1. Erich Bauer, sometimes referred to as "Gasmeister", was a low-level commander in the Schutzstaffel of Nazi Germany and a Holocaust perpetrator.
17 Facts About Erich Bauer
1. 2.
Erich Bauer participated in Action T4 program and later in Operation Reinhard, when he was a gas chamber operator at Sobibor extermination camp.
3.
Erich Bauer served as a soldier in World War I and was captured as a prisoner of war by the French.
4.
In 1940, Erich Bauer was assigned to the T4 Euthanasia Program, in which physically and mentally disabled people in institutions were killed by gassing and lethal injection.
5.
Erich Bauer testified to one of his first mass murders:.
6.
In early 1942, Erich Bauer was transferred to the office of Odilo Globocnik, the SS and Police Leader of Lublin, Poland.
7.
Erich Bauer was given an SS uniform and promoted to the rank of Oberscharfuhrer.
8.
Erich Bauer worked there until the camp's liquidation in December 1943, following a revolt by prisoners in October 1943.
9.
At Sobibor, Erich Bauer was in charge of the camp's gas chambers.
10.
Erich Bauer was described as a short, stocky man, a known drinker who regularly overindulged.
11.
The resistance almost postponed the uprising since Erich Bauer was at the top of the "death list" of SS guards to be assassinated prior to the escape that was created by the leader of the revolt, Alexander Pechersky.
12.
When he discovered that SS-Oberscharfuhrer Rudolf Beckmann was dead, Erich Bauer started shooting at the two Jewish prisoners unloading his truck.
13.
Erich Bauer was arrested in 1949 when two former Jewish prisoners from Sobibor, Samuel Lerer and Esther Raab, recognized him during a chance encounter at a Kreuzberg fairground.
14.
Erich Bauer admitted being aware of the mass murders at Sobibor, but claimed to have never taken any part in them, nor engaged in any acts of cruelty.
15.
The court convicted Erich Bauer based on the testimony of four Jewish witnesses who had managed to escape from Sobibor.
16.
Since capital punishment had been abolished in West Germany by that point, Erich Bauer's sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
17.
Erich Bauer served 21 years in Alt-Moabit Prison in Berlin, before being transferred to Tegel Prison.