Adam Grünewald

Adam Grünewald (born 20 October 1902 in Frickenhausen am Main – died 22 January 1945 in Veszprém) was a German Schutzstaffel officer and Nazi concentration camp commandant.

The son of a carpenter who died when he was 8, Grünewald apprenticed as a baker but found work difficult to come by when the First World War ended and the demobilised soldiers entered the labour market.[1] Attracted to the nationalist propaganda prevalent at the time Grünewald joined the Freikorps before signing on with the army for a 12-year stint.[1] Leaving the army as a staff sergeant in April 1931 Grünewald again struggled to find employment and so joined the Sturmabteilung. He rose to the rank of Obersturmbannführer in the SA before switching to the SS shortly after the Night of the Long Knives.[1]

In 1943 he succeeded Karl Chmielewski as commandant of Herzogenbusch concentration camp. However like his predecessor he too was removed. Tried and found guilty of causing the deaths of prisoners by excess cruelty for the Bunker Tragedy,[2] Grünewald was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment but subsequently he was pardoned.[3] He finished the war with the 3rd SS Division Totenkopf and died during a German counteroffensive in the siege of Budapest. His final rank was SS-Sturmbannführer.[4]

References
  1. Tom Segev, Soldiers of Evil, Berkley Books, 1991, p. 71
  2. Robert Melvin Spector, World Without Civilization: Mass Murder and the Holocaust, History and Analysis, Volume 1, University Press of America, 2005, p. 375
  3. Segev, Soldiers of Evil, p. 153
  4. Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich: Wer war was vor und nach 1945. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005
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