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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 5)
shed airtight and sound-proof. [12] A few weeks later, SS-Scharführer Lorenz Hackenholt was to begin his career as the Aktion Reinhard gassing expert. Within the short space of time of only one month — mid-March-mid-April 1942 — over 50,000 Jews were killed in the primitive gassing shed by the exhaust fumes from a Soviet tank engine operated by Lorenz Hackenholt. Later in the year, he designed and supervised the construction of new and bigger gas chambers in Belzec as well at the Treblinka and Sobibor extermination camps.
Before their marriage, the Hackenholts had been registered with the Berlin police as living in separate apartments at Kurfürstendamm 112 in the Reich capital. As this was Lorenz Hackenholt's last known address, it seemed the logical place for the investigators at the Ludwigsburg Central Office to begin their search for the wanted war criminal.
On 5 November 1959, an official enquiry was sent by the examining magistrate in Ludwigsburg in charge of the Belzec Case to the office of the Police President of West Berlin at Tempelhofer Damm 1-7. The judge requested information as to whether either Hackenholt or his wife had returned to Berlin at any time since 1945, and whether they were presently registered with the Berlin police as residents of the city. Also requested were Hackenholt's personal particulars: marital status, profession, place of work, etc., and also, if possible, for several copies of the photograph in his driving license to be provided. The judge stressed to the Berlin police that the investigation should be carried out with the utmost confidentiality so that 'the wanted person should in no way be aware of the enquiries'. [13]
The reply from the West Berlin Police Presidium 11 days later reported that there was no postwar police registration for Lorenz Hackenholt. There was, however, a registration card for a person who was probably his wife, a masseuse called Ilse Barbara Hackenholt, nee Zillmer, born on 19 November 1912 in Berlin-Charlottenberg. Until 22 December 1951 Frau Hackenholt had been registered as living at Munsterdamm 32 in Berlin-Steglitz, c/o Schimmelpfennig, but on that date she had moved to the village of Tiefenbach near Oberstdorf in the Allgäu, close to the Austrian border. She had registered there with the local Grenzpolizei (Border Police) on 3 January 1952. The Berlin police report also stated that on 22 August 1953 Frau Hackenholt had requested that a magistrates court in Berlin-Schöneberg declare her husband officially dead in order that she might claim a war widow's pension. [14]
Upon request from the Ludwigsburg Central Office, the Berlin magistrates court provided the following information about the 1953 court application:
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[12] Okregowa Komisja Badania Zbrodni Przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu/Instytut Pamieci Narodowej, Lublin, Poland (OKBL), Ds. 1604/45 - Zamosc (The Death Camp at Belzec). Statement by Stanislaw Kozak on 14.10.1945 in Belzec.Kozak was a member of the team of 20 local labourers who built the camp, including the gassing shed.
[13] ZStL 208 AR-Z 252/59 (Belzec Case), p. 190. Letter from the Ludwigsburg Central Office to the Police President of West Berlin, dated 5.11.1959.
[14] Ibid., p. 192. Report from Abteilung I of the Berlin Police Presidium to the Ludwigsburg Central Office, dated 16.11.1959.
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