Adam Grünewald

Adam Grünewald (20 October 1902 – 22 January 1945) was a German Schutzstaffel officer and Nazi concentration camp commandant.

The son of a carpenter who died when he was 8, Grünewald apprenticed as a baker but found work difficult to come by when the First World War ended and the demobilised soldiers entered the labour market. Attracted to the nationalist propaganda prevalent at the time, Grünewald joined the Freikorps before signing on with the Reichswehr for a 12-year stint.

Before the court reached its verdict, it decided to define the limits of "disciplinary authority" of camp commanders. "In the case the situation required it", camp commandants were authorized to carry out punishments that "may significantly harm physical well-being." Under those circumstances, such punishments were legal and "can never be punished as abuse." However, in Grünewald's case, they said he went too far. He was spared a harsher sentence on the grounds of his military service and the court accepting his claim that he "didn't wish for the death of ten women." The court found that Grünewald's crimes "did not come in the slightest out of dishonorable motives."

In March 1944, after serving nearly a month in prison, Grünewald was pardoned, but stripped of his rank and ordered to fight on the Eastern Front as a common soldier. He finished the war with the 3rd SS Division Totenkopf and died during a German counteroffensive in the siege of Budapest. His final rank was SS-Sturmbannführer.