Wilhelm Ruppert

Friedrich Wilhelm Ruppert (2 February 1905 – 29 May 1946). An SS trooper in charge of executions at Dachau concentration camp, he was, along with others, responsible for the executions of British SOE agents Noor Inayat Khan, Madeleine Damerment, Eliane Plewman and Yolande Beekman.

Friedrich Ruppert, 1945

Michael Pellis, a former inmate at Dachau, identifies former SS-Obersturmführer Friedrich Wilhelm Ruppert as the man responsible for selecting people to die in the crematorium, at the trial of former camp personnel and prisoners from Dachau

Concentration camps

As of April 11, 1933, Ruppert, married and father of a child, was a guard in the Dachau concentration camp and worked as a camp electrician. On 18 September 1942 he was transferred to the Majdanek concentration camp in Lublin. There he was the technical director of the camp administration. Ruppert was a witness to Operation Harvest Festival at Majdanek in November 1943, the mass murder of 43,000 Jews.

In May 1944 Ruppert was a warehouse manager in the Warsaw concentration camp until its evacuation. He returned to the Dachau concentration camp on August 6, 1944, serving under camp commandant Eduard Weiter. Ruppert was responsible for the operation of the camp. On April 23, 1945, he was replaced by Max Schobert.

Ruppert accompanied the death march of the prisoners in April 1945. The march went over Pasing, Wolfratshausen, Bad Tölz to Tegernsee and ended on 30 April. He was arrested by American troops shortly thereafter.

War crimes

Wilhelm Ruppert was tried for war crimes after the war. He was convicted and executed by hanging on May 29, 1946.

Bibliography

• Holger Lessing: Der erste Dachauer Prozess (1945/46). Nomos, Baden-Baden 1993, ISBN 3-7890-2933-5.
• Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich: Wer war was vor und nach 1945. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-16048-0.
• Case No. 000-50-2 (US vs. Martin Gottfried Weiss et al.) Tried 13 Dec. 45 in eng. Sprache (pdf-datei; 40,9 MB)