English source-aligned edition
Arthur Liebehenschel
Arthur Liebehenschel served as commandant of Auschwitz I and commander of the Auschwitz garrison, later commandant of Lublin-Majdanek concentration camp. The profile reconstructs the person’s function in Auschwitz, Birkenau, Lublin and Majdanek through documented office, decisions, supervision or operational conduct. It does not assign every crime committed by an institution or region to one individual.
Confirmed findings
- Before taking command of a camp, he worked at the headquarters of the concentration-camp system, headed Office D I in the SS-WVHA and served as deputy to concentration-camp inspector Richard Glücks.
- From November 1943 to May 1944, he was commandant of Auschwitz I and commander of the Auschwitz garrison. After the division of the complex, Auschwitz II-Birkenau had separate commandants, so not every order they issued can be attributed to Liebehenschel as a personal decision.
- In Commandant's Order No. 2/44 of 7 January 1944, he ordered that Jewish women prisoners be assigned to heavier physical labour and that German women and those deemed Aryan by the SS be assigned to office work or work in heated rooms.
- From May to July 1944, he was the last commandant of Lublin-Majdanek concentration camp, a post that exercised primary control over the organisation and operation of the camp in the final phase of its existence.
- The Supreme National Tribunal sentenced him to death on 22 December 1947 in the first Auschwitz trial; the sentence was carried out in Kraków on 24 January 1948.
Place in the chain of responsibility
Liebehenschel connects the central administration of the concentration-camp system with two commandant's offices in occupied Poland. His own order dividing work according to a racist hierarchy is especially clear evidence. The profile preserves the division of authority within the Auschwitz complex and does not automatically transfer to him all crimes committed at Birkenau or Majdanek.
Key events and mechanisms
- work in the Concentration Camps Inspectorate and Office D I of the SS-WVHA before November 1943
- taking command of Auschwitz I and the Auschwitz garrison in November 1943
- issuing Order No. 2/44 on the racist division of women prisoners' labour on 7 January 1944
- taking command of Lublin-Majdanek concentration camp in May 1944
- the trial before the Supreme National Tribunal in Kraków from 24 November 1947, the judgment of 22 December and execution on 24 January 1948
The circle records authority, function and agency. Several profiles may describe different parts of the same persecution chain, so profile-level totals must not be added together.
Postwar accountability
After extradition to Poland, he was indicted with 39 other members of the Auschwitz staff before the Supreme National Tribunal in Kraków. The trial began on 24 November 1947. He was sentenced to death on 22 December and hanged at a prison in Kraków on 24 January 1948.
Limits of the evidence
The office of commandant is not in itself proof of personally carrying out every killing. From November 1943, the Auschwitz complex was divided and Auschwitz II-Birkenau had its own commandant; the profile identifies the scope of Liebehenschel's authority without erasing that division. Nor does it state an individual victim count, which the sources used and the structure of the group trial do not allow to be established reliably.
Sources
The source set combines institutional, archival, trial or scholarly material from at least two independent publishers.