Robert Mulka Signed Document- Auschwitz

Typed document from Auschwitz concentration camp , ithas been signed by SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer Robert Mulka who was adjutant toRudolf Hoess , Mulka was responsible for the procuring and transportation ofZyklon B poison gas and the transporting of the prisiners to the Gaschambers. The document reads :Copy.Radio message No. 71Sending point: Arrived 9/22/42 1125OnP.H.A. K.L Au. HeadquartersRe: Displacement and commanding list from 8/30/42.The list of transfers and orders from August 30th, 1942 will be approved byme on October 1st, 1942 with Wirking.Signed von HerffSS Brigadefuhrer and Major General of the Waffen SSF.d.rRobert MulkaSS-Hauptsturmfuhrer and adjutant.Robert Karl Ludwig Mulka (12 April 1895 – 26 April 1969) was anSS-Obersturmführer. At Auschwitz concentration camp, he was adjutant to thecamp commandant, SS-Obersturmbannführer Rudolf Höss, making him second incommand of the camp.Mulka was the son of a postal assistant. After attending the Volksschule andRealschule, he obtained his secondary school diploma in 1911 andsubsequently became a business apprentice at an export agency.In August 1914, he signed up to serve in the First World War; he served inFrance, Russia and Turkey, eventually being promoted to second lieutenant ofthe reserve Imperial Army. From 1918 to 1920 he joined the Freikorps andfought against Bolshevism in the Baltics. In 1920, he returned to hishometown, where shortly after taking up work at an agency firm, he was foundguilty of receiving stolen property and sentenced to eight months in prison.Mulka remained with this firm (with whom he had completed his training)until 1931. He became independent, but his own import/export companies wereby no means swamped with trade. From 1928 to 1934, Mulka joined DerStahlhelm, which inspired him to be part of the newly strengthenedReichswehr.He was also a member of the Nationalverband Deutscher Offiziere (NationalFederation of German Officers and the Deutscher Fichte-Bund. There, hetrained in the reserves and was eventually promoted to first lieutenant in1935, but was released when the army learned of his criminal record, whichin turn thwarted all the efforts he made after the start of the Second WorldWar to become an army officer again.Following his application in September 1939, Mulka joined the Nazi Party in1940 as member number 7848085. Unwilling to begin as a common soldier andwork his way up through the ranks, he applied to be a commissioned officerand successfully joined the Waffen-SS as an SS-Obersturmführer. He workedbriefly as company leader of a sapper unit, but was declared only employableat garrisons in the homeland due to illness. As a result, he was deployed toAuschwitz at the beginning of 1942. After he had led a watch company for afew weeks, the camp commandant's adjutant became ill, and thus Mulka becamethe chief of staff of the commandant's office at Auschwitz-Birkenauconcentration camp.Mulka's tenure as Höss' adjutant began on 1 July 1942, and came to an end onMarch 30, 1943, when Hildegard Bischoff, wife of SS-Sturmbannführer KarlBischoff (architect of the crematoria and gas chambers), claimed that hemade a derogatory mark about Joseph Goebbels. He was briefly arrested, butthe proceedings against him were dropped; however, he lost his position asSS-Hauptsturmführer and was demoted to SS-Obersturmführer.Mulka subsequently returned to Hamburg in mid-1943 during the bombing of thecity. Later he worked under the Nordsee High SS and Police command. Early in1944 he was deployed to an SS sapper school near Prague, but after about ayear illness forced his return to Hamburg, where he remained as the war cameto an end.In 1945, Mulka set up his own company: Import/Export Agency Robert Mulka. Inthe spring of 1948, he was arrested and kept in custody because of his SSmembership. He was prosecuted and convicted under denazificationproceedings, but was exonerated from his original one and a half year prisonsentence.In 1960, an attorney from the Frankfurt Public Prosecutor's office wasreading the newspaper, which reported the success of a certain Rolf Mulka, abronze-medal-winning yachtsman, at the Rome Olympics. The prosecutor, whohad been investigating Auschwitz since 1959, recognized the relativelyuncommon name and investigated Rolf's father. His suspicion was correct, andRobert Mulka was arrested in November 1960. He was remanded in custody fromthen until March 1961, from May until December 1961, from February untilOctober 1964, and then from December 1964.TrialAt the time of his trial, Mulka was 68 years old and married with a daughterand two sons. The court noted that he had played a major role in thetransformation of Auschwitz from a concentration camp into an exterminationcomplex from mid-1942, in the planning and construction of the four Birkenaucrematoria and gas chamber complexes, and the selection of arrivingtransports of Jews on the Alte Rampe (Old ramp) for extermination, respectively occurred and began during his tenure. In the trial, Mulka saidthe Auschwitz atmosphere disgusted him, stating that "the things thattranspired there shocked me from the beginning". When asked to elaborate, hepointed to the striped prisoner uniforms, commenting that his SS colleagueshad "no style".Mulka was found guilty of aiding and abetting the murder of 750 people on atleast four occasions, and was sentenced to 14 years in prison. In theconviction, the court noted that:After weighing up all of these points, there is indeed a serious suspicion, that the accused, as adjutant, internally approved and willingly supportedthe mass murder of Jews, and therefore acted in mens rea; final doubtscannot be dispelled, however, that he saw to the smooth implementation ofextermination operations more out of command loyalty and a misplaced senseof duty, therefore only facilitating and supporting the acts of the mainperpetrators.He unsuccessfully attempted to commit suicide while in Kassel prison, andwas released in 1968 on compassionate grounds as severely ill, dying thefollowing year in Hamburg, aged 74.This Typed document from Auschwitz measures 150mm x 210mm