Richard Baer

RICHARD BAER

Richard Baer (SS-Sturmbannführer), born in Bavaria in 1911, became confectioner and was unemployed since 1930, before he joined the guards in Dachau concentration camp. Later he said, that not politics, but "the joy of playing soldier" had brought him to the SS (Frankfurt in 1960, report to the attourney at law). In 1939, he became a member of the "SS-Totenkopfdivision" and was appointed adjutant of Neuengamme concentration camp in 1942.

Since 1943, he was adjutant of SS-Obergruppenführer Oswald Pohl, chief of the Wirtschaftsverwaltungshauptamt (office of economic policy). In November 1943, he overtook the department D I, the "inspectorate for the concentration camps". After Arthur Liebehenschel, Baer was then the third and last commander of Auschwitz from May 11, 1944 to the evacuation and dissolution of the camp in January 1945. At the end of the war, he went into the underground and appeared as Karl Neumann next to Hamburg until 1960. In December 1960 he was arrested and died in detention in 1963.