Stefan Baretzki  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 mass murder by making selections and beat and murdered 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. The court sentenced him to life imprisonment and eight years for participating in the murder of more than 8,000 people. Baretzki regretted his actions, testified against his former superiors, and committed suicide in prison. 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. 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.