Dannecker, Theodor

(1913–1945)

   Dannecker was a key aide to Adolf Eichmann in the deportation of Jews from France and Italy and the failed effort to send native Bulgarian Jews to Auschwitz. Dannecker, a lawyer by training, operated out of the Berlin office of the Reich Security Main Office that dealt with Jewish matters. Sent to France, he supervised the preparation of the list of French Jews who were arrested and deported to Auschwitz. A fanatical Nazi, Dannecker consistently urged the Vichy government to take more active measures against the Jews. Xavier Vallet, the first French commissioner for Jewish Affairs, described Dannecker as a “fanatical Nazi who went into a trance every time the word Jew is mentioned.” From France, Dannecker was reassigned to Bulgaria where he concluded an agreement with Alexander Belev, the head of Bulgaria’s Commissariat for the Jewish Problem, to deport 20,000 Jews to Auschwitz. Eventually, 11,000 Jews from Macedonia and Thrace were sent to Auschwitz, but the Bulgarian government reneged on their agreement to deport Jews from Bulgaria proper. In March 1944, Eichmann sent Dannecker to Hungary to organize the deportation of the country’s 800,000 Jews. Subsequently, approximately 400,000 Jews were deported from Hungary and perished in Auschwitz. Dannecker’s next assignment occurred in October 1944 when Eichmann appointed him Jewish commissioner in Italy. He remained in Italy until the end of the war. Captured by American troops in 1945, Dannecker committed suicide in an American prison in Bad Tolz on 10 December 1945.