Johann Niemann


Johann Niemann was a German SS-Untersturmführer and deputy commandant of Sobibór extermination camp. Niemann directly perpetrated the genocide of Jews and other peoples at Sobibór during the Operation Reinhard phase of The Holocaust. Johann Niemann also served as a Leichenverbrenner at Grafeneck, Brandenburg, and Bernburg during the Aktion T-4 Euthanasia Program.
Niemann joined the Nazi Party in 1931 as member number 753,836 and the SS in 1934 as member number 270,600. He first served at Bełżec extermination camp, at the rank of SS-Oberscharführer, where he commanded Camp II, the extermination area. He then was transferred to Sobibór extermination camp. Niemann was deputy commander of Sobibór on various occasions in 1942 before being given the position permanently in early 1943. After Heinrich Himmler's visit to Sobibór on 12 February 1943, Niemann was promoted to SS-Untersturmführer.
Karl Frenzel, also a commandant at Sobibór, recalled how Niemann handled a particular threat of prisoner revolt within the camp:
On 14 October 1943, a prisoner uprising took place at the Sobibór camp. Niemann was the highest-ranking SS officer who was on duty that day, and so he was the first person targeted to be assassinated by the prisoners. Niemann was killed in the tailor's barracks with an axe to his head by Alexander Shubayev, a Jewish Red Army soldier imprisoned at Sobibór.
The Times newspaper reported that 350 wartime photos of Sobibor and other places have recently been discovered. The photos were in albums belonging to deputy camp commandant Johann Niemann. The images allegedly include photos of John Demjanjuk, a Ukrainian-born guard at the camp who in 2011 was convicted by a Munich court of "being an accessory to the murder of 27,900 Jews at Sobibor".