Biography: Josef Ackermann

Josef Ackermann was born in Lucerne, Switzerland, in 1896. In 1916 he commenced working for various German newspapers as an editor and journalist. In 1933 he was sent to Stadelheim prison as a protective custody prisoner and then transferred to the Dachau concentration camp, from where he was released in 1934. The Gestapo arrested Ackermann again in 1939. He was sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp and remained in the Mittelbau Dora camp until the end of the war.
At Buchenwald Ackermann worked in the pathology department as clerk to the camp doctor Dr Waldemar Hoven. He testified at the Dachau Main Trial.

After the war Ackerman was appointed director of the Munich News Service. As the founder and publisher of the Münchner Stadtanzeiger he reported on the Dachau Trials. He died on August 22, 1959. The “Buchenwald Case” commemorative brochure shown in the special exhibition comes from Ackermann’s estate in the archive of the Buchenwald Memorial.