State pays care of war grave with concentration camp commanders

The state grave care for a former concentration camp commander in Hamburg encounters strong criticism. At a small request of the left-wing MP Christiane Schneider, the Senate replied that the SS officer Hermann Baranowski was cremated after his death in 1940 and buried in a family grave. Later, his urn was reburied into a war grave.

Born in 1884 in Schwerin Baranowski was first commander of the Dachau concentration camp in Bavaria, then Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg near Berlin - in both camps tens of thousands of inmates were killed until the end of the war. Baranowski died a natural death.

"Why is this man, who is responsible for the suffering and death of innumerable people (...), officially still considered" victims of war and tyranny "in the sense of the Tomb Law?" Said the spokesman for the Left Party in the Hamburg Parliament, Florian Emperor. "We believe there can not be a single additional penny of tax money for the grave-care of this Nazi criminal."

SS men lie next to concentration camp victims

According to the War Graves Act of 1952, the survivors of soldiers were able to apply for permanent grave care from federal funds. Prerequisite for this was the reburial in a war grave to allow a practicable care, as a spokesman for the Hamburg cemetery Ohlsdorf now explained.

Until the 1960s, no distinction was made between perpetrators and victims. That is why there are war graves in the cemetery Ohlsdorf, in which soldiers and civilian bomb victims, but also SS men and prisoners from the Neuengamme concentration camp lie. A subsequent separation of the dead was practically no longer possible, because decades later there were no remains.

The Senate said in its answer to the request of the left, according to war grave lists were in Hamburg more than 50,000 deceased in such collection graves: "The random review has shown that among them are also SS members." The Hamburg cemeteries therefore intend to "include information on reburial in the Tafelprogramm the initiative" dealing with World War II graves ".