Editing Heinrich Matthes (section)

== Nazism ==
Matthes joined the Nazi Party and its paramilitary wing the [[Sturmabteilung|''Sturmabteilung'']]'' ''in 1934. He was drafted when [[World War II]] began in 1939, and after two years was recruited to [[Action T4]], the Nazi eugenics program during which disabled people were systematically [[Murder|murdered]] in the name of racial purity.

In August 1942, Matthes was stationed in Lublin, and drafted into the [[Schutzstaffel|''Schutzstaffel'']], before being sent to Treblinka, where he was appointed commanding officer of Camp II by [[Christian Wirth]]. His roommate, [[Einsatzgruppen|''Einsatzgruppen'']] member [[Franz Suchomel]], later recalled that Wirth installed him against his will so that he could keep a better eye on him. 

Matthes was obsessed with cleanliness. In the autumn of 1942, Matthes shot two prisoners because at the end of the work day they had not properly cleaned to his satisfaction the stretcher which they used to transport corpses. In the winter of 1942—43, a typhus epidemic broke out in Treblinka. Matthes took eight sick inmates to the ''Lazarett'' and had them shot. During that same winter he shot the prisoner Ilik Weintraub because, while transferring bodies from the gas chambers to the pits, Weintraub had stopped for a moment to drink some water from the well. He was also remembered by survivors of Treblinka as having regularly beaten the inmates "with a completely expressionless, apathetic look on his face, as if the beatings were part of his daily routine".

After being arrested sometime after the end of the war, Matthes was charged in the Treblinka trials of 1965, where he delivered testimony about the operations of the gas chambers. He was convicted of [[genocide]] and sentenced to life imprisonment. He died in 1978, at the age of 76.
[[Category:Modern Villains]]
[[Category:Genocidal]]
[[Category:Imprisoned]]
[[Category:Military]]
[[Category:Mass Murderers]]
[[Category:European Villains]]
[[Category:Nazi Party Members]]
[[Category:Villains of World War 2]]
[[Category:Deceased]]
[[Category:Male]]
[[Category:Anti-Semitic]]
[[Category:Emotionless Villains]]
[[Category:Anti-LGBT]]
[[Category:Xenophobes]]
[[Category:Supremacists]]
[[Category:Ableist]]
[[Category:Abusers]]
[[Category:Psychopath]]
[[Category:Destroyer of Innocence]]
[[Category:Murderer]]