English source-aligned edition
Walther Dürrfeld
Walther Dürrfeld served as technical director and construction manager of the IG Farben works at Auschwitz-Monowitz. The profile reconstructs the person’s function in Auschwitz III-Monowitz 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
- Dürrfeld directed construction and technical work at IG Farben's Buna plant near Auschwitz.
- The project used prisoners supplied from Auschwitz III-Monowitz under coercive and frequently lethal conditions.
- The IG Farben tribunal convicted him on the count concerning enslavement and mass murder through forced labour.
Place in the chain of responsibility
Dürrfeld occupied the operational point where corporate construction demands met the SS camp labour system. This establishes managerial responsibility for exploitation at the site, without making him the sole author of all deaths in Monowitz or the Auschwitz complex.
Key events and mechanisms
- In 1941 IG Farben began construction of the Buna works near Auschwitz with Dürrfeld as a leading technical manager.
- During construction and production, exhausted prisoners were replaced through the Auschwitz selection system.
- On 30 July 1948 he was sentenced to eight years' imprisonment.
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
Dürrfeld received one of the longest sentences imposed in the IG Farben Trial but was released from Landsberg in 1951. He later worked again in West German industry and died in 1967.
Limits of the evidence
The documented death toll for Monowitz is narrower than figures for the entire Auschwitz forced-labour system. These institutional totals involve IG Farben executives, plant managers and SS authorities and are not a personal total for Dürrfeld.
Sources
The source set combines institutional, archival, trial or scholarly material from at least two independent publishers.