Erich Bauer

Hermann Erich Bauer (March 26, 1900 — February 4, 1980), sometimes referred to as "Gasmeister", was a SS-Oberscharführer (Staff Sergeant). He participated in Nazi Germany's Action T4 program and later in Operation Reinhard, serving as a gas chamber operator at Sobibor extermination camp. Erich Bauer was one of the persons who directly perpetrated the Holocaust.

Early life
Erich Bauer was born in Berlin on 26 March 1900.

In 1933, Erich Bauer joined the NSDAP and SA while working as a tram conductor.

Action T4
In 1940 he joined the T-4 Euthanasia Program where the physically and mentally disabled were exterminated by gassing and lethal injection. In the beginning, he worked as a driver but he was quickly promoted. Erich Bauer described in testimony one of his first mass murders:

A pipe connected the exhaust of a car to a bricked-up laboratory in the asylum. A few patients were shut into the room and I turned on the car engine. This killed the patients in eight minutes.

Sobibor
In early 1942, Bauer was transferred to Odilo Globocnik, the SS and Police Leader of Lublin in Poland. Bauer was given an SS uniform and promoted to the rank of Oberscharfuhrer (Staff Sergeant). In April 1942, he was dispatched to the Sobibor death camp where he remained until the camp's liquidation in December 1943.

At Sobibor, Erich Bauer was in charge of the camp's gas chambers. At the time the Jews called him the Badmeister ("Bath Master"), while after the war he became known as the Gasmeister ("Gas Master"). He was described as a short, stocky man, a known drinker who regularly overindulged. He kept a private bar in his room. While other SS guards were neatly dressed, Bauer was different: he was always filthy and unkempt, with a stench of alcohol and chlorine emanating from him. In his room, he had a picture on the wall of himself and a picture of all of his family with the Führer.

Apart from beatings, whipping and randomly shooting prisoners, Bauer enjoyed setting Sobibor's attack dogs on Jewish prisoners. Among these dogs was a huge mixed breed similar to a St. Bernard by the name of Barry. Barry was trained to attack prisoners on a variety of different commands. Bauer's favorite command was Mensch, fass den Hund!, translated to "Man, grab that dog!". The pun here was the reversal of the words "man" and "dog", the former referring to Barry and the latter to the dog's victim. Upon the command, Barry would attack the chosen Jewish prisoner.

On October 14, 1943, the day of the Sobibor uprising, Bauer unexpectedly drove out to Chełm for supplies. The uprising was almost postponed since Bauer was at the top of the "death list" of SS guards to be assassinated prior to the escape that was created by the leader of the revolt, Alexander Pechersky. The revolt had to start early because Bauer had returned earlier from Chełm than expected. He discovered that SS-Oberscharführer Rudolf Beckmann was dead and started shooting at the two Jewish prisoners unloading his truck. The sound of the gunfire prompted Pechersky to begin the revolt early.

After the war
At the end of the war, Bauer was arrested in Austria by the Americans and confined to a POW camp until 1946. Shortly afterwards he returned to Berlin where he found employment as a laborer cleaning up debris from the war.

Erich Bauer was arrested in 1949 when two former Jewish prisoners from Sobibor, Samuel Lerer and Esther Raab, recognized him during a chance encounter at a Kreuzberg fair ground. When Ester Raab confronted Erich Bauer at the fair, he reportedly said, "How is it that you are still alive?" He was arrested soon afterwards and his trial started the following year.

During the course of his trial, Bauer maintained that at Sobibor he only worked as a truck driver, collecting the necessary supplies for the camp's inmates and the German and Ukrainian guards. He admitted being aware of the mass murders at Sobibor, but claimed to have never taken any part in them, nor engaged in any acts of cruelty. His primary witnesses, former Sobibor guards SS-Oberscharführer Hubert Gomerski and Untersturmführer Johann Klier testified on his behalf.

The court, however, convicted Erich Bauer based on the testimony of four Jewish witnesses who managed to escape from Sobibor. They identified Bauer as the former Sobibor Gasmeister, who not only operated the gas chambers in the camp but also engaged in mass executions by shooting as well as in a variety of particularly vicious and random acts of cruelty against camp inmates and victims on their way to the gas chambers.

On May 8, 1950 the court, Schwurgericht Berlin-Moabit, sentenced Erich Bauer to death for crimes against humanity. Since capital punishment had been abolished in West Germany, Bauer's sentence was automatically commuted to life imprisonment. He served 21 years in Alt-Moabit Prison in Berlin before being transferred to Berlin Tegel prison. During his imprisonment, he admitted to his participation in mass murder at Sobibor and even occasionally testified against his former SS colleagues.

Bauer died at Berlin Tegel prison on February 4, 1980.

Quotes
Usually the undressing went smoothly. Subsequently, the Jews were taken through the "tube" to Camp III — the real extermination camp. The transfer through the "tube" proceeded as follows: one SS man was in the lead and five or six Ukrainian auxiliaries were at the back hastening the [Jews] along. The women were taken through a barrack where their hair was cut off. In Camp III the Jews were received by SS men.... As I already mentioned, the motor was then switched on by Go[t]ringer and one of the [Ukrainian] auxiliaries whose name I don't remember. Then the gassed Jews were taken out....

I was blamed for being responsible for the death of the Jewish girls Ruth and Gisela, who lived in the so-called forester house. As it is known, these two girls lived in the forester house, and they were visited frequently by the SS men. Orgies were conducted there. They were attended by Bolender, Gomerski, Karl Ludwig, Franz Stangl, Gustav Wagner, and Steubel. I lived in the room above them and due to these celebrations could not fall asleep after coming back from a journey....

I cannot exclude any member of the Sobibor camp staff of taking part in the extermination operation. We were a "blood brotherhood gang" in a foreign land.

We were a band of "fellow conspirators" ("verschworener Haufen") in a foreign land, surrounded by Ukrainian volunteers whom we could not trust....The bond between us was so strong that Frenzel, Stangl and Wagner had had a ring with SS runes made from five-mark pieces for every member of the permanent staff. These rings were distributed to the camp staff as a sign so that the "conspirators" could be identified. In addition the tasks in the camp were shared. Each of us had at some point carried out every camp duty in Sobibor (station squad, undressing, and gassing).

I estimate that the number of Jews gassed at Sobibor was about 350,000. In the canteen at Sobibor I once overheard a conversation between Karl Frenzel, Franz Stangl and Gustav Wagner. They were discussing the number of victims in the extermination camps of Belzec, Treblinka and Sobibor and expressed their regret that Sobibor "came last" in the competition.