Reward for Mass Murder: A Trip to Berlin - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

The Perpetrators at Leisure The Sobibor Uprising and the Death of Johann Niemann

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Visit of Operation Reinhard personnel to Berlin, summer 1943. —United States Holocaust Memorial Museum collection, gift of Bildungswerk Stanislaw-Hantz
Officials from the “euthanasia” program for the murder of people with disabilities (code-named T4) lead Niemann (in uniform in the middle) and his delegation on a tour of Berlin, summer 1943. Werner Blankenburg, head of Section II at the T4 office, is talking with a Trawniki guard of the rank of sergeant (far right). —United States Holocaust Memorial Museum collection, gift of Bildungswerk Stanislaw-Hantz
A photograph taken inside the bus on its way from Lublin to Berlin. The seating arrangement is by rank: Johann Niemann and his wife Henriette are seated in the front, behind them are SS man Hubert Gomerski and his wife Emilie. The Trawniki men are seated in the back of the bus. The man standing in the aisle is likely a chaperone provided by the T4 central office. At Sobibor, Gomerski was primarily stationed inside the killing area. Tried and sentenced in 1950 to life imprisonment, he was released in the 1970s and died as a free man in 1999 in Frankfurt, Germany. —United States Holocaust Memorial Museum collection, gift of Bildungswerk Stanislaw-Hantz

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Among Johann Niemann’s possessions was a small photo album documenting a visit to Berlin in summer 1943 by killing center personnel. The trip was a reward from the T4 (“euthanasia” program for the murder of people with disabilities) central office, now located at Tiergartenstrasse 4; its operatives had originally recruited Niemann and other SS men to become killing experts on behalf of the state.

As the highest-ranking SS officer on the trip, Niemann headed the delegation. The group included his wife, Henriette, and two of his closest SS subordinates and their wives. Twenty-two hand-selected Trawniki guards from the Sobibor and Treblinka killing centers also participated.

The album illustrates how involved the T4 office was in the implementation of the Holocaust. Three high-ranking T4 officials welcomed the delegation. These photographs hint at a much closer working relationship among the T4 office, the SS, and the Trawniki guards than previously known. The Trawniki-men were the foot soldiers of the Final Solution and occupied the lowest rung in the operational ladder. Yet some of them participated in the field trip and were welcomed by the T4 office as official guests.

The presence of the perpetrators’ wives in the photographs sheds new light on their complicity as the beneficiaries of their husbands’ crimes. Henriette Niemann’s account ledgers show she benefited financially as the wife of an Operation Reinhard perpetrator.

Starting in August 1942, her personal accounts show large deposits of cash that far exceeded her husband’s already generous SS salary. Many of these deposits coincided with her husband’s regular home visits. Several survivors describe in their testimonies how SS men routinely ordered them to retrieve clothes, toys, and valuables such as gold coins, foreign currency, and jewelry from the victims’ belongings. The SS men would then carry this loot home with them on their furloughs.

Over time, Henriette, a rural homemaker, amassed a small fortune, consisting of tens of thousands of Reichsmarks at the time of Niemann’s death in October 1943. This amount far exceededNiemann’s monthly salary of 300 Reichsmarks, plus a “hardship” daily bonus pay of 18 Reichsmarks.

A group of SS officers and Trawniki guards at a public pool, Berlin, 1943. Niemann is standing in uniform toward the left. Some of the Trawniki are wearing swimming trunks. The unidentified chaperone is taking a snapshot of the photographer. *—United States Holocaust Memorial Museum collection, gift of Bildungswerk Stanislaw-Hantz*

The Perpetrators at Leisure The Sobibor Uprising and the Death of Johann Niemann