Lot 184: Rudolf Beer Signed Document - Auschwitz

Typed document from Auschwitz concentration camp 2nd Guard Company , it is dated 22 May 1941 , it is signed by Auschwitz Guard and company leader SS-Untersturmfuhrer Rudolf Beer. The document reads : K.L. Auschwitz Au. , on 22.May 1941 2nd Guard Company to: Headquarters re: Reporting a lost property On May 21, 1941, an SS-Fuhrer whose name I did not know left a book in the guard building. It is the "textbook of ear, nose, and throat diseases" and has no name or inventory entries. It can be given to the owner in the guard building. Signed by Rudolf Beer SS-Untersturmfuhrer Rudolf Beer (born February 17, 1911 in Friedland in Bohemia , Austria-Hungary ; died 1981 ) was a Czechoslovak teacher and German SS Obersturmführer in the Ravensbrück concentration camp . Rudolf Beer was the son of a railway official. After the First World War , the family belonged to the Sudeten German minority in Czechoslovakia . He attended elementary school and community school. He was trained for four years at the German-speaking teacher training institute in Reichenberg . From 1930 to 1938 Beer worked at various German-speaking elementary and community schools in the Sudetenland. In 1934 he did a year of military service in the Czechoslovak Army and was promoted to lieutenant in the reserve. Beer married in 1938. During the Sudeten crisis , he joined the Sudeten German Party in April 1938. After the Sudetenland was annexed to the German Reich, its party membership was transferred to the NSDAP . In October 1938 he became a member of the SS . At the beginning of 1940 he was called up as a Untersturmführer to the Waffen-SS and was used as a platoon leader in a skull regiment in occupied Poland and during the conquest of the Netherlands . In October 1940 he was appointed adjutant in the guard battalion in the Auschwitz concentration camp and one year later with the rank of SS-Obersturmführer as the protective custody camp leader of the men's camp in the Ravensbrück concentration camp . During his time in Ravensbrück, initially 300 and in 1944 1,500 men from different nations were imprisoned who were penned in five barracks and had to do forced labor . He was subordinate to five SS block leaders and one SS labor service leader, as well as a network of prison functionaries . He himself was directly subordinate to the concentration camp commandant Ravensbrück and the latter to the concentration camp inspection in Oranienburg . Because of an argument with the commanding officer Fritz Suhren he reported in July 1944 for deployment to the front in the SS Panzer Division "Wiking" and was taken prisoner at the end of the war. After his release he was sent to political custody in the Ludwigsburg camp in June 1946 . The Central Arbitration Chamber of North Württemberg in Ludwigsburg classified him as the "main culprit" and sentenced him on November 5, 1948 to a ten-year labor camp atonement, which he was supposed to serve in the Ludwigsburg labor camp, on the basis of established activities. The verdict was confirmed on June 14, 1949 by the “Central Appeals Chamber North Württemberg”. In January 1950, Beer was taken into custody again and charged before the Stuttgart Regional Court . On July 12, 1950, the court added multiple bodily harm in office , extortion of testimony by hanging on stakes or on the counts Whipping and other criminal offenses a sentence of 84 years, so that Beer was sentenced to a total sentence of 15 years in prison and the maximum sentence of ten years of loss of honor . The Stuttgart Higher Regional Court rejected Beer's appeal on January 19, 1951, again referring to Beer's particular inhumanity as a camp leader, as evidenced by witness statements. In a second trial for the murder of a prisoner in the subcamp at Gut Dahmshöhe in July 1943, Beer had to be acquitted by the Stuttgart Regional Court for lack of sufficient evidence. Beer was released again in 1955 and died in 1981. This Typed document from Auschwitz measures 145mm x 210mm