Crimes of Martin Sommer - Nazi Guard Too Cruel Even for Nazi Standards - Buchenwald
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EXTREMELY Brutal Crimes of Martin Sommer - Nazi Guard Too Cruel Even for Nazi Standards - Buchenwald. Walter Gerhard Martin Sommer joined the Nazi Party in 1931 and 2 years later in 1933 he joined the SS. The SS – Schutzstaffel or Protection Squads - was originally established in April 1925 to protect Adolf Hitler and other Nazi leaders and speakers and provide security for political meetings. SS members were subject to strict military discipline and swore an oath of complete loyalty to Adolf Hitler and those appointed by him. In January 1929 Heinrich Himmler became the head of the SS and the organization greatly expanded in size and strength.
Martin Sommer’s career in concentration camps began at Dachau concentration camp. Established in March 1933, it was the first regular concentration camp built by the Nazi government.
In October, 1933, Dachau’s commandant, Theodor Eicke, introduced a system of regulations which inflicted brutal punishments on prisoners for the slightest offenses.
Dachau concentration camp was a place where many Nazi guards such as Martin Sommer learned how to torture the prisoners that they supervised and how to get a maximum amount of work out of them whilst they were still alive.
In the summer of 1937 Sommer was deployed in the Buchenwald concentration camp which was one of the largest concentration camps established within German borders. The camp became operational from July the same year.
Most of the early inmates at Buchenwald were political prisoners, people who had been arrested for some form of political opposition to the Nazi regime. In addition to the political prisoners and Jews, Buchenwald prisoners also included repeat offenders, Jehovah's Witnesses, Sinti and Roma people and German military deserters. Sommer had a special hatred for priests. On one occasion after beating a German pastor, he hung him naked outside in the winter before throwing buckets of water on him. The pastor froze to death.
On another occasion when a Catholic priest performed the Sacrament of Penance for a fellow inmate, Sommer beat the priest to death.
Otto Neururer, an Austrian Roman Catholic priest, fared even worse. He was sent to the punishment block. Martin Sommer hung him upside down and then nailed him to a tree. Practically crucified, Neururer did not scream, instead he prayed silently. Otto Neururer was left there for 36 hours before being killed by Sommer.
Sometimes Martin Sommer even snatched the stick out of the hands of other SS men and continued to hit the inmate if he thought that they were not being hit hard enough.
Many of those who were lucky enough to survive his beatings, were taken to the infirmary with damaged kidneys.
In 1941, Buchenwald caught the attention of Josias, Hereditary Prince of Waldeck and Pyrmont. This higher SS and Police Leader for Weimar had in this position supervisory authority over Buchenwald concentration camp.
He decided to investigate the charges of cruelty, unauthorized murder and embezzlement at Buchenwald.
Georg Konrad Morgen found the allegations to be true and Sommer’s treatment of prisoners so excessively brutal and sadistic that he put Sommer on a trial at the same time as Buchenwald Commandant Karl Otto Koch and his wife Ilse for embezzlement and abuse of the prisoners at Buchenwald. While Karl Otto Koch was convicted and later executed, his wife Ilse was acquitted for lack of evidence.
Sommer was sentenced to a reduction in rank and sent to a penal battalion fighting on the Eastern Front “ to redeem himself” . In the Soviet Union he was wounded in a tank explosion, losing right leg and permanently crippling his right arm. He was arrested by the Soviet army and was detained as prisoner of war until 1950 when his prisoner status was changed from Prisoner of War to war criminal. In 1955 Sommer was released.
In court in 1958, Sommer denied that he had killed anyone and excused his brutality in the beatings by saying that his youth and athletic physical strength had been abused by the camp administration.
Martin Sommer was found guilty of murder of at least 25 prisoners by injection and sentenced to maximum punishment permitted under West German law: life imprisonment.
In 1971, however, Sommer was released from jail because there was no facility to continue the treatment of his war injuries.
He was 73 years old when he died on the 7th of June 1988.
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