(1909-11-06)6 November 1909 Liegnitz, German Empire
Died
23 January 1972(1972-01-23) (aged 62) Wegscheid, West Germany
Allegiance
Nazi Germany
Service/branch
Schutzstaffel
Rank
Scharführer
Commands held
Oversaw watchmen at Sobibor; trained watchmen at Trawniki
Other work
Bricklayer
Erich Gustav Willie Lachmann[1] (6 November 1909 – 23 January 1972) was an SS functionary who participated in Operation Reinhard in Sobibor extermination camp. Lachmann was born on 6 November 1909 in Legnica. His first job was that of a journeyman bricklayer. In spring 1933, he joined the Stahlhelm paramilitary organization and subsequently the SA, despite not being a member of the Nazi Party. In September of that same year, he was conscripted into the auxiliary police force and attended an Unterführer training course in Katowice. Despite failing the course, he was promoted to Oberwachtmeister.[2]
In September 1941, Lachmann was stationed at Trawniki concentration camp, where he was tasked with retraining Soviet POW's to serve as watchmen at extermination camps. During this time, he began a relationship with a local Polish woman.[3] In mid-1942, Lachmann himself was sent to Sobibor to serve as the commander of the watchmen. The watchmen under his command performed a variety of tasks including supervision of prisoners' work details and unloading new transports of prisoners. While performing these tasks, they frequently bullied the prisoners. However, it is unknown whether Lachmann himself ordered them to do so and to what extent he personally participated.[4] During his service at Sobibor, at least 12,000 people were murdered in the gas chambers.[5] Two survivors of Sobibor said they witnessed him rape young girls.[6]
At Sobibor, Lachmann was known for his incompetence. Fellow SS man Erich Bauer called him "a boozer and somebody who stole like the ravens".[7] He was actively involved in the camp's underground trading economy, procuring food and alcohol for prisoners in exchange for valuables from the sorting barracks.[8] When Franz Reichleitner took over command of Sobibor from Franz Stangl, he sent Lachmann back to Trawniki because he deemed that Lachmann was unfit for duty.[9] In 1943, Lachmann discovered that he was to be transferred to Treblinka and deserted with his Polish girlfriend.[1]
Two months later, Lachmann was arrested in Warsaw. An SS police court sentenced him to six years in prison for desertion. Lachmann would spend most of the remainder of the war in prison. In March 1945, he was released from an SS penal camp in Dachau concentration camp and assigned to a penal company. After six weeks of training, Lachmann was deployed as a soldier against the Red Army in Brandenburg, but quickly captured. A Soviet military tribunal later sentenced him to 25 years in prison with hard labour as a saboteur. He was released from prison on 5 May 1950.[10]
In the Sobibor Trial in Hagen, which lasted from 6 September 1965 to 20 December 1966, he was accused of participating in the mass murder of approximately 150,000 Jews.[11][1] During the trial, few Sobibor survivors could recognize him or provide reliable information about his actions at the camp.[12] Lachmann's own testimony was vague, contradictory, and not always coherent.[13] Lachmann was quoted as saying: "I had nothing against the Jews. I regarded them as all other people. My suits I previously bought from a Jew, Max Süssmann, who had a textile firm in Liegnitz."[14] The court found Lachmann to be mentally incompetent and he was acquitted because of "putative duress".[11][1]
^ abcdSobibor Interviews: Biographies of SS-men
^Marek Bem (2015). Sobibor Extermination Camp: 1942-1943 Stichting Sobibor, pp. 388-389. ISBN 978-83-937927-2-6
^Marek Bem (2015). Sobibor Extermination Camp: 1942-1943 Stichting Sobibor, pp. 389-391. ISBN 978-83-937927-2-6
^Marek Bem (2015). Sobibor Extermination Camp: 1942-1943 Stichting Sobibor, p. 390. ISBN 978-83-937927-2-6
^Marek Bem (2015). Sobibor Extermination Camp: 1942-1943 Stichting Sobibor, p. 391. ISBN 978-83-937927-2-6
^Schelvis: Vernichtungslager Sobibór. S. 306
^Henry Friedlander (1995). The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, p. 244. ISBN 0-8078-2208-6
^Marek Bem (2015). Sobibor Extermination Camp: 1942-1943 Stichting Sobibor, pp. 390-391. ISBN 978-83-937927-2-6
^Jules Schelvis (2014). Sobibor: A History of a Nazi Death Camp Bloomsbury Academic, p. 358. ISBN 1-84520-419-0
^Dick de Mildt: In the Name of the people: Perpetrators of Genocide in the Post-War Prosecution in West-Germany – The 'Euthanasia' and 'Aktion Reinhard' Trial Cases, Niederlande 1996, S. 214f.
^ abSobibor - The Forgotten Revolt Archived May 17, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
^Marek Bem (2015). Sobibor Extermination Camp: 1942-1943 Stichting Sobibor, pp. 391-393. ISBN 978-83-937927-2-6
^Marek Bem (2015). Sobibor Extermination Camp: 1942-1943 Stichting Sobibor, pp. 389,393. ISBN 978-83-937927-2-6
Erich Gustav Willie Lachmann (6 November 1909 – 23 January 1972) was an SS functionary who participated in Operation Reinhard in Sobibor extermination...
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of this trial, some of the public had learned about SS-Oberscharführer Erich Bauer, an officer who was known as the gas chamber "meister" and was described...
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extermination camp before being posted to Sobibor in August 1942. He succeeded ErichLachmann as commander of the approximately 200 Ukrainian Trawniki guards at Sobibor...
Graetschus Lorenz Hackenholt Josef "Sepp" Hirtreiter Alfred Ittner ErichLachmann Willi Mentz Paul Rost Ernst Stengelin Ernst Zierke Heinrich Barbl Franz...
lieutenant Fritz Konrad SS-Scharführer Sergeant, killed in the revolt ErichLachmann SS-Scharführer Sergeant, Head of Ukrainian Guard (1/2) Karl Emil...
killing 10; Died 18 November 2010 age 89 before trial could start. ErichLachmann Born 6 November 1909. Assigned KZSobibor. Tried for war Crimes 1965–1966...
Graetschus Lorenz Hackenholt Josef "Sepp" Hirtreiter Alfred Ittner ErichLachmann Willi Mentz Paul Rost Ernst Stengelin Ernst Zierke Heinrich Barbl Franz...
Graetschus Lorenz Hackenholt Josef "Sepp" Hirtreiter Alfred Ittner ErichLachmann Willi Mentz Paul Rost Ernst Stengelin Ernst Zierke Heinrich Barbl Franz...
Gerhard "George" Lachmann Mosse (September 20, 1918 – January 22, 1999) was a German-American social and cultural historian, who emigrated from Nazi Germany...
Graetschus Lorenz Hackenholt Josef "Sepp" Hirtreiter Alfred Ittner ErichLachmann Willi Mentz Paul Rost Ernst Stengelin Ernst Zierke Heinrich Barbl Franz...
century. He sold it from his shop in Paris to a collector, ErichLachmann of Berlin. In 1925, Lachmann sold the instrument to Dr. Steiner-Schweitzer, a collector...
Robert Lachmann (28 November 1892 – 8 May 1939) was a German ethnomusicologist, polyglot (German, English, French, Arabic), orientalist and librarian....
Rudi Elke Sommer as Bärbel Lachmann Peter Fitz as Harry Lachmann, Detective inspector Hermann Lause as Bruno, Patrolman Erich Schwarz as Hans-Christian...
Donnersmarck (born 2003), social media personality and fashion model Esther Lachmann (1819–1884), French courtesan known as "La Païva", wife of Guido, Prince...
chronological order) Lachmann, Karl, ed. (1826). Der Nibelunge not mit der klage : in der ältesten gestalt (1 ed.). Berlin: G. Reimer. Lachmann, Karl, ed. (1841)...
was married in his first marriage to the famed French courtesan Esther Lachmann, known as La Païva, of Russian Jewish origin. Born in Breslau, Silesia...
Richard Lachmann: Die "Studentes" des Christophorus Stymmelius und ihre Bühne. Dissertation, Leipzig 1926, p. 56. Dr. Fritz Richard Lachmann: Die "Studentes"...
give the Lachmann numbers alongside the text or provide a concordance of Lachmann numbers for the poems in the edition or translation. Lachmann, Karl, ed...
Zoltán Kodály Boris Kotlyarov Franjo Kuhač Jaap Kunst Filip Kutev Robert Lachmann Paul-Gilbert Langevin Argeliers León Alan Lomax John Lomax William P. Malm...
2015, pp. 64–65. Lachmann, Karl, ed. (1826). Der Nibelunge not mit der klage : in der ältesten gestalt (1 ed.). Berlin: G. Reimer. Lachmann, Karl, ed. (1841)...
read papers on varied subjects, including Karl Konrad Friedrich Wilhelm Lachmann, Friedrich Schiller, old age, and the origin of language. He described...
persuasion: World War II, New York: Chelsea House Publishers, p. 16 George Lachmann Mosse, Nazi culture: intellectual, cultural and social life in the Third...
remained under the control of rebellious peasants. And even though Johann Lachmann, later a church reformer, had attempted to mediate, the peasants did not...
March 1933, after the Reichstag fire, Rudolf Mosse's son-in-law, Hans Lachmann-Mosse, the publisher, dismissed editor in chief Theodor Wolff because of...
Reinhart collection, formerly in the collector of Erna Felicia and Hans Lachmann-Mosse, expropriated from the family in 1934 and restituted by the Oskar...
co-signed by 10 others, including Christopher Leaver, Bruce Ames and Peter Lachmann, who quote estimates of 60 to 80 million deaths "as a result of misguided...
Global Information
Nazi Germany
Schutzstaffel