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 21) By all accounts, Lorenz Hackenholt had been a loner with no close friends; certainly throughout the investigation not one of the men he served with — some of them since the early days at the Gafeneck killing centre in 1939 — would admit to being in any way friendly with him. They all agreed independently that even his free time he spent mostly alone. The Central Office and SK III/a investigators therefore concluded that such a callous, brutal and selfish person, used to existing alone and relying on no one but himself, could well have survived the war. What, then, might have happened to Lorenz Hackenholt during the last days of the war and its aftermath? It was known that 11 members of the Aktion Reinhard and Einsatz R SS-Sonderkommandos who served in Poland and Italy had been killed in action in northern Italy in 1944, including their commander SS-Sturmbannführer Wirth who had been assassinated by Yugoslav partisans. [74] They had all been buried in the German Military Cemetery at Opcina, overlooking Trieste, and between 1957-1961 exhumed and reburied — together with over 21,000 other German war dead in Italy — in a new German Military Cemetery at Costermano on the eastern shore of Lake Garda in Verona province. But there was no record of a Lorenz Hackenholt ever being buried either in Opcina or Costermano. From his former SS comrades who had been in Trieste at the end of the war, the officers of SK III/a began to piece together an account of the last days in the city under German occupation, and the retreat of the German troops over the border into Austria. Robert Juhrs stated that in Italy too Hackenholt continued to use his so-called 'organizational abilities' and dealt extensively on the black market: I know that among other things he bartered with the German navy. When he had nothing with which to barter, then we went to a gun emplacement with two 'Flak' guns, one of which I operated. [75] Juhrs does not mention whether this anti-aircraft duty performed in lieu of bartered goods was voluntary or imposed upon them by Hackenholt. Inevitably, Hackenholt overstepped the mark and began black market dealings with the enemy, a capital offence in wartime. He was arrested for selling ammunition to the partisans. This came as no surprise to his comrades in the unit, after all, they knew well enough that Hackenholt had neither morals nor scruples. Hackenholt was imprisoned for a time in the San Sabba rice mill, pending court martial and certain execution by firing _______________ [74] Wirth was assassinated on 26 May 1944 by Yugoslav partisans of I Battalion of the 'Istrska' Division led by Max Zadnik while on a duty journey from Trieste to Fiume (now Rijeka in Croatia). His car was ambushed near Kozina, 20 km. east of Trieste. See: Max Zadnik, Istrska Odred, Nova Gorica 1975, pp. 321-322. [75] ZStL 208 AR-Z 252/59 (Belzec Case), p. 1470. Statement by Robert Juhrs on 11.10.1961 in Frankfurt-am-Main. [76] Ibid., 208 AR-Z 251/59 (Sobibor Case), p. 2430. Extracts from the files of the State Prosecutors Office in Munich I pertaining to the civil action against Ilse Hackenholt by the Social Security Court in Augsburg in 1962.    Back Page 21 Forward
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