Heinrich Matthes

Heinrich Arthur Matthes (11 January 1902 – 16 December 1978) was a German SS commander during the Nazi era. He served as a deputy commandant of Treblinka extermination camp during the Operation Reinhard phase of the Holocaust in Poland. Matthes was appointed chief of the extermination area at Camp 2 where the gas chambers were built and managed by the SS personnel overseeing some 300 slave labourers disposing of corpses under penalty of death. He was tried in the 1964 Treblinka trials, convicted, and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Life Matthes was born in 1902 in Wermsdorf, near Leipzig. His father was a senior male nurse. Matthes attended public elementary school for eight years. He then became a tailor, but changed careers to nurse. He trained at Sonnenstein and took his exam there. Then he worked at the Arnsdorf and Bräunsdorf hospitals.

Treblinka death camp

In August 1942, Matthes was ordered to Lublin reservation, where he was in short time drafted into the SS with the rank of Scharführer (Sergeant), dispatched to Operation Reinhard, and sent to Treblinka extermination camp. There he was appointed chief officer commanding Camp II (the extermination area) and the gas chambers.

Matthes was obsessed with cleanliness. In the autumn of 1942, Matthes shot two prisoners because at the end of the work day they had not properly cleaned to his satisfaction the stretcher which they used to transport corpses.

In the autumn of 1943 Matthes was transferred to Sobibor extermination camp. He later served in Trieste with the other Operation Reinhard perpetrators.

Matthes testimonies at trial