Born in
Sabine in the former
Upper Silesia region of the
German Empire (now, the village of
Sowin, Opole Voivodeship, Poland). Thomalla became a member of the
Nazi Party in 1932: (no. 1,238,872) and
Schutzstaffel (SS no. 41,206). These workers consisted of about eighty Jews from ghettos within the vicinity of the camp. A squad of ten watchmen trained at
Trawniki concentration camp guarded these workers. Upon completion of the camp, these Jews were shot. SS commander
Erwin Lambert who had previously been assigned to the
Action T4 euthanasia program and had constructed the new gas chambers in Treblinka, testified about Thomalla: Between July 1942 and October 1943, around 850,000 people were murdered in Treblinka. Thomalla was reportedly executed by the
NKVD (Soviet secret police) in
Jičín,
Czechoslovakia on 12 May 1945; he was formally declared dead
in absentia by a court in Ulm in 1957. ==References==