The Auschwitz pharmacist shot for defeatism. The case of Adolf Krömer.
Adolf Krömer was the camp pharmacist at the Auschwitz concentration camp and on 17 February 1944 he was shot for defeatism, or at least that is what most books will tell you. Of course by February 1944 the war was clearly lost for Nazi Germany although it would have taken a very brave person, above all a staff member at Auschwitz to admit to this. So lets look at the life of Adolf Krömer.
Kromer was born on 19 May 1890 in Roben, today Równe near Leobschütz today Głubczyce which is the Opole district of Poland and not far from where I am writing this. Krömer trained as a pharmacist and like most men of his generation took part in the First World War . In 1933 the National Socialists seized power in Germany and he was one of many that joined the party in May 1933 and got membership number 3,530,596. The following month he joined the SS where he got SS membership number 119,440/
Due to his professional background, he was appointed to head the camp pharmacy in the Auschwitz concentration camp. This role would not have been as benign as might appear. The pharmacist would have been the one who supplied phenol for murdering inmates, if not the person who actually injected it into the heart. Furthermore he probably participated in selections for the gas chambers of newly arrived prisoners being one of those so called doctors who could see who was fit for work or not at a rapid glance.
In November 1943 he was promoted to SS-Sturmbannfuhrer which is approximately equivalent rank to that of major. On 15 September 1943, Krömer was awarded the War Merit Cross with Swords, the highest war decoration for civilians who did not take part in hostilities but to use the vernacular of the time to those who took part in so-called "other wartime tasks". I think that the award of the War Merit Cross with Swords indicates participation in violent actions which in the case of Auschwitz can only mean that Adolf Krömer took part in selections of who to murder.
According to his successor as camp pharmacist Victor Capesius, Adolf Krömer was executed for spreading defeatism. Capesius was arrested at the beginning of December 1959 when he went to open his pharmacy in Göppingen one morning and found police officers waiting for him. On 20 August 1965, in the first Auschwitz trial, the district court in Frankfurt am Main sentenced him to nine years in prison for four cases of aiding and abetting mass murder, each involving at least 2,000 people . Capesius had furthermore used the looted property of the victims of National Socialism to set up his own businesses after the war, not only the pharmacy but also a beauty parlour.
In 1995 a stack of around 280 documents relating to the medical staff at the Auschwitz concentration camp was found in an attic of a building formerly used by the SS in the town of Oświęcim, the Polish name for the town of Auschwitz. The documents were not examined until the beginning of 2010. One of these documents was the death certificate of Adolf Krömer, and this showed that he had not been shot for defeatism on 17 February 1944 but rather had died of a heart attack in the camp hospital on that day, aged 53.
So why did Victor Capesius make this story up? I must leave that to the opinion of others who know more about psychology than I do.
My history channel is based on my own research and generally comes from places I have visited and or original research. I live in a motorhome and as such spend most of my time travelling between Poland, Germany and Italy which is why there is a tendency to produce material from these countries, and sometimes material that is not available in English. My speciality is in World War Two, and in particular, the Holocaust although as you can see, I have opinions on a lot of other historical subjects too.
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