14 Facts About Otto Hantke

Otto Hantke was a German SS-Unterscharfuhrer, convicted murderer, and war criminal in German-occupied Poland during the Holocaust.

Between at least 1942 and 1944, Hantke served as the commandant of the Budzyn labor camp and Poniatowa concentration camp, both subcamps of the Majdanek concentration camp, and was an SS officer at the Lipowa 7 concentration camp and Stutthof concentration camp.

In 1974, at the age of 67, Otto Hantke was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes committed in 1942 and 1943, including shooting to death at least four people during the deportation of Jews from Krasnik in November 1942.

Otto Hantke was born on 21 January 1907, in Kietrz, Upper Silesia.

Otto Hantke joined the SS of the Nazi Party by 1933.

Otto Hantke was an SS officer at the Lipowa 7 concentration camp in Lublin.

From September to December 1942, Otto Hantke helped establish and served as the first commandant of the Budzyn labor camp, where the inmates were slave laborers at a Heinkel aircraft factory.

Otto Hantke chose about 150 men from Krasnik to be imprisoned at Budzyn, with the rest deported to the Belzec death camp.

Otto Hantke later sent 50 prisoners from Budzyn to be expelled to Zaklikow.

From May through the summer of 1943, Otto Hantke replaced Birmes-Schulten as the second commandant of the Poniatowa concentration camp, another Majdanek subcamp.

Otto Hantke was in Warsaw during the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in May 1943 in order to coordinate the deportation of Jews to Poniatowa.

Otto Hantke was replaced as commandant at Poniatowa by Gottlieb Hering, who had served as commandant of the Belzec death camp.

Otto Hantke was convicted in Hamburg in 1960, and was released in 1967.

Otto Hantke was convicted of killing four Jews between 1942 and 1943.