Arthur Liebehenschel Signed Letter - Auschwitz

Arthur Liebehenschel Signed Letter - Auschwitz
Letter on Commander of Concentration camp Auschwitz headed paper andis signed by the then commandant Arthur Liebehenschel.It is dated 21 January 1944 and features a stunning Waffen SS concentrationcamp Auschwitz stamp and is signed in grease pencil by Liebehenschel.The Letter reads :Concentration camp Auschwitz CommanderAuschwitz O/S the 21.Jan.1944Local call Auschwitz No. 65concerns: submission of vacation vouchers.Commanding officers who live in the Birkenau barracks have the leavecertificate for the U.v.D. to the 1st headquarters company.The U.v.D. of the headquarters staff receives the vacation tickets the nextmorning.The camp commandant and site elder.SS-ObersturmbannfuhrerLiebehenschel.Arthur Liebehenschel ( 25 November 1901 – 24 January 1948) was a commandantat the Auschwitz and Majdanek concentration camps during the Holocaust.After the war, he was convicted of war crimes by the Polish government andexecuted in 1948.Liebehenschel was born in Posen (now Poznań). He studied economics andpublic administration. Too young to serve in World War I, in 1919 heenrolled in the Freikorp "Grenzschutz Ost"; he served as a sergeant major inthe German armed forces (Reichswehr) afterwards. In 1932, he joined the NaziParty and in 1934 the SS, where he served in the Death's Head Units.Liebehenschel became the adjutant in the Lichtenburg concentration camp, andtwo years later was transferred to the Concentration Camps Inspectorate inBerlin. In 1942, when the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office wasfounded, Liebehenschel was assigned to the Department D (ConcentrationCamps) as head of DI (Central Office).On 1 December 1943, Liebehenschel was appointed commandant of Auschwitz Iconcentration camp, succeeding Rudolf Höss. While continuing massexecutions, he made some minor "improvements" including removing thestanding cells and halting the selections to gas chambers among regularprisoners. According to Hermann Langbein, a prisoner at Auschwitz infirmary:"in general one could establish that even those SS members who were verybloodthirsty before became a bit more reserved because they realized thattheir fanaticism would not necessarily be tolerated anymore.On 8 May 1944 Höss returned to Auschwitz replacing Liebehenschel, who wasappointed commandant of the already emptied Majdanek camp on 19 May 1944,succeeding Martin Gottfried Weiss. The camp was evacuated because of theSoviet advance into German-occupied Poland. Liebehenschel relocated toTrieste, Italy to the office of Odilo Globocnik, the SS and Police Leaderfor Operational Zone Adriatic Coast (OZAK). Liebehenschel became head of theSS Manpower Office there.At the war's end, Liebehenschel was arrested by the U.S. Army and wasextradited to Poland. After being convicted of crimes against humanity atthe Auschwitz Trial in Kraków, he was sentenced to death and subsequentlyexecuted by hanging on 24 January 1948.This letter measures 210mm x 150mm approx and has two folder punch holemarks on the left side,