Wilhelm Gerstenmeier

SS-Hauptsturmführer Wilhelm Gerstenmeier (January or October 17, 1908 – December 3, 1944) was a German member of the SS (card number 13300) during World War II. He was convicted of atrocities committed at the Majdanek concentration camp in occupied Poland and hanged for war crimes on the grounds of the camp in 1944.

Highlights


Wilhelm Gerstenmeier was born in Augsburg, Bavaria, a son of Karl Gerstenmeier and Eilzabeth nee Krippendorf. He was married with two children before the Nazi German invasion of Poland. While in Poland, he served as Master Sergeant in the Schutzstaffel squadron of the Waffen-SS and in 1941 was assigned as assistant to SS-Obersturmführer Anton Thernes, commandant of the camp administration in charge of slave labour, starvation rationing and maintenance of the camp structures. Gerstenmeier rose to the rank of Obersturmführer at Majdanek as manager of the storage depot for property and valuables stolen from the victims at the killing centers in Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka. He was captured by the Soviets and arraigned before the courts on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the First Majdanek Trial, which lasted from November 27, 1944 to December 2, 1944. He was sentenced to death by hanging and executed on December 3, 1944 along with Anton Thernes and five other war criminals close to the camp gas chambers and crematorium.

Majdanek, also known as KL Lublin remains the best preserved Nazi concentration camp of the Holocaust. During the mere 34 months of its operation, more than 79,000 people were murdered there, at the main camp alone (59,000 of them Polish Jews). Some 18,000 Jews were killed at Majdanek on November 3, 1943 during the largest single-day, single-camp massacre of the Holocaust, named Harvest Festival (totalling 43,000 with subcamps).