The Holocaust would not have been possible without the willingness of individuals to plan and commit mass murder. How does someone become a “killing expert”? The career path of Johann Niemann provides insights into the complex dynamics of this process in the Nazi German hierarchy.
Johann Niemann writing a letter in his room at the T4 “euthanasia” killing facility in Bernburg, Germany, winter 1940/1941. He captioned the photograph “Letter to my wife.” —United States Holocaust Memorial Museum collection, gift of Bildungswerk Stanislaw-Hantz
A Nazi Storm Trooper at 18
Johann Gerhard Niemann was born on August 4, 1913, in the small town of Völlen in northern Germany. The region was, at the time, among the poorer parts of Germany. At age 14, Niemann dropped out of school to become an apprentice to a house painter. His boss was an early supporter of the then-fringe Nazi Party. Niemann himself joined the Nazi Party in 1931 when he was 18.
In October 1931, Niemann joined the local branch of the SA (Sturmabteilungen, commonly called Storm Troopers). The SA was the Nazi paramilitary group that carried out racially and politically motivated violence and intimidation of opposition parties and individuals. Niemann was one of roughly 400,000 Storm Troopers at the time who participated in Nazi rallies and marches along with bloody street fights. Violence was central to his role.
Concentration Camp Guard
Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933, and quickly moved to bring the government under Nazi control. Soon after, German authorities established concentration camps to detain people whom the Nazis viewed as political enemies. By the end of July 1933, almost 27,000 people were incarcerated in these camps.
In May 1934, at age 20, Niemann volunteered as a guard in the Esterwegen concentration camp, located near his hometown. Most of the prisoners in Esterwegen were political opponents of the Nazi regime such as Communists and Social Democrats. This path offered new career opportunities for a young man with few skills and limited education.
A Member of the SS
A group photograph of SS guards at the Esterwegen concentration camp standing in formation, taken between October 1934 and July 1935. Johann Niemann is depicted in the front row on the far right. —United States Holocaust Memorial Museum collection, gift of Bildungswerk Stanislaw-Hantz
Soon after Niemann’s arrival as a guard at Esterwegen, he switched to the ranks of the SS (Schutzstaffel, or “Protection Squads”). Like Niemann, most of the SS men staffing the concentration camps were younger than 30 years of age. Most were from modest socio-economic backgrounds, eager for career advancement, and fanatical in their loyalty to the Nazi regime and its antisemitic and racist ideology. Brutality against the perceived enemies of the Nazi state was both encouraged and rewarded.
Niemann spent a little over two years as a guard at the Esterwegen camp. In August 1936, he was transferred to the larger Sachsenhausen concentration camp. There, he was repeatedly promoted.
T4 “Killing Expert”
In November 1939, Nazi officials summoned Niemann and a small group of fellow SS guards to the Führer Chancellery in Berlin, a small Nazi Party office that handled party matters as well as Hitler’s private affairs as chancellor. They were inducted into a secret program later code-named Operation T4. T4’s purpose was the killing of people with mental and physical disabilities, primarily patients in mental health institutions.
Over a period of nearly two years, Niemann worked in three of the six T4 killing facilities. Thousands of men, women, and children with disabilities were murdered in gas chambers while Niemann was stationed there. As a so-called “burner,” Niemann removed corpses from the gas chambers, extracted gold teeth, dragged the corpses to the crematorium, and burned the remains.
Despite his gruesome daily tasks, the photographs of Niemann during this period paint a different picture. He poses in scenes that portray him as an accomplished young man in relaxed settings. These photographs illustrate that Niemann had achieved some measure of status in Nazi society and felt proud enough to document it.
The career paths of burners like Niemann demonstrate how these “euthanasia” facilities served as proving grounds for the future operators of the killing centers during the Holocaust, testing their loyalty and tolerance for mass murder. According to the T4 program’s records, 70,273 patients were murdered between January 1940 and August 1941.
Niemann had proved he was ready and willing to embark on mass murder on an industrial scale.
Johann Niemann (right) at the site of the T4 “euthanasia” killing facility in Bernburg, winter 1940/1941. —United States Holocaust Memorial Museum collection, gift of Bildungswerk Stanislaw-Hantz