3. 4. 1977 Wilhelm Friedrich Boger died

He was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Wilhelm Friedrich Boger also died in prison on 3 April 1977. However, he managed to evade justice for many years.

He was born into a merchant's family. As a boy he was already a member of the Hitler Youth and after he finished high school in 1922, he helped his father as a clerk for three years. He worked in Stuttgart, where he also joined the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP). When he lost his job as a clerk in 1932, he joined the auxiliary forces in Friedrichshafen and a year later the political police in Stuttgart. He graduated from the police training school and became a commissioner, notwithstanding the fact that he was arrested in 1936 for abusing a prisoner during interrogation.

When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, he was transferred to the state police headquarters in Zichenau. Three weeks later he was put in charge of setting up and supervising the border police in the Polish town of Ostrolenka, located north of Warsaw. In 1940 he transferred to the SS, and two years later was wounded in battle. After he recovered, he was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp.

At the death factory, Boger was in charge of keeping records and receiving prisoners, overseeing camp security and conducting interrogations. To get prisoners to say what he wanted, he often used a method known as the "Boger Swing." Prisoners were suspended from a metal bar with their arms threaded through their legs and swung. Boger would ask them questions in a calm voice, but when he did not get the answer he wanted, he would beat the prisoners with a metal crowbar across their buttocks, back and legs. As Boger's questioning escalated, his voice became more and more unpleasant and harsh. He then beat the prisoners with such intensity that he inflicted deep wounds with the crowbar. As a result of the extensive trauma, they often died.

Boger earned the nickname "The Tiger of Auschwitz". When he learned that the Red Army was approaching, he escaped from Auschwitz in January 1945. In June 1946, Boger was arrested in Ludwigsburg, where his parents lived. He escaped before being extradited to Poland, where he was to be tried. From 1948 to mid-1949 he worked in an aircraft factory near Stuttgart and was again captured. This time in Ravensburg, for the aforementioned abuse of a prisoner he had interrogated in 1936. However, Boger was soon released again.

After that, he probably felt safe. He lived with his family in Hemmingen, near the large district town of Leonberg, which is located in the German state of Baden-Württemberg about sixteen kilometres west of Stuttgart. He worked as a delivery manager at a factory owned by the aircraft manufacturer Heinkel in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen, where Boger was born. He did well and earned a promotion.

In 1959 he was arrested again and was already facing charges for the atrocities committed at Auschwitz. He stood trial in Frankfurt on August 20, 1965. After a series of eyewitness testimonies, Boger was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder in at least 5 cases, for mass murder in at least 109 cases, and for collective aiding and abetting mass murder. He was imprisoned in Bietigheim-Bissingen until the end of his life. He died on 3 April 1977 at the age of 70.

Sources: www.findagrave.com, https://ww2gravestone.com/