Arthur Liebehenschel

Arthur Liebehenschel (German:

Liebehenschel was born on 25 November 1901 in Posen (now Poznań). He studied economics and public administration. Too young to serve in World War I, in 1919 he enrolled in the Freikorps "Grenzschutz Ost"; he served as a sergeant major in the German armed forces (Reichswehr) afterwards. In 1932, he joined the Nazi Party and in 1934 the SS, where he served in the Death's Head Units. Liebehenschel became the adjutant in the Lichtenburg concentration camp, and two years later was transferred to the Concentration Camps Inspectorate in Berlin. In 1942, when the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office was founded, Liebehenschel was assigned to the Department D (Concentration Camps) as head of DI (Central Office).^[1]

On 1 December 1943, Liebehenschel was appointed commandant of

Liebehenschel had one son and three daughters by his first wife, Gertrud,[4]^[5] the youngest of whom, Barbara Cherish (born 1943), now lives in the United States.

In 2009, Cherish published her book My Father, the Auschwitz Commandant, in which she outlined actions by Liebehenschel that improved the prisoners' lives, but also discussed his participation in a genocidal system.^[6] Together with another daughter, Antje, she was interviewed in 2002 by ZDF, the German television channel, about living with their father's guilt.^[5] Liebehenschel had a son by his second wife, Anneliese. Liebehenschel's first wife, whom he left during the war, suffered from mental health issues after the war and committed suicide in a hospital for the mentally ill in 1966.^[6]

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