Oswald Kaduk (August 26 1906 – May 31 1997) was a German SS-Unterscharführer and Rapportführer at Auschwitz concentration camp.

Biography

The son of a blacksmith, Kaduk was born in in Chorzów, Upper Silesia. After attending the Volksschule he trained as a butcher before becoming one in 1924. As well as working at the local slaughterhouse, Kaduk also held positions with fire fighting services at the municipal fire brigade in Chorzów and at a chemical plant.

World War II

In 1939 he joined the Allgemeine SS and in 1940 he was drafted into the Waffen-SS. He was sent to the Eastern Front, but due to various illnesses and stays at military hospitals he was posted to Auschwitz in 1941. At first he was assigned to watch tower duties in 1942, then became Blockführer and finally Rapportführer.

Kaduk was considered to be "one of the cruelest, brutalest, most vulgar" of SS men at Auschwitz:

Kaduk also witnessed the mass murder of people in gas chambers. On describing his SS colleagues inserting the Zyklon B gas, Kaduk has said:

After the war

After Germany's surrender, Kaduk worked in a sugar factory in Löbau. In December 1946 he was recognized by a former prisoner and consequently arrested by a Soviet military patrol. In 1947 the Supreme National Tribunal sentenced him to 25 years hard labour, but he was reprieved in April 1956.

Kaduk then went to West Berlin, working at hospital as a nurse. Despite his violent reputation at Auschwitz, he earned himself the nickname "Papa Kaduk" among patients.

In July 1959 Kaduk was again arrested, and appeared in the Auschwitz Trials in Frankfurt where he was one of the main accused. On August 19 1965 the court sentenced him to life imprisonment for murder in ten cases, and joint murder in at least one thousand cases. Because of the gravity of Kaduk's deeds, the responsible Spruchkammern rejected various pleas for clemency.

While in prison, Kaduk was interviewed as part of a TV documentary about SS men stationed at Auschwitz. When asked about Holocaust denial, Kaduk says:

After the 1984 shift to the Offener Vollzug, Kaduk was released from the Schwalmstadt prison in 1989 due to health reasons (Haftunfähigkeit). He died in Langelsheim, Harz, as a pensioner in 1997, at the age of 91.

Literature

• Demant, Ebbo (Hg.): Auschwitz — "Direkt von der Rampe weg…" Kaduk, Erber, Klehr: Drei Täter geben zu Protokoll: Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1979 ISBN 3499144387
• Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich: Wer war was vor und nach 1945. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005. ISBN 3-596-16048-0
• Hermann Langbein: Menschen in Auschwitz. Frankfurt am Main, Berlin Wien, Ullstein-Verlag, 1980, ISBN 3-54833014-2.
• Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum: Auschwitz in den Augen der SS. Oswiecim 1998, ISBN 83-85047-35-2.

References