Hermann Baranowski

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29d ago 3:16

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rWotD Episode 3049: Hermann Baranowski
Welcome to random Wiki of the Day, your journey through Wikipedia's vast and varied content, one random article at a time.
The random article for Monday, 8 September 2025, is Hermann Baranowski.
Hermann Baranowski (11 June 1884 in Schwerin – 5 February 1940 in Aue) was a German politician and military figure. A member of the Nazi Party, he is best known as the commandant of two German concentration camps of the SS Death's Head unit.
In April 1900, at the age of fifteen, he volunteered for the navy and fought in the First World War, serving aboard the SMS Moltke. In 1912 he married August Dibbern with whom he had two children, a boy and a girl. In 1930 he was discharged as a lieutenant and then worked first as an office clerk in Kiel and later as a sales representative in Hamburg.
Baranowski joined the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazi Party) in 1930. The following year he signed up for the SS (SS #24009). His first appointment was as the leader of the 4th SS Standarte in Hamburg-Altona. In March 1936 Himmler appointed him commandant of the Lichtenburg concentration camp. However, he was soon removed, demoted and sent as a Lagerführer (compound leader) at Dachau concentration camp.
However, in 1938 he was promoted to Schutzhaftlagerführer at Dachau concentration camp. He served as the commandant (SS-Oberführer) of Sachsenhausen concentration camp from May 1938 until September 1939. He died at Aue in 1940.
He was noted to be especially sadistic. However, Rudolf Höss, commandant at Auschwitz, described Baranowski as: very strict and hard, but of a scrupulous sense of fair play and fanatical sense of duty. As a very old SS leader and National Socialist he became my role model. I constantly saw in him a grander reflection of myself. He also had movements where his good nature, his soft heart revealed themselves, and yet he was hard and uncompromisingly strict in all matters of duty. So he constantly brought home to me how the hard 'must' demanded by the SS had to silence all soft stirrings.
This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 00:10 UTC on Monday, 8 September 2025.
For the full current version of the article, see Hermann Baranowski on Wikipedia.
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