Hermann Florstedt

Arthur Hermann Florstedt
SS-Hauptsturmführer Florstedt
Born	(1895-02-18)February 18, 1895 Bitsch, German Empire
Died	April 15, 1945(1945-04-15) (aged 50) Buchenwald camp, Germany
Allegiance	Nazi Germany
Service/branch	Schutzstaffel
Years of service	1931-1945
Rank	SS-Standartenführer
Commands held	Majdanek concentration camp

Arthur Hermann Florstedt (18 February 1895 – 15 April 1945), NSDAP card number 488 573 (the SS: 8660), was a Nazi German war criminal and convicted war profiteer. He became the third Commandant of Majdanek concentration camp in October 1942. A World War I veteran, Florstedt was awarded the Iron Cross by Nazi Germany which didn't prevent him from being executed by the SS in 1945.

World War II

Born in Bitche, Lorraine near the German border, Florstedt had served first during World War II at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp from 1940 till 1942. He was brought to Majdanek extermination camp to replace SS-Sturmbannführer Max Koegel. Notably, Florstedt was one of two Majdanek commandants put on trial by the SS themselves in the course of the camp operation.^[1] He was charged with wholesale stealing from the Third Reich to become rich, partly because of what the camp was initially, merely a storage depot for gold, money and furs stolen from trainloads of Holocaust victims at death factories of Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka (see Majdanek Trials). Hermann Florstedt, the third chief of Majdanek (from October 1942 on) was executed by the SS on April 15, 1945.^[2]

He was replaced by the interim commander Martin Gottfried Weiss, after the SS charged him with embezzlement and arbitrarily killing of prisoner witnesses – having been investigated by SS Judge Georg Konrad Morgen.^[3] He was executed by the SS. Florstedt was alleged to have had an affair with Oberaufseherin Ilse Koch.

Hermann Florstedt was given the ranks of SS Untersturmführer on November 9, 1933; Hauptsturmführer on April 1, 1934; Sturmbannführer on June 9, 1934; Obersturmbannführer on April 20, 1935 and Standartenführer on April 20, 1938, a year before the invasion of Poland.

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