Years of service 1935—1943 | Name Siegfried Graetschus | |
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Rank SS-Oberscharfuhrer (Staff Sergeant) Died October 14, 1943, Sobibor extermination camp Unit Sobibor extermination camp | ||
Siegfried Graetschus (9 June 1916 – 14 October 1943) was a German SS functionary at the Sobibor extermination camp during Operation Reinhard, the deadliest phase of the Holocaust in occupied Poland. He was assassinated by a Sonderkommando prisoner during the Sobibor uprising.
Graetschus joined the SS in 1935 and the Nazi Party in 1936. He served at Bernburg Euthanasia Centre and Treblinka extermination camp before being posted to Sobibor in August 1942. He succeeded Erich Lachmann as commander of the approximately 200 Ukrainian Trawniki guards at Sobibor.
Siegfried Graetschus was killed in the shoemaker's barracks with an axe to his head by Arkady Moiseyevich Vaispapir, a Jewish Russian Red Army soldier who had been imprisoned at Sobibor at the time of the Sobibor revolt on October 14, 1943.