Willy Hack

Willy Hack (26 March 1912 – 26 July 1952) was a German SS officer and concentration camp official. He was born in the town of Reutlingen, Baden-Württemberg, and trained as an engineer before joining the SS in 1934. Hack served in the Waffen-SS on the Eastern Front during World War II. In February 1942 he was promoted to the rank of Obersturmführer and transferred to Amtsgruppe C (Buildings and Works) at the SS-Main Economic and Administrative Office.

In 1943 Hack was assigned to the staff of the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. While at Dora he served as director of construction for the sub-camp of Niedersachswerfen. Hack oversaw hundreds of slave-laborers who were employed in building a large subterranean aircraft engine factory that would be used to produce components for Germany’s V-2 guided missiles. In November 1944 Hack left Dora and was made commandant of the Berga labor camp near Greiz.

At Berga he again directed slave-labor by concentration camp prisoners, this time using inmates from Buchenwald to dig mining tunnels for use in synthetic oil production. In February 1945 a group of 350 American prisoners of war arrived at Berga. Many of these men were American Jews who had been sent by the SS to Berga, rather than a standard POW camp, due to their ethnicity. The casualties among this group were severe, with at least 55 Americans dying as a result of disease or malnutrition in just the few months they spent in the camp.

Hack was initially able to avoid capture following the German surrender in 1945, but was eventually arrested by Soviet occupation authorities in the city of Zwickau in 1947. Hack was tried by the government of East Germany for war crimes in 1949. He was found to be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of prisoners who had perished under his command at both Niedersachswerfen and Berga and was sentenced to death. He was retried in 1951 and was again convicted and his death sentence reaffirmed. Hack was executed by hanging in Dresden on 26 July 1952.