Richard Baer

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Richard Baer
Born	September 9, 1911(1911-09-09) Bavaria
Died	June 17, 1963 (aged 51)
Nationality	German
Occupation	SS-Sturmbannführer
Known for	Commander of the Auschwitz I concentration camp (May 1944 to February 1945)
Political party	Nazi

Richard Baer (September 9, 1911 - June 17, 1963) was a Nazi official with the rank of SS-Sturmbannführer (major) and commander of the Auschwitz I concentration camp from May 1944 to February 1945. He was a member of N.S.D.A.P. (no. 454991) and the SS (no. 44225).

Baer was born in Bavaria in 1911; originally a trained confectioner, he became a guard in Dachau concentration camp after becoming unemployed in 1930. In 1939, he joined the Totenkopfdivision, and was appointed adjutant of Neuengamme concentration camp in 1942 following spells in Oranienburg, Columbia-Haus and Sachsenhausen. At Neuengamme he participated in the killing of Soviet prisoners of war in a special gas chamber and in the selection of prisoners for the so-called Operation 14f13 in the T-4 Euthanasia Program. From November 1942 until May 1944, Baer was adjutant of 'SS-Obergruppenführer' Oswald Pohl, then chief of the Wirtschaftsverwaltungshauptamt (SS office of economic policy). In November 1943, he took over the department D I, the "inspectorate for concentration camps". He succeeded Arthur Liebehenschel, considered by Himmler to be too "soft" with the prisoners, as the third and final commandant of Auschwitz from May 11, 1944 until the final dissolution of the camp in early 1945. From November 1943 until the end of 1944 Frederick Hartjenstein and Josef Kramer were responsible for the extermination camp Auschwitz II, Birkenau, so that Baer was only Commandant of this part of the camp from the end of 1944 until January 1945. Near the end of the war Richard Baer, now commandant of the Dora-Mittelbau camp in Thuringia Nordhausen, was responsible for the execution of Russian prisoners at mass gallows. His final rank was SS-Sturmbannführer.

At the end of the war, Baer fled and lived near Hamburg as Karl Egon Neumann, a forestry worker. In the course of investigation in the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials a warrant for his address was issued in October 1960 and his photograph was printed in newspapers. He was recognised by a co-worker and arrested in December 1960 after Adolf Eichmann's arrest. On the advice of his lawyer he refused to testify and died of a heart attack in pre-trial detention in 1963. Several people doubt that he died a natural death - Baer's body was cremated by order of Fritz Bauer before the cause of death could be investigated. Even today, there are no reliable sources about the real cause of his death (but it is said Baer was healthy and his death was unforeseen).

The story of Baer's arrest is vividly recounted by Devin Pendas in his book The Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial (2006), p. 48f. After seeing a wanted picture in the Bild-Zeitung, a co-worker on Otto von Bismarck's estate reported that Baer was working as a forester there. When officials confronted "Neumann" in the forest on the early morning of December 20, 1960, he at first denied everything. Having already addressed Baer as her "husband," the woman in the house subsequently gave her name as "Frau Baer," but still claimed that Baer was named Neumann. Baer, however, finally admitted his true identity.