Hermann Florstedt

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Arthur Hermann Florstedt
Executed
ConvictionEmbezzlement
Criminal penaltyDeath
Military career
Allegiance German Empire (1912–1918)

 Weimar Germany (1918–1919)

 Nazi Germany (1933–1945)
Service / branch Imperial German Army (1912–1919)
Schutzstaffel (1931–1945)
Years of service1912–1919
1931–1945
RankSS-Standartenführer
CommandsMajdanek concentration camp
AwardsIron Cross 2nd Class 1914
Honor Cross of World War 1914/1918
SA-Sports Badge in Bronze
NSDAP Party Badge

Arthur Hermann Florstedt (18 February 1895 – 5 April 1945) was a German SS official who served as the third commandant of Majdanek concentration camp from November 1942 to October 1943.

Florstedt was a veteran of

Holocaust victims at Majdanek. Florstedt was convicted and sentenced to death, but his execution on 5 April 1945 shortly before the end of World War II is unconfirmed and his fate is unknown.[1]

Early life

Arthur Hermann Florstedt was born on 18 February 1895 in

Bezirk Lothringen (present-day Bitche, France) the son of an Imperial German Army sergeant. His family were from Eisleben in the Prussian Province of Saxony, but his father was stationed at Bitsch's citadel and they returned to Eisleben in 1897. Florstedt joined the Prussian Army in Potsdam in 1912 and, following the outbreak of World War I in 1914, served on both the Western and Eastern fronts. He was taken as a prisoner of war by the Russians
in 1917, during which he impregnated a Russian woman, and was allowed to return to Germany after the child was born in May 1918. His child, a son named Walter, was raised by his parents.

Florstedt was discharged from the army in January 1919 and moved to

bankrupt to his relatives. In November 1929, the Eisleben district court issued him a fine of 100 RM for assault. By 1931, he was working as a sales manager in a bicycle
shop.

Political career

Florstedt joined the

disturbing the peace and property damage after he had caused a drunken riot at a Bruchsal police station the day before. In March 1936, Florstedt's command was transferred to Sturmbann I/36 in Kassel as punishment for insulting a Reichsbahn official in January. He was placed in command of the 35th SS Standarte in Kassel in January 1937 and promoted to the rank of Standartenführer
in April 1938.

Concentration camps

Florstedt became a member of the

Soviet prisoners of war, he had three well-known communist prisoner functionaries replaced and punished with beatings. Florstedt was transferred to the Mauthausen concentration camp
in June 1942.

Florstedt was appointed commandant of

state property. Florstedt was investigated by SS Judge Georg Konrad Morgen and charged with embezzlement and arbitrary killing of prisoner witnesses.[2] He was one of two Majdanek commandants put on trial by the SS in the course of the camp operation.[3] Florstedt was charged with corruption (wholesale stealing from the state); he had access to valuables stolen from those murdered at the Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka
camps. These valuables were stored and processed at Majdanek where both Florstedt and Koch had served as commandant. Florstedt was found guilty of murder and corruption by an SS court and sentenced to death.

Disappearance

Florstedt was allegedly executed by the SS on 5 April 1945, the same day as Koch's execution which has been confirmed, though his fate remains disputed.[4][5] According to Ernst Klee, Florstedt was shot on Heinrich Himmler's orders shortly before the end of the war. Martin Sommer, who was also the subject of internal SS investigations, told West German investigators in 1963 that Florstedt had been shot in Buchenwald together with Koch, which was confirmed by Morgen. However, neither Sommer nor Morgen were present at the execution, and office records at Buchenwald were destroyed during the war. Others have claimed that Florstedt had not been executed, including his sister-in-law who claimed that he stayed with her in Halle (Saale) before going into hiding.

On 24 April 1962 the Thüringer Tageblatt, a newspaper of the Christian Democratic Union in East Germany, reported that Florstedt worked for the Kriminalpolizei in Mainz. The newspaper's publisher later referred to West German investigative authorities on the information of an unnamed Buchenwald prisoner who now lives in West Germany. Mainz police investigated the claim but were unsuccessful. The Central Office of the State Justice Administrations for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes considered Florstedt's death to be unproven according to a memo dated 6 October 1975.

Notes

  1. ISBN 3-596-16048-0
    , S. 156f.
  2. ^ "Konrad Morgen "The Bloodhound Judge", Investigating corruption within the SS". Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team. 2012. Retrieved 2013-04-23.
  3. Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    . Retrieved 2013-04-13.
  4. ISBN 3-929389-19-3
    .
  5. ISBN 3-596-16048-0
    , S. 156f.
Military offices
Preceded by
SS-Sturmbannführer Max Koegel
 Commandant of Majdanek concentration camp
November 1942 – October 1943 		Succeeded by
SS-Obersturmbannführer Martin Gottfried Weiss
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