- Richard Baer
Infobox Person
name = Richard Baer
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birth_date = birth date|1911|09|09
birth_place =Bavaria
death_date = death date and age|1963|06|17|1911|09|09
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nationality = German flagicon|Germany
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known_for = Commander of theAuschwitz Iconcentration camp (May 1944 to February 1945)
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occupation =SS -Sturmbannführer
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party =Nazi
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footnotes =Richard Baer (
September 9 1911 –June 17 ,1963 ) was a Nazi official with the rank of "SS -Sturmbannführer " (major) and commander of theAuschwitz Iconcentration camp from May 1944 to February 1945. He was a member ofN.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 inDachau concentration camp after becoming unemployed in 1930. In 1939, he joined the "Totenkopfdivision ", and was appointed adjutant ofNeuengamme 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 specialgas chamber and in the selection of prisoners for the so-called Operation 14f13 in theT-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 succeededArthur Liebehenschel , considered by Himmler to be too "soft" with the prisoners, as the third and final commandant ofAuschwitz fromMay 11 1944 until the final dissolution of the camp in early 1945. From November 1943 until the end of 1944Frederick Hartjenstein andJosef 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 theDora-Mittelbau camp in ThuringiaNordhausen , 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 theFrankfurt 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 afterAdolf 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 peopleWho|date=October 2008 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 saidFact|date=September 2008 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.
ee also
*
Ex-Nazi sExternal links
* [http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Baer.html Richard Baer] on the
Jewish Virtual Library
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