Stefan Baretzki ( – ) was an Auschwitz guard of Bukovina German origin. He was conscripted into the Waffen-SS and stationed at the Auschwitz concentration camp from 1942 until 1945. There he participated in the mass murder by making selections, beatings and murdering prisoners on his own initiative. After the war, Baretzki settled in West Germany. He was the lowest-ranking of the twenty-four defendants in the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials. His murders were sensationalized in the German press, taking the focus off of the systematic crimes of the Nazi regime. The court sentenced him to life imprisonment and eight years for participating in the murder of more than 8,000 people. Baretzki expressed regret for his actions, testified against his former superiors, and committed suicide while serving his sentence. Early life Stefan Baretzki was born in 1919 into a Bukovina German family in Cernăuți (Czernowitz), then part of the Kingdom of Romania. Hermann Langbein, an Austrian historian and Auschwitz political prisoner, noted that Baretzki was born in the same town as Viktor Pestek, an Auschwitz guard executed by the Nazis because he helped Siegfried Lederer, a Czech Jew, to escape. Baretzki had only an elementary school education and never spoke German well. He was conscripted into the SS in 1941, after an announcement in his church encouraged him to resettle in Breslau, then part of Germany, as part of the Heim ins Reich ("Back home to the Reich") policy of resettling Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans) in Greater Germany. Auschwitz Baretzki served as a block officer in Auschwitz II-Birkenau from 1942 to 1945. With other Volksdeutsche guards, he was shown antisemitic propaganda films such as Jud Süß and Ohm Krüger after work. Encouraged by the films, guards would beat up Jewish prisoners the following morning. Baretzki stated at his trial that when Volksdeutsche guards asked why prisoners were sent to Auschwitz, they were told that all of them were dangerous criminals convicted of sabotage. When asked how small children could be guilty, it was explained to the guards they were too uneducated to understand, and it would be clear later. They were also told that all things authorized by Adolf Hitler were legal. Baretzki claimed not to believe these assurances and considered going into hiding when he went to Romania on leave in 1943. He did not do so because, according to him, he feared repercussions against his family. According to Rebecca Wittmann, Baretzki's