Karl Chmielewski

{{Short description|Nazi war criminal}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=March 2021}}

{{Infobox criminal

| name = Karl Chmielewski

| image = KarlChmielewski.jpg

| image_size =

| caption = Chmielewski in the 1940s

| birth_date = {{birth date|1903|07|16|df=y}}

| birth_place = Frankfurt am Main, German Empire

| death_date = {{death date and age|1991|12|01|1903|07|16|df=y}}

| death_place = Bernau am Chiemsee, Germany

| occupation = Commandant of Herzogenbusch concentration camp (1943)

| criminal_penalty = Nazi Germany
15 years imprisonment
West Germany
Life imprisonment with hard labour

| criminal_status = Deceased

| conviction = Nazi Germany
Rape
Embezzlement
West Germany
Murder
Perjury
Fraud
Bigamy

| motive = Nazism

}}

Karl Chmielewski (16 July 1903 – 1 December 1991) was a German SS officer and concentration camp commandant. Such was his cruelty, he was dubbed Teufel von Gusen or the Devil of Gusen."Sagel-Grande, et.al.: Justiz und NS-Verbrechen - Strafverfahren gegen Chmielewski Karl (Lage, Aufbau und personelle Besetzung des Lagers Gusen und Lebensbedingungen seiner Häftlinge. Band XVII, Amsterdam 1977. p. 160 ff.

Chmielewski joined the SS whilst unemployed in 1932 and joined the Nazi Party the following year. After initially serving in the office of Heinrich Himmler, he was transferred to the Columbia concentration camp in 1935, before moving to Sachsenhausen concentration camp the following year. He was promoted to Untersturmführer in 1938 and attached to the Schutzhaftlagerführung, the 'Protective custody' units of the SS-Totenkopfverbände.

From 1940 to 1942 Chmielewski, by then a Hauptsturmführer, served as Schutzhaftlagerführer at Gusen concentration camp, and it was there that he developed a reputation for extreme brutality.Schiffkorn Elisabeth: "Zur Forschungsgeschichte des urnenfelderzeitlichen Gräberfeldes von Gusen". In: EuroJournal Mühlviertel-Böhmerwald, 2.Jg, Sonderheft 1, Linz 1996. He then became commandant of the newly established Herzogenbusch concentration camp in the Netherlands, where he further developed a reputation for cruelty.

Amongst the claims made against him was that during inspections he ordered the drowning of prisoners in buckets of water.Tom Segev, Soldiers of Evil, Berkley Books, 2001, p. 137 Fellow camp commandant Franz Ziereis claimed after the war that Chmielewski had used the skin of prisoners to make things such as wallets and book bindings, something Ziereis claimed was strictly forbidden by the Nazi authorities.Segev, Soldiers of Evil, p. 145 During his reign at Herzogenbusch, Chmielewski gained a reputation for corruption, and he was eventually tried for personally enriching himself through stealing diamonds from prisoners. He was deprived of his position and rank in 1943, being succeeded as commandant by Adam Grünewald. In 1944, an SS court sentenced Chmielewski to 15 years in prison for rape and embezzlement. He spent the rest of the war as an inmate at Dachau concentration camp.Segev, Soldiers of Evil, p. 153{{Cite web |title=Camp Commander Karl Chmielewski - KZ-Gedenkstätte Mauthausen |url=https://www.mauthausen-memorial.org/en/Gusen/The-Concentration-Camp-Gusen/The-SS/Camp-Commander-Karl-Chmielewski |access-date=2022-06-12 |website=www.mauthausen-memorial.org |archive-date=17 May 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220517235829/https://www.mauthausen-memorial.org/en/Gusen/The-Concentration-Camp-Gusen/The-SS/Camp-Commander-Karl-Chmielewski |url-status=dead }}

Chmielewski disappeared into Austria after the war. By 1953, he was back in Germany, under an assumed identity, where he had taken up farming. He was tried that year for perjury, fraud, and bigamy, and sentenced to a year in prison. After his real identity was established, he was arrested by West German police in January 1959, accused of nearly two hundred counts of murder. At his trial in 1961, he was found guilty of causing the deaths of prisoners through his brutality, and was sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labour.Michael Bar-Zohar, The Avengers, Hawthorn Books, 1969, p. 254{{Cite web|url = http://www.redcap70.net/A%20History%20of%20the%20SS%20Organisation%201924-1945.html/C/CHMIELEWSKI,%20Karl.htm|title = Chmielewski, Karl|accessdate = 18 October 2015|website = RMP World|publisher = Royal Military Police}} The court pronounced him a sadist who took pleasure in killing prisoners, whom he did not see as human, by scalding them with boiling water.Segev, Soldiers of Evil, p. 203Segev, Soldiers of Evil, p. 33

He was released from prison in March 1979, on mental health grounds, and spent his last years in a care institution at Chiemsee.