Heinrich Barbl

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Heinrich Barbl was born on 3 March 1900 in Sarleinsbach, Austria. He worked as a tinsmith and plumber in Linz before joining the Nazi Party and the SS after Austria joined Germany (the Anschluss). Barbl was sent to Hartheim and Grafeneck euthanasia centers, where he stamped metal nameplates for the dead and helped prepare urns filled with ashes for relatives, often with the wrong ashes mixed in.

In 1942 Barbl was posted to Bełżec extermination camp, one of the first camps built for Operation Reinhard. He was known to be often drunk on duty and, according to camp commandant Gottlieb Hering, not very bright; Hering even kept him from taking part in killing the sick and elderly because he “would shoot us, not the Jews.” Barbl was punished by Christian Wirth and, at one point in late 1942 or early 1943, imprisoned by Hering for several days. He was later sent to Sobibor to help fit the gas chamber exhaust piping and boasted that he had made the gas chambers look like neat showers.

After the war, Austrian police questioned Barbl but he was never put on trial. He gave a testimony in Linz in 1965, and nothing more is known about his life or death.