Oranienburg - Haus Szczypiorski

About a kilometer east of the Inspectorate of KL (concentration camps) is Haus Szczypiorski, where the head of the Inspectorate, SS-Obergrüppenführer Theodore Eicke, lived with his family from 1934 until his death in 1943. As a senior SS official, Eicke chose to build his own villa instead of settling in one of the regular SS settlements nearby.

Eicke was a hard-line Nazi who became a member of the party in 1928 and a member of the SS in 1930. Eicke was a key figure in the development of the concentration camps and was commandant of Dachau between June 1933 and July 1934. He is said to have been one of two SS officers who shot SA’s leader, Ernst Rohm, in the Stadelheim prison July 1, 1934 (the other was Eickes’ adjutant Michael Lippert).

Eicke set the guidelines for the entire camp guard system in the concentration camps (SS-Totenkopfverbände) and was appointed by the SS chief, Heinrich Himmler, in July 1934, as head of the newly formed Inspectorate for the concentration camps. As head of the concentration camps, it was Eicke who developed and expanded the concentration camps organization. In 1939, he was appointed commander of the newly formed SS division, Totenkopf, which consisted of men who served in the concentration camps. Eicke was killed on February 26th, 1943, when his plane was shot down by Soviet flak about 100 kilometres south of Kharkiv, Ukraine.