that stated, “There are too many prisoners working on all worksites, with the exception of the aramaments factories, and their working strength is not being exploited. We are aware that tougher supervision by young SS officers would be necessary to increase the working yield from the prisoners”many prisoners were worked harder than they should have been.  Later in the war Liebehenschel got married for the second time to a woman named Annelise. From an SS point of view “she was too friendly with Jews.” Arthur was ranked high in the SS, but after a while another SS man by the name Heinrich Himmler was “unhappy that Arthur left his other wife for Annelise because she was linked to the Jews”. (Arthur Liebehenschel, Commandant of Auschwitz) So Heinrich demoted Arthur to a lower SS ranking. Barbara explains in the memoir, “That if this never happened he would of never ended up at Auschwitz. He never wanted to go to Auschwitz, he was sent there as a punishment.” When Barbara interviewed Annelise she said, “He would come home after watching new arrivals to Auschwitz and cry “oh no, women and children.”  She says that he would do anything to try to forget it all but nothing worked. She says that he would take long showers to “wash the evil away” but that didn’t work either.  While he was at the camp he tried to increase sanitary conditions for the prisoners, offer them better food, and provide better medicine. However, all attempts for those improvements failed, because The WVHA didn’t like the idea of “helping Jews”.