Karl Streibel

Karl Streibel
Karl Streiber at Trawniki (with potbelly, smiling) inspects the company of Hiwis (some still wearing Soviet Budionovkas)
Born	11 October 1903 Chiemgau, Upper Bavaria, German Empire
Died	1986[1]
Allegiance	Nazi Germany
Service/branch	Schutzstaffel
Years of service	until 1945
Rank	Sturmbannführer
Unit	SS-Totenkopfverbände

SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl Streibel (11 October 1903 – 1986) was the second and last commander of the Trawniki concentration camp – one of the subcamps of the KL Lublin system of Nazi concentration camps in occupied Poland during World War II.^[2]

Streibel was born in the area of Chiemgau in Oberbayern (Upper Bavaria). He joined the NSDAP and the SS at the age of 29, in November 1932. He was promoted to Obersturmführer just before the Nazi German invasion of Poland. He was appointed leader of Trawniki by Globocnik on 27 October 1941 to conduct training of the collaborationist auxiliary police a.k.a. "Hiwis" (Hilfswilligen, lit. "those willing to help") for service with Nazi Germany in the General Government. His camp had also imprisoned Polish Jews condemned to slave labor. The Jews were all massacred in Operation Harvest Festival on 3 November 1943.^[2][3][4]

The Trawniki men (German: Trawnikimänner) took part in Operation Reinhard, the Nazi extermination of Jews. They conducted executions at death camps and in Jewish ghettos including Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka II, Warsaw (three times, see Stroop Report), Częstochowa, Lublin, Lwów, Radom, Kraków, Białystok (twice), Majdanek as well as at Auschwitz, not to mention Trawniki itself,^[5] and the remaining subcamps of KL Lublin/Majdanek including Poniatowa, Budzyn, Kraśnik, Puławy, Lipowa, but also during massacres in Łomazy, Międzyrzec, Łuków, Radzyń, Parczew, Końskowola, Komarówka and all other locations, augmented by the SS and the Reserve Police Battalion 101 from Ordnungspolizei (Orpo).^[6][7]

A free man

On 24 June 1944, Streibel escaped from Trawniki with his own SS Battalion Streibel toward Kraków and Auschwitz, ahead of the Soviet offensive. They retreated again through Poland and Czechoslovakia to Dresden, Germany, where his battalion was disbanded between 4 March and 12 April 1945. Streibel and his Hiwis blended in with the civilian population and disappeared from sight.^[8] Nothing was known about his whereabouts until his indictment in 1970. Streibel was put on trial in Hamburg for his wartime activities, and in 1976 acquitted of any wrongdoing and set free.^[9] German prosecutor Helge Grabitz believed his word, but also granted him partial memory impairment.^[10] Streibel was declared innocent of inciting violence; without prosecution right of appeal.^[9][11] Further accounts of his life appear missing.^[12]

For some 30 years thereafter, the German authorities were unanimous about not prosecuting any of the foreign SS helpers at all. The next war crimes trial against a former Hiwi from the SS Battalion Streibel, was launched in 2009 in Munich against the 89-year-old John Demjanjuk from the Sobibór, thus resulting in more questions than answers.^[13][14] An actual roster of Hiwis from Trawniki who were deployed to the annihilation of the Warsaw and the Białystok Ghetto, as well as some 1,200 original SS service sheets written in German, still exist today.^[8] Most of the documents are located at the SFB Archive in Moscow, because most of them were captured during the liberation of Lublin, Majdanek and Trawniki camps in the summer of 1944. The SS personnel files also show that a small number of Hiwis mutinied and were punished by death by the Germans after their capture (as in Auschwitz).^[8] Possibly as many as one thousand Trawniki men who dared to return to their homeland were apprehended and tried for treason by the Soviets. There were no acquittals. Most defendants were sentenced to Gulag, but released under the Khrushchev amnesty of 1955.^[5]

Notes