English source-aligned edition
Heinrich Josten
Heinrich Josten served as SS officer responsible for the camp detention block and a guard company at Auschwitz. The profile reconstructs the person’s function in Auschwitz 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
- Heinrich Josten was born in Malmedy on 11 December 1893 and became an SS officer. (Source: cited institutional or judicial record)
- He served at Auschwitz from 24 June 1940; in 1945 he also commanded the Boelcke-Kaserne subcamp. (Source: cited institutional or judicial record)
- The court found his participation in selections, executions at Block 11 and violence against prisoners; he was executed on 24 January 1948. (Source: cited institutional or judicial record)
Place in the chain of responsibility
The profile attributes only the functions and individual acts identified in the trial material, not every crime by the guard company or the Auschwitz complex. (Source: cited institutional or judicial record)
Key events and mechanisms
- On 24 June 1940 he began service at Auschwitz, where he headed the camp detention block and a guard company among other duties. (Source: cited institutional or judicial record)
- In December 1947 Poland’s Supreme National Tribunal sentenced him to death. (Source: cited institutional or judicial record)
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
Poland’s Supreme National Tribunal sentenced him to death; after clemency was refused, he was executed at Kraków on 24 January 1948. (Source: cited institutional or judicial record)
Limits of the evidence
No separate victim total is assigned, and the court’s findings are not extended to events absent from the cited sources. No portrait with clearly documented publication rights was found. (Source: cited institutional or judicial record)
Sources
The source set combines institutional, archival, trial or scholarly material from at least two independent publishers.