Reinhold Hanning

Reinhold Hanning, an SS officer who met Jewish prisoners as they arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau and escorted them to the gas chambers, is an example of the blinding of individuals that the Nazi regime was able to achieve. He joined the Hilter Youth at 14 and, at the outbreak of the Second World War, volunteered for the Waffen-SS, a volunteer army that worked alongside the regular army and uniformed police. In 1942, Reinhold Hanning was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau where he was one of the officers who met the prisoners when they were getting of the trains into the concentration camp. He was then transferred to Sachsenhausen in June 1944, and became a prisoner of war in May 1945, shortly after the liberation of Sachsenhausen. In 2013, Reinhold Hanning was investigated with the intention of proving him responsible for war crimes committed during the Holocaust. After three years of investigations he was convicted of 170,000 counts of being an accessory to murder and sentenced to 5 years in jail. However, Reinhold Hanning continually denied the charges, thus highlighting that he did not see what he was doing as a crime, but as a duty passed to him from the leader of his country.

Although Reinhold Hanning has been convicted and is seen as a war criminal, he is an essential part in learning about the Holocaust and the Nazi regime, as he represents the human involvement of the Nazi party, something which is forgotten in history, and which can lead to the repetition of this horrific event.