Wilhelm Kaiser (20.9.1903 Munich – 6.1.1943 Neuengamme Concentration Camp)

Wilhelm Kaiser was born into modest circumstances in Munich in 1903. He attended elementary and vocational schools and trained as a cooper. Due to several property crimes, he came increasingly into conflict with the law as a young man and was punished with several months in prison. Even as a young man, he had sexual contact with other men and was sentenced according to § 175 Reichstrafgesetzbuch (German Penal Code) at the age of 24.

This did not stop him from continuing to live as a homosexual. Thus, he met the son of an industrialist from Saxony, who was twelve years younger, in 1940; Kaiser repeatedly extorted smaller amounts of money from him. After a few months, the relationship was discovered, Kaiser was taken into ‘preventative detention’ by the police, and he was sent to the Dachau Concentration Camp. His younger partner and another man were also arrested. Due to the previous crimes and the extortion attempt, Kaiser was now treated as “the type of a dangerous habitual offender,” according to the judgment. With his behavior, he was accused of having engaged in “commercial fornication,” that is, prostitution, even though as a warehouse worker, he would have had modest but sufficient earnings (StAM, Staatsanwaltschaften 18305). Then, in October 1941, he was sentenced to four years in prison - at a time when he had already been imprisoned in the Auschwitz Concentration Camp for a short while. Kaiser was sent from there back to Munich, where in March 1942, the court's doctor determined that he was in good health with an athletic body. Soon after this, however, Kaiser was transferred to the notorious Emsland Neusustrum Camp, and in December 1942 from there to the Neuengamme Concentration Camp; he died there on January 6, 1943.