Ruppert, Friedrich Wilhelm.

Ruppert, Friedrich Wilhelm, born 02-02-1905 in Frankenthal, Stadtkreis Frankenthal, Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany

Starting on 11-04-1933, Ruppert, married and the father of a child, was one of the first guards at Dachau concentration camp. Dachau was a concentration camp located near the town of Dachau in Bavaria, Germany. The camp was established in 1933 and was located in a former gunpowder factory. Dachau was the first concentration camp built by the Nazis and was used to detain political prisoners, Jews, Sinti and Roma, homosexuals, and criminals.The camp was liberated by American troops on 29-04-1945. Over the course of its existence, approximately 200,000 people were imprisoned at Dachau and at least 32,000 people died, including 1,935 Dutch men and 200 Dutch women.Dachau was also a training ground for SS guards and SS leaders who would later be deployed at other concentration camps and extermination camps. The camp was also used as a storage facility for items stolen from Jews and other victims.

Ruppert initially worked as a camp electrician. On 18-09-1942 he was transferred to the Majdanek concentration camp in Lublin. There he was the technical director of the camp administration. Ruppert was a witness to Operation Harvest Festival at Majdanek.

SS and police units implement Aktion Erntefest (Operation Harvest Festival), the murder of the Jewish laborers in concentration camp Lublin/Majdanek and the forced-labor camps Trawniki and Poniatowa.

Uprisings at the Treblinka and Sobibor killing centers and the Warsaw, Bialystok, and Vilna ghettos had led to increased concerns about Jewish resistance. To prevent further resistance, SS chief Heinrich Himmler   ordered the killing of surviving Jews in the Lublin District of German-occupied Poland. Most of the remaining Jews were employed in forced-labor projects and were concentrated in the Trawniki (at least 4,000), Poniatowa (at least 11,000), and Majdanek (about 18,000) camps. They were killed on November 3 and 4. At Majdanek, near Lublin, the SS shot them in large prepared ditches outside the camp fence near the crematorium.  Jews from other labor camps in the Lublin area were also taken to Majdanek and shot. Music was played through loudspeakers at both Majdanek and Trawniki to drown out the noise of the mass shootings. Approximately 42,000 Jews were killed during “Operation Harvest Festival,” the largest German-perpetrated massacre of the Holocaust.

In November 1943, the mass murder of 43,000 Jews. Majdanek (or Lublin) was a Nazi concentration and extermination camp built and operated by the SS on the outskirts of the city of Lublin during the German occupation of Poland in World War II. It had seven gas chambers, two wooden gallows, and some 227 structures in all, placing it among the largest of Nazi concentration camps. Although initially intended for forced labor rather than extermination, it was used to murder people on an industrial scale during Operation Reinhard, the German plan to murder all Polish Jews within their own occupied homeland. In operation from 01-10-1941 to 22-07-1944, it was captured nearly intact. The rapid advance of the Soviet Red Army during Operation Bagration prevented the SS from destroying most of its infrastructure, and Deputy Camp Commandant SS Obersturmführer Anton Thernes   failed to remove the most incriminating evidence of war crimes. Thernes was executed on 03 -12-1944, age 52, along with five other war criminals, close to the gas chambers and the Majdanek crematorium. .Former SS-Obersturmführer Anton Thernes in front of a penal court on trial for crimes he committed at Majdanek (standing left), 1944.

In May 1944, Ruppert was a warehouse manager in the Warsaw concentration camp until its evacuation. He returned to the Dachau concentration camp on 06-08-1944, serving under camp commandant SS-Obersturmbannführer Eduard Weiter. Ruppert was responsible for the operation of the camp. On 23-04-1945, he was replaced by  SS-Sturmbannführer Max Schobert [de]. In the context of the Dachauer Prozesse wurde Schobert in Buchenwald-Hauptprozess with 30 more accusations filed. Schobert was accused of being abused and subjected to abuse. Sows are charged with Schobert schwer, so that they will be happy with their husbands and their husbands with their little blessings. On 14-08-1947 Schobert was published during the day. Schobert wurde, trotz mehrerer Gnadengesuche, am 19-11-1948, age 43, in dem Kriegsverbrechergefängnis Landsberg hingerichtet.

Ruppert accompanied the death march of the prisoners in April 1945. The march went over Pasing, Wolfratshausen, Bad Tölz to Tegernsee and ended on April 30. He was arrested by American troops in Tegernsee.

Death and burial ground of Ruppert, Friedrich Wilhelm.

   Wilhelm Ruppert was tried for war crimes after the war. Multiple witnesses identified him at the trial and said he selected prisoners for execution. An eye-witness said that he executed Special Operations Executive agent Noor Inayat Khan, an Indian princess. Ruppert undressed her and beat her until she was a “bloody heap of human being.” He then personally shot her in the back of the head. She, nicknamed ‘Madeleine’ (Nurse); ‘Jeanne-Marie Renier’, died 13-09-1944, in Dachau, Nazi-Duitsland. Evidence show that he had presided over the executions of at least 90 Russian prisoners. Ruppert was called a man who had no empathy for his victims, whom he frequently whipped.

The Dachau concentration camp trial opened on 02-11-1945 in Dachau, Germany. Forty individuals who had participated in the operation of the Dachau concentration camp were charged with the murder and mistreatment of foreign nationals imprisoned there. Among those charged were Martin Gottfried Weiss, the camp commandant from 1942-1943; Dr. Klaus Karl Schilling, an SS physician who was brought to Dachau to find a method of immunizing people against malaria; and three former prisoners. The trial lasted from November 15 to December 13, 1945, with seventy witnesses called for the prosecution and fifty witnesses called for the defense. All forty defendants were found guilty, with thirty-six being sentenced to death by hanging (including Weiss and Schilling), one sentenced to hard labor for life, and three sentenced to hard labor for ten years. A few of the sentences were reduced after a review board determined the defendants were involved to a lesser degree than originally believed, but most were upheld. Weiss was executed on 29-05-1946 and Schilling on 28-05-1946, both in Landsberg Prison.

Ruppert was convicted of war crimes, sentenced to death, and hanged at Landsberg am Lech Prison on 28-05-1946. He was buried at the Spöttinger Cemetery, Hindenburgring 24 86899 in Landsberg am Lech, Germany,

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