Josef Windeck

Passions

Vocation

German construction worker and brutal Kapo who was sentenced to life plus 15 years imprisonment at the third Frankfurt Auschwitz trial in June 1968, convicted of committing murder while he was a detainee at Auschwitz. In his youth, he became a construction worker like his father. In 1936, he was accused of calling on his colleagues on a construction site to strike, and then arrested. As a political prisoner he came to Esterwegen concentration camp, from where he was subsequently transferred to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. In the summer of 1937 he was released, but sentenced in the following October for theft to two and a half years in prison. He had 23 criminal records for property offences and resisting arrest. After expiration of this sentence, he was transferred to the police prison in Dusseldorf in March 1940, from where he was relocated to Sachsenhausen and finally on 29 August 1940 as an "asocial inmate" with a black triangle along with another 99 inmates to the Auschwitz concentration camp. In the Auschwitz concentration camp Josef Windeck was first a Kapo in the main camp at Auschwitz, then from April 1941 to spring 1942, he was almost continuously Kapo of Arbeitskommandos in the construction of the Buna plant. After Windeck was again Kapo in the main camp, he was transferred to the Auschwitz III Monowitz concentration camp on 28 October 1942 with 600 inmates. There he became the first camp senior. On 4 December 1942, Windeck killed the inmate Fritz Löhner-Beda. Windeck, dressed in riding boots, breeches and a dark jacket, used a dog whip for the mistreatment of inmates. After a year in prison, Windeck was released in June 1969 for health reasons. He died on 21 July 1977 in Mönchengladbach. Link to Wikipedia biography (German)