THE CAMP COMMANDANT OF NEUENGAMME CONCENTRATION CAMP: MAX PAULY (JUNE 1, 1907 TO OCTOBER 8, 1946)

          70 years ago on this date, October 8, 1946, the Camp Commandant of Neuengamme Concentration Camp, Max Pauly was executed by hanging at Hamelin Prison.

Official portrait of Max Pauly

Max Pauly (June 1, 1907, Wesselburen – October 8, 1946, Hamelin) was an SS Standartenführer who was the commandant of Stutthof concentration camp from September 1939 to August 1942 and commandant of Neuengamme concentration camp and the associated subcamps from September 1942 until liberation in May 1945.

During his tenure as commandant of Neuengamme numerous atrocities occurred including medical experimentation. In 1944 Kurt Heissmeyer conducted experiments on 20 Jewish children in an effort to develop new drugs to treat tuberculosis. The children were brought from Auschwitz specifically for this purpose. The children and their four caregivers were murdered by being hanged from hooks on the wall in April 1945 in the basement of the Bullenhuser Damm School in Hamburg which had been used as a subcamp.

Pauly was tried by the British for war crimes with thirteen others in the Curio Haus in Hamburg which was located in the British occupied sector of Germany. The trial lasted from March 18 to May 13, 1946. He was found guilty and sentenced to death with 11 other defendants. He was hanged in Hamelin prison on October 8, 1946.