Siegfried Graetschus

Siegfried Graetschus

Siegfried Graetschus
Born 9 June 1916
Tilsit, German Empire
Died 14 October 1943 (aged 27)
Sobibor, German-occupied Poland
Allegiance  Nazi Germany
Service/branch Schutzstaffel
Years of service 1935—1943
Rank SS-Oberscharführer (Staff Sergeant)
Unit Sobibor

Siegfried Graetschus (9 June 1916 — 14 October 1943) was a German SS-Oberscharführer (Staff Sergeant) at Sobibor extermination camp. In the process, Graetschus aided with the genocide of Jews and other peoples at Sobibor during Operation Reinhard of The Holocaust. He was promoted to the rank of Untersturmfuhrer (Junior Storm Leader) during his time at Sobibor. [1]

Graetschus joined the SS in 1935 and the Nazi Party in 1936. He served at Bernburg Euthanasia Centre and Treblinka extermination camp before being posted to Sobibor in August 1942. He succeeded Erich Lachmann as commander of the approximately 200 Ukrainian (Trawniki) guards at Sobibor.[2][3]

Siegfried Graetschus was killed in the shoemaker's barracks with an axe to his head by Arkady Mojzeszewicz Wajspapir, a Jewish Russian Red Army soldier who had been imprisoned at Sobibor as a prisoner of war, during the Sobibor revolt on October 14, 1943.[4][5][6]

References

  1. Sobibor: A History of a Nazi Death Camp, Schelvis, Jules. 2007, p. 162
  2. Sobibor - The Forgotten Revolt
  3. Sobibor Interviews: Biographies of SS-men
  4. BBC History of World War II. Auschwitz; Inside the Nazi State. Part 4, Corruption.
  5. Yitzhak Arad. Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps. Indiana University Press, 1987.
  6. Blatt, Thomas Toivi (1997). From the ashes of Sobibor: a story of survival. p. 146.