1. Lorenz Hackenholt was a member of the Schutzstaffel with the rank of Hauptscharfuhrer.
21 Facts About Lorenz Hackenholt
1. 2.
Lorenz Hackenholt had earlier been part of the murder of mental patients and the disabled in Action T4 programme of forced euthanasia.
3.
Lorenz Hackenholt's father was Theodor Hackenholt and his mother was Elizabeth Wobriezek.
4.
Lorenz Hackenholt attended the local elementary school until he reached the age of 14.
5.
Lorenz Hackenholt was a skilled driver and mechanic and, beginning in March 1938, served at Sachsenhausen concentration camp in the motor pool.
6.
In November 1939 Lorenz Hackenholt was assigned to Action T4, when he was transferred to Berlin for 'special duty'.
7.
Lorenz Hackenholt drove a bus with the SS staff from facility to facility.
8.
Lorenz Hackenholt removed the bodies from the gas chambers and burned them.
9.
On vacation leave, Lorenz Hackenholt went to Berlin to marry Ilse Zillmer, who was then 29 years old.
10.
Lorenz Hackenholt set up three gas chambers in an insulated barracks.
11.
Lorenz Hackenholt designed and operated gas chambers at the Treblinka and Sobibor extermination camps.
12.
Lorenz Hackenholt, who was called "Hacko" by other guards, was a tough, large man who was willing and able to do any task at the extermination camps, although he reportedly balked at cleaning up seeping corruption from bodies rotting in mass graves.
13.
In 1943, when Himmler ordered the mass graves at Belzec to be reopened and the bodies burned, Lorenz Hackenholt was in charge of the operation.
14.
Himmler considered Lorenz Hackenholt to be "one of the most deserving men of Operation Reinhard".
15.
In 1944 Lorenz Hackenholt was awarded the Iron Cross for his role in Operation Reinhard.
16.
Chris Webb reports that Lorenz Hackenholt avoided being shot and was released from custody by the decision of the commander of the Einsatz R, Dietrich Allers.
17.
Lorenz Hackenholt was then to work in Trieste as a driver for some time.
18.
Lorenz Hackenholt claimed that Hackenholt sent him to his wife to give him civilian clothes through him.
19.
Bauer stated that Lorenz Hackenholt had definitely survived the war, because he had met him in 1946 near Ingolstadt, Bavaria, where he allegedly worked as a driver or courier.
20.
Bauer stated that Lorenz Hackenholt had assumed the identity of a dead Wehrmacht soldier named Jansen, Jensen or Johannsen and lived with a woman he had met in Trieste.
21.
Tregenza believed that Lorenz Hackenholt had survived the war and was living under a false name somewhere in Germany.