ESTERWEGEN CONCENTRATION CAMP- HANS LORITZ LOT

ESTERWEGEN CONCENTRATION CAMP- HANS LORITZ LOT
HANS LORITZ LETTER AND SS DOCUMENT GROUP FROM ESTERWEGEN CONCENTRATION CAMP, ,Group of three documents concerning SS Scharfuhrer Herbert Osterwald, a member of the Wachtruppe “”Ostfriesland”" at the Eserwegen concentration camp and later the “SS-Totenkopfverbande”. Included is: typed D.S. on “Konzentrationslager Esterwegen” administration letterhead, 1p. 4to., Esterwegen, Apr. 20, 1935 appointing Osterwald an SS-Sturmmann, signed by camp commandant SS-Standartenfuhrer HANS LORITZ; vacation voucher issued to Osterwald as a member of 24./V./2.SS.Totenkopfverbande “Brandenburg” for Sep. 4-5, 1937 for a journey from Dachau to Munich and back, issued in Dachau on Sep. 4 by an SS-Obersturmfuhrer; reply to a letter from Osterwald to group leader Theodor Eicke, 1p. 4to., Feb. 5, 1940 responding to Osterwald’s request for transfer to the Waffen-SS, signed by an unidentified SS-Sturmbannfuhrer; HANS LORITZ (1895-1946) formed and commanded the SS Standarte at the Dachau concentration camp, and in July 1934, commanded KZ Esterwegen. In December 1939, Loritz was transferred to KZ Sachsenhausen. He selected prisoners unable to work, who were killed in June 1941 in Sonnenstein Euthanasia Center. In the same year, he organized the shooting of at least 10,000 Soviet prisoners of war. He would command four other camps before committing suicide at war’s end. The Esterwegen concentration camp was an early Nazi concentration camp within a series of camps first established in the Emsland district of Germany. It was established in the summer of 1933 as a concentration camp for 2,000 so-called political Schutzhauftlinge (protective custody prisoners) and was for a time the second largest concentration camp after Dachau. After 1936, it was used as a prison camp holding political prisoners and so-called Nacht und Nebel prisoners.