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 18) Among the Aktion Reinhard camp personnel transferred to the airfield by Wirth was SS-NCO Kurt Bolender, formerly a member of the Sobibor camp staff and recently released from custody in an SS penal camp. His arrival did not please Wirth, as Bolender recalls: Wirth was not enthusiastic about my arrival and showed his displeasure by pushing me away. But on orders from Berlin he had to keep me ... I was assigned to a Kommando supervised by Hackenholt ... Hackenholt looked after himself and cared little for his work brigade. [63] On 31 October 1961, Ilse Hackenholt, while again being interrogated by officers from SK III/a, informed them that in the autumn of 1943 she had visited her husband at the Lublin airfield camp. He had sent her a telegram in which he wrote that he had been injured and that she should come and see him. They agreed to meet first in Warsaw: At that time my husband was in a factory, or some such similar place in Lublin, in which Jews were interned and had to work. My husband lived at that time in Lublin in the camp complex ... As far as I know, my husband performed guard duty on the area of the camp. I cannot give more precise details about his duties. [64] During her stay in Lublin during the last three weeks of October and the first days of November 1943, Ilse Hackenholt met several of her husband's SS comrades as well as Gottlieb Hering, the former commandant at Belzec. At this time he was commandant of the Jewish labour camp at Poniatowa near Lublin which came under Wirth's jurisdiction, and regularly visited him at the airfield. Just over three weeks after Ilse Hackenholt's arrival in the city, she had to leave suddenly and return to Berlin, as she explained to the police officers: have an extraordinarily unpleasant memory of the last days of my holiday in Lublin. As explained before, we lived a part of the time inside the camp complex, and on this particular day the whole camp was surrounded and the interned Jews were driven out. Although I myself saw that the camp was surrounded, I cannot say for sure to which units the soldiers belonged. I believe I heard from my husband that the camp was surrounded by the SS. The Jews were taken some distance from the camp and later I heard shooting. I surmised something bad was happening. It was uncanny for me there. My holiday was not yet over but I decided to leave. Besides, I remember that Hering advised me to leave. [64] _______________ [63] Ibid., 208 AR-Z 252/59 (Belzec Case), pp. 1314-1315. Statement by Kurt Bolender on 5 June 1961 in Munich. Bolender had been sentenced by an SS and Police Court in Cracow to nine months imprisonment — three of them in a penal camp in Danzig-Matzkau, for intimidating a witness and committing perjury during his divorce proceedings. [64] Ibid., pp. 1496-1497. Statement by Ilse Hackenholt on 31.10.1961 in Sonthofen. 65 Ibid.    Back Page 18 Forward
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