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Walter Gerhard Martin Sommer (8 February 1915 – 7 June 1988) was an SS Hauptscharführer (master sergeant) who served as a guard at the concentration camps of Dachau and Buchenwald.
- Early Life
- At Buchenwald
- Particular Hatred For The Clergy
- Under Investigation
- Retrial and Later Life
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Martin Sommer was born on February 8, 1915, to a farming family in Schkölen. An early adherent of Naziism, he joined the party at 16 in 1931 before joining the SS in 1933. By 1943 he was an SS Hauptscharfuhrer at Buchenwald after a brief stint at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
Sommer’s natural sadism had free reign when he was promoted to the Chief Penal Officer of Buchenwald. His preferred method of torture was to tie prisoners’ arms behind their backs and then hang them a few inches off the ground until their arms dislocated. This practice earned him the nickname “the Hangman of Buchenwald.” The camp’s surrounding area...
Sommer especially hated members of the clergy. His most famous crime was the execution of Austrian priests Otto Neururer and Mathias Spannlang. Both were crucified upside down. In another case, Sommer hung a German pastor naked outside in the winter, splashing water on him until he froze. On another occasion, he fatally beat a Catholic priest for p...
One fascinating component of the Nazi Regime was its glaring contradictions. Murder, torture, and cruel medical experiments were fair game if they followed official Nazi policy. If you stepped outside those bounds, you would run into problems. In 1943, SS judge Georg Konrad Morgenwas appointed by Heinrich Himmler to investigate allegations of cruel...
Sommer was taken into custody by American occupation authorities after recuperating from his injuries due to his SS affiliation. He kept his true identity hidden, evading a probable capital punishment in the Buchenwald trial. He was eventually identified by a former prisoner, resulting in his detention in February 1950. Nevertheless, the charges we...
Learn about Martin Sommer, a sadistic SS guard who tortured and killed thousands of prisoners at Buchenwald concentration camp. Discover how he evaded justice for years, but was eventually caught and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Jan 5, 2023 · Concentration camp guard Walter Gerhard Martin Sommer was an SS Hauptscharführer. After his time in Sachsenhausen, he was sent to Buchenwald, where he first became known as the infamous ...
Walter Gerhard Martin Sommer, auch bekannt als Henker von Buchenwald, war ein deutscher SS-Angehöriger und Aufseher in den Konzentrationslagern Sachsenburg und Buchenwald.
As the master of the punishment cellblock between 1938 and 1943, Sommer was the broad-shouldered bullyboy who, in the words of West German Prosecutor Helmut Paulik, perpetrated...
Mar 20, 2015 · Martin Sommer was a former concentration camp overseer at Buchenwald who beat or throttled to death dozens of prisoners. The district court in Bavaria opened his case in 1958 after years of postponement due to his wounds.
Walter Gerhard Martin Sommer was an SS-Hauptscharführer who served as a guard at the concentration camps of Dachau and Buchenwald. Known as the "Hangman of Buchenwald", he was considered a depraved sadist who reportedly ordered Otto Neururer and Mathias Spanlang , two Austrian priests, to be crucified upside-down .
