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 27) would not, however, tell her where her husband was. Ilse Hackenholt explained that she could not hand over the clothes immediately because they had been taken to his sister's at the onset of the heavy Allied bombing of the Reich capital. It occurred to her then that her husband would have known this. After a conversation with the stranger that lasted perhaps 10 minutes he left, promising to return two days later for the clothes. On his return, the man again asked for Lorenz Hackenholt's civilian clothes, and this time had an an additional request, also allegedly from Hackenholt: he now wanted a valuable diamond ring which Lorenz had given her. Not wishing to hand over such a valuable piece of jewellry to a complete stranger, Ilse Hackenholt asked him to return later when she had thought it over. The stranger returned a couple of days later and she suggested a compromise: that they should sell the ring on the black market and divide the proceeds. The ring fetched 2,500 Reichsmarks and the stranger took half the money, promising to give it to Hackenholt. On this occasion, Ilse Hackenholt made clear her intention of accompanying the man to find her husband who was apparently in an Allied sector of West Germany. They agreed on a meeting place and a time, but the stranger never turned up. [97] She told her interrogators: I know for certain that the stranger never told me where my husband was staying in the west, but I can remember quite clearly that he said he wanted to get to Memmingen. This was an intriguing piece of information. Memmingen is almost equidistant between Stuttgart and the Ingolstadt area where Bauer and Rehwald claimed they had met Hackenholt in 1946. And Memmingen is only 50 kilometers from Tiefenbach where Ilse Hackenholt made her permanent home in December 1951. There is no indication in the report of the interrogation that the SK III/a officers asked her why she had chosen this particular village as her home. The interrogators next turned to the question of the official declaration of death of Lorenz Hackenholt requested by Frau Hackenholt in Berlin in 1953, two years after she moved to Tiefenbach. She explained that she had first approached the Regional Welfare Office in Heilbronn, where she was living at the time because of the job offered to her at the Badschuh-Strack Clinic, with the intention of claiming a war widow's pension. This was her right as her husband had not returned after the war and was listed as 'missing'. It was explained to her at the Welfare Office that in order to claim such a pension it was first necessary to have her husband officially declared dead by a magistrates court; it was not sufficient for him to listed simply as 'missing, believed killed in action'. _______________ [97] The description of the stranger given by Ilse Hackenholt could correspond to Rudolf Kamm who had served with Hackenholt in Belzec and Trieste. Kamm was arrested by the US Army in Bavaria in the summer of 1945 and interned in the Aiblingen camp. He was not released until 18.2.1946, which would explain his failure to turn up to meet Ilse Hackenholt in June 1945.    Back Page 27 Forward
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