SS officer Friedrich Kamilo Ehrlich was the commander of the "Kinder-KZ", a Nazi concentration camp for Polish children in occupied Lodz during World War II. It was he who oversaw the criminal and inhumane treatment of up to 2,000 children there, of whom some 300 were murdered or died as a result of the horrific conditions. Ehrlich was arrested by the Red Army after the war and sentenced to life imprisonment.
But he was released by the East German - at that time - authorities and then disappeared. An in-depth search of German and Polish archives by the Museum of Polish Children of Victims of Totalitarianism, established in Poland, revealed that he was never found by the authorities to serve his sentence because his name was misspelled! ΄
He even wrote a book for the German police entitled in German "Einbrecher: Aufzeichnungen eines Kriminalkommissars", which translates as "Burglars: Notes of a Detective Inspector."
A Nazi criminal and child torturer who was never punished
Mikal Hankiewicz of the Children's Museum of Poland-Victims of Totalitarianism, who conducted the investigation, said that due to a mistake by the administration, the Nazi criminal was known as Karl Ehrlich after the war. "Therefore, he was never held accountable for the war crimes he committed," Mr. Hankiewicz said, he continued: "With new information that Karl Ehrlich and Friedrich Camillo Ehrlich were the same person we have been able to start putting the pieces of his life together. By examining German archives, we were able to discover that in February 1950 he was transferred to a prison in Waldheim."
On 16 May 1950, the National Court in Chemnitz sentenced him to life imprisonment, deprivation of political rights and confiscation of property. However, on 28 April 1956, Ehrlich was released by the East German authorities, with no reason given for his release. He fled to West Germany, where his conviction was deemed unsubstantiated.
After fleeing to West Germany, he began publishing articles on forensic science and also wrote manuals for police officers on how to encourage teenagers to avoid crime. He lived his life comfortably in Munich writing manuals for the German police and died in Munich on 6 June 1974 at the age of 81.
However, in 1970 Ehrlich was questioned as a suspect in connection with an investigation of Heinrich Fuge, who was a commandant at another concentration camp near the one in Lodz. Ehrlich denied having committed any crimes and claimed that he had banned the beating of children. He also claimed that he had never seen guards with whips or sticks. He said that he allowed children to see their families and claimed that only three children died in the camp under his command. No charges were brought against him.
Born on 23 February 1893 in Lovnitz, Saxony, during the First World War, Ehrlich was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant and won the Iron Cross. He joined the police and worked as a detective in the present-day city of Chemnitz. With the opening of the children's camp in December 1942 on the orders of SS chief Heinrich Himmler, Ehrlich was appointed its commander.
"Little Auschwitz"
Hidden within the Jewish ghetto of Lodz, it was the only camp created by the Nazis specifically for children in occupied Europe. Some 2,000 Polish children, aged between two and 16, faced untold horrors there as they were imprisoned in horrific conditions, beaten, tortured and starved. The camp soon became known as "Little Auschwitz" because of the high mortality rate and the violence perpetrated by SS criminals.
The children were isolated from the main Lodz ghetto, which "housed" adults, by a high wooden fence built by Jewish prisoners. Most were sons and daughters of what the Nazis called "dangerous bandits" men and women who belonged to the "underground resistance" movement. They were also homeless children and people with mental and physical disabilities. Some children who had been arrested for petty offences were also detained there. They were stripped of their identity cards and clothes and forced to wear grey prison uniforms and chokers. They no longer had a name - only a number, by which they were identified - and were forced to endure unbearable living conditions.
Although not "formally" part of the vast system of Nazi concentration camps, survivors say the brutal conditions were worse than other camps. Prisoners were crammed into wooden blocks that offered little protection from the cold in winter, while German guards lived in brick buildings with heating. Prisoner testimonies speak of constant, unrelenting hunger. For breakfast the children were given only a slice of bread and half a litre of black coffee. For lunch they were given only half a litre of turnip or potato soup and beetroot leaves or cabbage for dinner. Very rarely were they given a spoonful of jam.
Many of the children died from starvation and disease or from savage beatings and whippings at the hands of the SS guards. The camp was in filth, which caused an epidemic of typhus in late 1942 and early 1943 that claimed the lives of many children. Those who remained alive were subjected to forced labour from morning to night and were subjected to inhumane punishments by sadistic German guards.
It is believed that up to 300 children were murdered or died within the walls of the camp, although the exact number is unknown. The children were forced to sleep in camp uniforms on bare boards, which rotted when the young children were wet with fear. They were forced to wash outside, usually without soap, in freezing conditions under an ice water pump or in a basin. Until the spring of 1944 there was no bathroom for the prisoners or a place to disinfect clothes, which meant that lice were permanent residents of the camp. If the prison guards found that a child had lice, they punished them with flogging and deprivation of food.
Two monster Nazi prison guards "to death"
One of the camp's most notorious guards was the sadist Edvard August. Camp survivor Josef Witkowski recalls, "He was constantly drunk. He was omnipresent. He enjoyed subjecting prisoners to the most imaginative torture. He beat and kicked them in the most sensitive places, buried them in sand boxes, immersed them in a barrel of water, hung them by their feet on a chain and lowered their heads into a tank of used car oil, cut off their genitals with a knife, beat their heels with a stick and put out his cigarettes on the prisoners' chests.
Sidonie Bayer was the Nazi criminal in charge of the camp girls nicknamed "Frau Doctor", who was given the nickname "Frau Doctor" by the children. The former saleswoman had basic First Aid knowledge and was put in charge of the blocks where seriously ill children were taken. Josef recalls, "She enjoyed dragging sick children in the snow and pouring cold water on them. He ordered them to be whipped, beaten, kicked, and left to starve. As a form of punishment for children who wet their beds, he built a special torture area. Survivor Maria Jawowska recalled how a 10-year-old girl who had wet her bed died a few days after being savagely beaten by Bayer. Camp records show that Bayer listed tuberculosis as the cause of the girl's death.
Children were also subjected to horrific experiments as guards infected them with various diseases to test treatment methods. Bayer and Agust were arrested after the war and executed for crimes committed against the children in the camp.
"Mommy, bake me 20 pancakes."
Vital documents were destroyed by the Germans before they left the camp as the Red Army advanced on January 18, 1945. When the Nazis left Lodz, there were about 800 children left in the camp. Last year, researchers at the Museum of Children of Poland - Victims of Totalitarianism discovered letters written by children while imprisoned in the Lodz camp. In the letters they revealed the inhumane conditions in which these children were forced to live.
In one letter, a 12-year-old girl named Halinka Kubrzynska wrote on 15 February 1944: 'Dear parents, if you can send me leather boots because I have nothing to wear ()And some soap and a spoon, because I have nothing to eat.'
In another letter dated October 16, 1944, a 12-year-old boy, Yas Spihala, writes "Dear Mummy, please bake me 20 pancakes. And onions and mustard. I work here and make saddles. You can send me photos but don't expect a reply for at least a month."
In another letter dated April 2, 1944, a 13-year-old girl - Gertuda Novak, writes : "Yerzhi came from the hospital healthy, now he is sick again with pneumonia and fluid in his ribs. I am very worried that he will get worse."
Describing the findings as "priceless" Dr Andrei Yanichi from the museum said: "These letters are a special, intimate form of communication between children and their parents. If one reads them 'literally' the content might suggest that conditions were good. The letters are full of assurances that the children are having a good time, that everyone is healthy. But between the lines a tragic picture emerges. There is information here that tells of the actual situation in the camp. The content of the letters written by the children to their parents or other close relatives obviously does not show the truth about the conditions in the camp - hunger, beatings and disease. Each letter was censored and dictated by the guards. However, even what the children managed to describe is shocking."
Source: protothema.gr
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