Stefan Baretzki (March 24, 1919 – June 21, 1988) was an Auschwitz guard of Bukovina German origin.
Stefan Baretzki was born in 1919 into a Bukovina German family in Cernăuți (Czernowitz), then part of the Kingdom of Romania.
Hermann Langbein, an Austrian historian and Auschwitz political prisoner, noted that Baretzki was born in the same town as Viktor Pestek, an Auschwitz guard executed by the Nazis because he helped Siegfried Lederer, a Czech Jew, to escape.
Baretzki had only an elementary school education and never spoke German well.
1941
He was conscripted into the SS in 1941, after an announcement in his church encouraged him to resettle in Breslau, then part of Germany, as part of the Heim ins Reich ("Back home to the Reich") policy of resettling Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans) in Greater Germany.
1942
He was conscripted into the Waffen-SS and stationed at the Auschwitz concentration camp from 1942 until 1945.
There he participated in the mass murder by making selections, beatings and murdering prisoners on his own initiative.
After the war, Baretzki settled in West Germany.
He was the lowest-ranking of the twenty-four defendants in the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials.
His murders were sensationalized in the German press, taking the focus off of the systematic crimes of the Nazi regime.
The court sentenced him to life imprisonment and eight years for participating in the murder of more than 8,000 people.
Baretzki expressed regret for his actions, testified against his former superiors, and committed suicide while serving his sentence.
Baretzki served as a block officer in Auschwitz II-Birkenau from 1942 to 1945.
With other Volksdeutsche guards, he was shown antisemitic propaganda films such as Jud Süß and Ohm Krüger after work.
Encouraged by the films, guards would beat up Jewish prisoners the following morning.
Baretzki stated at his trial that when Volksdeutsche guards asked why prisoners were sent to Auschwitz, they were told that all of them were dangerous criminals convicted of sabotage.
When asked how small children could be guilty, it was explained to the guards they were too uneducated to understand, and it would be clear later.
They were also told that all things authorized by Adolf Hitler were legal.
1943
Baretzki claimed not to believe these assurances and considered going into hiding when he went to Romania on leave in 1943.
He did not do so because, according to him, he feared repercussions against his family.
According to Rebecca Wittmann, Baretzki's admission that he knew that the mass murder of Jews was illegal sealed his conviction.
At his trial, Baretzki described how he treated inmates who had been transferred from subcamps because they had become too starved or ill to work.
He did not allow any of them to register for the camp.
He held them instead in a quarantine block until they died, not even allowing them to enter the barracks because the starving prisoners would create a mess.
Baretzki was known to practice a sport he called the "rabbit hunt", where prisoners were ordered to remove their caps.
Anyone who did not do so quickly enough was beaten and shot while "trying to escape".
However, at other times, he attempted to help inmates, such as bringing water to women confined to "Mexico", an especially primitive section of the camp lacking the most basic facilities.
SS-Obersturmführer Johann Schwarzhuber, the commandant of Auschwitz II-Birkenau, thwarted these efforts.
Schwarzhuber told Baretzki that he should not have any compassion for Jewish prisoners.
1944
In the spring of 1944, Viktor Pestek was arrested after returning to the camp and attempting to rescue additional inmates.
Baretzki claimed that he had seen other SS men beating Pestek.
Ryszard Henryk Kordek, a prisoner, contradicted this saying that Baretzki had raised the alarm over Pestek's return, and was one of the guards who beat him.
During the liquidation of the Theresienstadt family camp in July 1944, Baretzki asked his superiors to spare the lives of the children imprisoned there.
A selection was held for teenage boys, and some were saved, but Franz Lucas intervened to prevent saving the girls.
Asked to explain his actions at his trial, Baretzki stated that he had often attended theatrical performances at the children's block in the family camp.
After the evacuation of Auschwitz, Baretzki was transferred to the SS division "30 January" and captured by Soviet forces in early May.
1945
Released on 17 August 1945, he settled near Koblenz and worked in a coal shop.
1953
In 1953, he was sentenced to 21 days in jail for assault; two years later, he was fined for resisting arrest.
