Arnold Strippel

Arnold Strippel
Official portrait
Personal details
Born	2 June 1911
Died
Military service
Allegiance	Nazi Germany
Service/branch	Schutzstaffel
Years of service	1934 - 1945
Rank	Obersturmführer, SS (First Lieutenant)

Arnold Strippel (2 June 1911 – 1 May 1994) was an SS-Obersturmführer and a member of the SS-Totenkopfverbände who while assigned to the Neuengamme concentration camp was given the task of murdering the victims of a tuberculosis medical experiment conducted by Kurt Heissmeyer.

Strippel served in various concentration camps starting in 1934 when he joined the SS. His first assignment was at Sachsenburg, his next was Buchenwald, where he participated in the shooting of 21 Jewish inmates on November 9, 1939, following the failed assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler in Munich. While at Buchenwald, Strippel caught an inmate who was using a rope and some paper to alleviate heavy loads he was carrying on his work detail. This was against camp regulations (stealing Third Reich property), so Strippel decided to make an example out of him. "You used this rope; you'll hang on a rope. And the whole camp will watch as you twist in the wind." The inmate's hands were tied behind his back and he was lifted two feet off the ground from a tree. The weight of his body was all on the shoulder joints and the pain was "excruciating beyond all description."

Strippel's next assignment from March – October 1941 was the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in Occupied France. Strippel then served in Majdanek near Lublin Poland, Ravensbrück, then at Peenemünde on the Usedom peninsula, in the Karlshagen II forced labor camp, the site of V-2 rocket production and launches. From there the 's-Hertogenbosch concentration camp in Vught, the Netherlands, more commonly known as Camp Vught. His final assignment was at Neuengamme, where he would oversee the murders of the twenty Jewish children involved in Kurt Heissmeyer's experiments, their four adult caretakers and twenty-four Soviet P.O.W.'s. They were all hung in the basement of the Bullenhuser Damm school, the adults from overhead pipes and the children from a hook on the wall.

War crimes trial

Strippel was convicted of war crimes at the Third Majdanek Trial before the West German Court in Düsseldorf (1975–1981) for his actions at Buchenwald and at the Majdanek concentration camp, Poland, where he served as deputy commandant (Case no. 145 & 616 in Frankfurt District Court). He was implicated in the torture and killing of many dozens of prisoners including 42 Soviet POWs in July 1942. Strippel received a nominal three-and-a-half year sentence. He also received 121,500 Deutsche Mark reimbursement for the loss of earnings and his social security contributions, which made him a wealthy man. He used this windfall to purchase a condominium in Frankfurt, which he occupied until his death.