The ‘Disappearance’ of SS-Hauptscharführer Lorenz Hackenholt A Report on the 1959-63 West German Police Search for Lorenz Hackenholt, the Gas Chamber Expert of the Aktion Reinhard Extermination Camps © Michael Tregenza (Page 11) At the conclusion of the search the officers informed Ilse Hackenholt that they had a second warrant to search the business premises at Landhausstrasse 27 in Leutkirch, where she also sometimes stayed. She made no objection but requested that the officers present there should also be in plain clothes as 'she believed that the sight of uniformed police officers would adversely affect her business'. [27] Ilse Hackenholt was driven the 50 kilometers to Leutkirch in an unmarked police car, and her request was heeded — no uniformed police took part in the search. The concluding paragraph of the police report states: Ilse Hackenholt, during a lengthy conversation, and after being cautioned to tell the truth, made the credible statement that she knew nothing about her husband Lorenz Hackenholt. She had, so she says, received the last letter from her husband in 1944 or 1945. She does not know exactly where this letter came from, but probably from the east. She had finally had her husband declared dead. Her marriage had not been very happy and her husband had written relatively seldom. She was astonished to hear that her husband could still be alive. Here she protested once again that if this were true she had nothing to do with it. Finally, she asked that she should be informed about where and when her husband had been traced as she had a legal right to know this. It was established that Ilse Hackenholt was in receipt of a monthly back-pension of about 100 Deutschemarks and had been receiving this pension back-payment for several years. [28] This search too produced no result. * * * * * During the course of the investigation into the whereabouts of Lorenz Hackenholt and the crimes committed in the Belzec extermination camp, nine former members of the camp SS garrison were traced and taken into custody. [29] While being interrogated about their individual roles in the extermination process they were also asked what they knew about Hackenholt's activities and responsibilities in Belzec. About these, they all agreed that at first he had been employed in the camp as a driver, and that the camp commandant, SS-Oberscharführer/Kriminalkommissar Christian Wirth, had made him responsible for procuring vehicles from the SS and Police depot in Lublin. Only later were suitable vehicles, mainly lorries, supplied to the camp via the Führer's Chancellery in Berlin. [30] In the camp, Hackenholt soon acquired a reputation for being the type of person who, because of what his comrades called his 'outstanding ability to organize anything', could be relied upon for all kinds of jobs, especially of a technical or mechanical nature. _______________ [27] Ibid. [28] Ibid., p. 1373a. [29] The nine former Belzec guards were: Werner Dubois, Erich Fuchs, Hans Girtzig, Heinrich Gley, Robert Juhrs, Josef Oberhauser, Karl Schluch, Heinrich Unverhau and Ernst Zierke. [30] ZStL 208 AR-Z 74/60: The Case Against Georg Michalsen (Staff of the SS-und Polizeifuhrer Lublin), p. 9280.    Back Page 11 Forward
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