Schwarz, Gottfried “Friedl”, born 03-05-1913 in Fürth, member of the SS, was a member of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler after the National Socialist Party “seizure of power” and was also employed in the Dachau concentration camp by the guards. Member of the NSDAP (membership number 1,321,742) and SS (SS number 37,758), Probably from 1939 or 1940, Schwarz was transferred to “Aktion T4” and worked there as a “corpse burner” in the “euthanasia” institutions in Grafenec.
Aktion T4 was a postwar name for mass murder by involuntary euthanasia in Nazi Germany Brandenburg and Bernburg. Adolf Hitler signed a “euthanasia note”, backdated to 01-09-1939, which authorised his physician Karl Brandt and Reichsleiter Philipp Bouhler
to implement the programme. Karl Brandt
would be hanged in Landsdorf age 44 on 02-06-1948.
From the end of 1941, Schwarz became the first commanding officer in the Belzec extermination camp under Christian Wirth and from the beginning of August 1942 under SS Hauptsturmführer Gottlieb Hering. On 09-10-1945, age 58, Gottlieb Hering died of mysterious complications in the waiting room of St. Catherine’s Hospital in Stetten im Remstal. Schwarz was responsible for the gassing process in the extermination area of the Belzec camp, in which more than 430,000 Jews were murdered. After the Belzec camp was closed, Schwarz became camp commander in the Dorohucza labor camp in March 1943. Schwarz was described by SS Reichsleiter Heinrich Himmler
as one of the most deserving men of the “Action Reinhardt” because of his “deeds” and at the same time promoted to SS Untersturmführer on 21-6-1943.Schwarz also served at the Sobibor death camp and was there when Erich Fuchs tested the gas chamber engine. After the war he worked as a lorry driver, motor mechanic and car salesman. Fuchs was put on trial at the Bełżec Trial in Munich 1963-64, for which he was acquitted. Fuchs was rearrested and tried at the Sobibor Trial in Hagen. He was charged with participation in the mass murder of approximately 3,600 Jews. On 20-12-1966, Fuchs was found guilty of being an accessory to the mass murder of at least 79,000 Jews and sentenced to four years imprisonment. Fuchs was married for the sixth time during the trial. Fuchs died on 25-07-1980 at the age of 78
Death and burial ground of Schwarz, Gottfried “Friedl”
After the “Aktion Reinhardt” ended, in late 1943, like most of the personnel of the “Aktion Reinhardt”, Schwarz was transferred to the Adriatic Coastal Region operational zone in Trieste. Here he was a member of the “Special Role”, which served the “extermination of the Jews”, the confiscation of Jewish property and the partisan fight. Schwarz was killed by partisans on 19-06-1944 in San Pietro al Natisone, Italy. After the war ended, Schwarz was buried together with SS Sturmbannführer Christian Wirth
and SS Hauptsturmführer Franz Reichleitner, the second commander of the Sobibor extermination camp, in the German military cemetery in Costermano, block 15, grave 666, in the province of Verona. After protests, the names of the three SS men killed were erased from the cemetery ‘s “book of honor” in the early 1990s and their ranks on the gravestones were removed.
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