Heinrich Wicker (30.6.1921 Gausbach near Gernsbach – probably 29/30.4.1945 Dachau)

The son of a sales representative, he attended elementary school and then commercial college for two years in Karlsruhe. In 1933, at the age of 12, he joined the Hitler Youth; in 1936 he was a Fähnlein (small company-like unit of boys) leader (Fähnleinführer) in the Jungvolk, a Nazi organization for pre-teens, and at the beginning of 1937 a Young Comrade leader (Jungenschaftsführer). Wicker became a member of the SS in June of that same year. He was sent to Dachau to be in the 1st SS ‘Death’s Head’ Totenkopf Standard (SS-Totenkopf-Standarte), which was also used to guard the concentration camp. This is where he received his military training.

At the beginning of the war in 1939, he took part in the attack on the Poles as a member of the SS ‘Death’s Head Units’ (SS-Totenkopf-Verbände), then the invasion of France and the invasion of the Soviet Union, where he was seriously wounded during the Battle of the Demyansk Pocket at the beginning of 1942. Recovered, but no longer considered suitable for fighting at the front, he went to Graz at the beginning of 1943 to join SS training units for volunteers of the occupied countries. He attended the SS Junker school in Bad Tölz from August to November 1943. He was then transferred to Amtsgruppe D “Concentration camp business” of the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office (SS-Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungshauptamt).

As a member of the staff led by Amtsgruppe leader Richard Glück, he was given the rank of ‘Junior Storm Leader’ (Untersturmführer) in January 1944. From July 1944, Wicker was active in the National Socialist concentration camp system in several satellite camps of the Natzweiler Concentration Camp, initially as a leader of a guard company in the Cochem Satellite Camp, then from September 1944 as a guard company and camp leader in the Mannheim-Sandhofen Satellite Camp. Wicker was considered stuffy and particularly strict by both the inmates and his subordinates. stuck to his National Socialist convictions to the last.

When the Allied Troops moved closer, Wicker started organizing, in March 1945, the “evacuation” one after the other of the inmates from the satellite camps Mannheim-Sandhofen, Heppenheim, Neckarelz and Hessental near Schwäbisch Hall to the Dachau Concentration Camp. As there were not enough trains and the rail network was sometimes disrupted, the inmates, who were usually already very weak, were forced to go long distances on foot. Numerous participants in these death marches died en route due to physical exhaustion or, if they were too weak to go on, were murdered by the SS guards or their helpers. This was particularly true of the death march that Wicker led from Hessental to the Bavarian town of Nördlingen between April 4 and 15, 1945, which claimed the lives of 150-200 of the approximately 700 inmates who took part in the march. The surviving inmates arrived in Dachau or the Allach Satellite Camp in mid-April 1945.

Wicker received the order to form a military combat group for the “final battle” from the former guards of the Württemberg Satellite Camp in Dachau. When the US troops moved closer to Dachau at the end of April, a large part of the inmates there were sent on death marches south. By April 27, the majority of the SS guard squad had left the concentration camp with them. Wicker was given command of the inmates left behind. On April 29, the US troops took over the camp. Given the hopelessness of the situation, Wicker had surrendered it to the US soldiers without a fight and was arrested. A little later, he was most likely killed by the inmates or US soldiers. However, because his body could not be found, there remains an element of uncertainty around his death.