admission that he knew that the mass murder of Jews was illegal sealed his conviction. At his trial, Baretzki described how he treated inmates who had been transferred from subcamps because they had become too starved or ill to work. He did not allow any of them to register for the camp. He held them instead in a quarantine block until they died, not even allowing them to enter the barracks because the starving prisoners would create a mess. Baretzki was known to practice a sport he called the "rabbit hunt", where prisoners were ordered to remove their caps. Anyone who did not do so quickly enough was beaten and shot while "trying to escape". However, at other times, he attempted to help inmates, such as bringing water to women confined to "Mexico", an especially primitive section of the camp lacking the most basic facilities. SS-Obersturmführer Johann Schwarzhuber, the commandant of Auschwitz II-Birkenau, thwarted these efforts. Schwarzhuber told Baretzki that he should not have any compassion for Jewish prisoners. In the spring of 1944, Viktor Pestek was arrested after returning to the camp and attempting to rescue additional inmates. Baretzki claimed that he had seen other SS men beating Pestek. Ryszard Henryk Kordek, a prisoner, contradicted this saying that Baretzki had raised the alarm over Pestek's return, and was one of the guards who beat him. During the liquidation of the Theresienstadt family camp in July 1944, Baretzki asked his superiors to spare the lives of the children imprisoned there. A selection was held for teenage boys, and some were saved, but Franz Lucas intervened to prevent saving the girls. Asked to explain his actions at his trial, Baretzki stated that he had often attended theatrical performances at the children's block in the family camp. After the evacuation of Auschwitz, Baretzki was transferred to the SS division "30 January" and captured by Soviet forces in early May. Released on 17 August, he settled near Koblenz and worked in a coal shop. In 1953, he was briefly imprisoned for assault; two years later, he was fined for resisting arrest. In 1956, he was fined once more for assault. He was never married. Trial A warrant for Baretzki's arrest was issued on 3 March 1960, and he was apprehended a month later. He was the lowest-ranking of twenty-four men indicted at the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials; his defense attorneys were Eugen Gerhardt and