Wilhelm Gideon

Wilhelm Gideon (15 November 1898, in Oldenburg – 23 February 1977) was a Schutzstaffel officer and Nazi concentration camp commandant.

A native of Oldenburg in the state of Lower Saxony, Gideon began work as a trainee engineer but had his studies ended by the outbreak of World War I, when he volunteered for service in the German Imperial Army.[1]

Gideon enlisted in the SS in 1933 (member number 88,657) and the Nazi Party in 1937 (member 4,432,258).[2] He had various posts in the SS, initially being stationed with the 9th SS-Reiterstandarte (cavalry) from 1934 to 1939. Following this, he was moved to the 3rd SS Division Totenkopf until 1942, after which he was briefly attached to the SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt. He also served for a short period at Neuengamme concentration camp and as administrator of the 88th SS-Standarte in Hamburg.[2]

Gideon had been identified by Oswald Pohl as a reliable SS officer, and was promoted to Hauptsturmführer by the concentration camp chief.[3] He was appointed commandant of Gross-Rosen concentration camp on 16 September 1942, in succession to Arthur Rödl, and held the post until 10 October 1943, when Johannes Hassebroek succeeded him.[4] His final post was on staff of the SS and Police Leader in occupied Denmark until the surrender in 1945.[2]

Gideon was found in 1975 when Israeli historian Tom Segev interviewed him for his book Soldiers of Evil, a study of the concentration camp commandants. However, after initially cooperating with Segev, Gideon terminated the interview when he suddenly claimed that he was a different person who happened to be named Wilhelm Gideon rather than the former commandant of Gross-Rosen.[5]

Literature
  • Orth, Karin: Die Konzentrationslager-SS. dtv, München 2004, ISBN 3-423-34085-1.
  • Tom Segev: Die Soldaten des Bösen. Zur Geschichte der KZ-Kommandanten. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1995, ISBN 3-499-18826-0.
  • Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich: Wer war was vor und nach 1945. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005. ISBN 3-596-16048-0.

References
  1. Tom Segev, Soldiers of Evil, Berkley Books, 1991, p. 68
  2. Wilhelm Gideon
  3. Michael Thad Allen, The Business of Genocide: the SS, Slave Labor, and the Concentration Camps, University of North Carolina Press, 2002
  4. Belah Guṭerman, A Narrow Bridge to Life: Jewish Forced Labor and Survival in the Gross-Rosen Camp System, 1940-1945, Berghahn Books, 2008, p. 75
  5. Segev, Soldiers of Evil. p. 219


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