Brutal Death of Rudolf Beckmann
- Nazi Guard at Grafeneck, Hadamar & Sobibor Camp - Sobibor Uprising

17 August 2022

Category: Male Nazi Guards

Brutal Death of Rudolf Beckmann - Nazi Guard at Grafeneck, Hadamar & Sobibor Camp - Sobibor Uprising. Rudolf Beckmann was born on the 20th of February 1910 in Osnabrück, then part of the German Empire. Before Beckmann started his criminal career in concentration camps, he had joined the Nazi Party and the SS.

In 1940, Rudolf Beckman, who was a true believer in Nazi racist ideology, was first sent to the Grafeneck T4 facility which was the first centralized killing center to be established by German authorities within the context of the Nazi “euthanasia,” or T4, program which was the systematic extermination of institutionalized patients with disabilities in Germany. Shortly before it closed, most of the facility’s staff, including Rudolf Beckmann, transferred to the newly established Hadamar T4 facility.

Helped establish the killing center

Rudolf Beckamnn helped establish the Sobibor killing center in spring 1942 when he became the camp’s head of the sorting commands being in charge of sorting the clothing and other possessions from murdered Jews. In addition to this, Beckmann was also in charge of administration matters and was responsible for tending to the horses.

German SS and police officials conducted deportations to Sobibor between May 1942, when the regular gassing operations began, and the fall of 1943. Most of the Jews brought to Sobibor were immediately gassed by carbon monoxide which had been piped into the gas chambers from an engine. About 250,000 victims were murdered in this killing center.

During the year and a half that Sobibor was operational, several attempts were made by the prisoners to escape. On one such occasion when 72 Dutch Jews were organizing an escape and were betrayed by the kapo, they were executed on the order of Johann Niemann, the camp’s deputy commander. Rudolf Beckmann, then 32 years old when he was killed during the prisoner's revolt.

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