Johann Niemann, the middle of nine siblings, was born on the 4th of August 1913 in the village of Völlen, then part of the German Empire. Johann’s father Klaas was a farmer and his mother Bilda was a housewife. Niemann attended elementary school for eight years, studied with a local master painter, and passed his journeyman’s examination. On the 30th of January 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany. The following year, Johann Niemann became a member of the SS and started to serve as a guard at the Esterwegen concentration camp. From there, Niemann was sent as a guard to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp which was located north of Berlin. The camp held Jews, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Roma and Sinti people and, later, Soviet civilians.
In 1939 Niemann’s son August was born and in December of the same year he married his longtime girlfriend, Henriette Frey. The Second World War started on 1 September 1939 when Germany invaded Poland. The same year Niemann started to work for the Nazi Euthanasia Program, code-named T4, which was the systematic murder of institutionalized patients with disabilities in Germany. In August 1941 Niemann was promoted to SS-Oberscharführer, which was equivalent to Staff Sergeant. Next, Niemann helped establish the Belzec killing center, where he essentially commanded Camp II, which was the extermination side of the camp. Beginning in March 1942, Jews from various parts of the General Government, which was an annexed territory of Poland run by German authorities, were deported to Belzec, where they were murdered in gas chambers with carbon monoxide gas generated by large diesel engines. The authorities at the Belzec killing center consisted of a small staff 20-30 German SS and police officials. In spring 1942 Johann Niemann helped establish the Sobibor killing center and in that summer he became the camp’s deputy commander. He was also promoted to SS-Hauptscharführer, which was equivalent to Master sergeant. His daughter Johanne was born in May 1942 - the same month that gassing operations began at Sobibor.
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