Lorenz Hackenholt

Laurenzius Marie "Lorenz" Hackenholt (26 June 1914 missing 1945, declared legally dead as of 31 December 1945, but believed to have still been alive) was a member of the Schutzstaffel (SS) with the rank of Hauptscharführer (First Sergeant). During World War II Hackenholt built and operated the gas chamber at the Bełżec extermination camp in occupied Poland during Operation Reinhard. In doing so, he personally carried out and managed the murder of hundreds of thousands of people, both directly and indirectly.

Life Hackenholt's full name was Laurenzius Marie Hackenholt. He was born on 26 June 1914 in Gelsenkirchen/Ruhr. His father was Theodor Hackenholt and his mother was Elizabeth Wobriezek. He attended the local elementary school until he reached the age of 14. He then became an apprentice bricklayer. After he passed the trade examination, he worked on various building sites.

Concentration camp guard In 1933, Hackenholt volunteered for the SS. After joining the SS he was sent to a training school on 1 January 1934. After that he volunteered for service in the army, where he was assigned to the 12th Engineers' Battalion. After two years of military service, he was discharged, and then joined the SS Death's Head troops. He was a skilled driver and mechanic and, beginning in March 1938, served at Sachsenhausen concentration camp in the motor pool. He also worked as a guard at Sachsenhausen. to conduct experiments to establish a method for the mass-murder of Jews by gassing. Hackenholt set up three gas chambers in an insulated barracks. Using engine exhaust, piped into the chambers from a disassembled Soviet tank, Hackenholt murdered over 50,000 Jews in one month (mid March to mid April 1942). This month alone placed his direct kill count as possibly the highest recorded in history. In August 1942, Hackenholt built and operated newer and larger gas chambers at Belzec. Once Belzec came into operation, a sign was placed over the gas chambers which said "Hackenholt Foundation"; with potted geraniums on either side of the entrance.

In December 1943, Hackenholt and other personnel from Operation Reinhard were transferred to northern Italy (Trieste),

In the summer of 1945, Rudolf Kamm, an essayist from the Bełżec crew, was to report to Hackenholt's wife Ilse (née Zillmer, b. 1912), who was in Berlin at the time. He claimed that Hackenholt sent him to his wife to give him civilian clothes through him.

1945 disappearance and investigation What is certain is that he disappeared At the end of July 1959, the Headquarters for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes in Ludwigsburg in West Germany opened an investigation into the crimes committed in Bełżec. They were able to locate Hackenholt's wife and mother. Both certified that Hackenholt had not been heard from since the war, and surveillance of the wife's residence showed there were no attempts by him to visit her there.

Post-1946 Hackenholt's brother, Theo, testified that in 1946 he saw him on the road from Dortmund to Gelsenkirchen driving a vehicle. In 1961, West German Police interrogated Hackenholt's former colleague Hermann Erich Bauer, then serving a life sentence in Berlin. Bauer stated that Hackenholt had definitely survived the war, because he had met him in 1946 near Ingolstadt, Bavaria,