Rapportführer was a paramilitary title of the SS, specific to the Totenkopfverbande (Concentration Camp Service). An SS-Rapportführer was usually a mid-level SS-non-commissioned officer

Non-commissioned officer

A non-commissioned officer , called a sub-officer in some countries, is a military officer who has not been given a commission...

 (often an Oberscharführer

Oberscharführer

Oberscharführer was a Nazi Party paramilitary rank that existed between the years of 1932 and 1945. Translated as “Senior Squad Leader”, Oberscharführer was first used as a rank of the Sturmabteilung and was created due to an expansion of the enlisted positions required by growing SA membership...

or Hauptscharführer

Hauptscharführer

Hauptscharführer was a Nazi paramilitary rank which was used by the Schutzstaffel between the years of 1934 and 1945. The rank was the highest enlisted rank of the SS, with the exception of the special Waffen-SS rank of Sturmscharführer....

) who served as the commander of a group of Blockführer who themselves were assigned to oversee barracks within a Concentration Camp

Nazi concentration camps

Nazi Germany maintained concentration camps throughout the territories it controlled. The first Nazi concentration camps set up in Germany were greatly expanded after the Reichstag fire of 1933, and were intended to hold political prisoners and opponents of the regime...

.

The primary duty of a Rapportführer was to conduct daily and evening camp roll call, which was usually a long and grueling process involving prisoners standing for sometimes hours on end in all types of weather

Weather

Weather is the state of the atmosphere, to the degree that it is hot or cold, wet or dry, calm or stormy, clear or cloudy. Most weather phenomena occur in the troposphere, just below the stratosphere. Weather refers, generally, to day-to-day temperature and precipitation activity, whereas climate...

 conditions. The Rapportführer also oversaw camp discipline of prisoners as well as training for junior SS personnel. Most Rapportführers in the SS were known for their brutality, which such individuals as Eric Muhsfeldt

Eric Muhsfeldt

SS-Oberscharführer Eric Mußfeldt was a senior NCO of the Sonderkommando at the Auschwitz concentration camp.-Personal life:...

 and Gustav Wagner

Gustav Wagner

Gustav Franz Wagner was an SS-Oberscharführer from Vienna, Austria. Wagner was a starter deputy commander of the Sobibor extermination camp in German-occupied Poland, where more than 200,000 Jews were gassed during Operation Reinhard...

 holding this position.

In larger camps (such as Auschwitz, the Rapportführer would answer to a Camp Adjutant SS-Officer, but in smaller camps (such as Sobibor

Sobibór

Sobibór is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Włodawa, within Włodawa County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. It lies close to the Bug River, which forms the border with Belarus and Ukraine. Sobibór is approximately south-east of Włodawa and east of the regional capital...

) the Rapportführer worked directly for the Camp Commander and served in a type of Sergeant Major

Sergeant Major

Sergeants major is a senior non-commissioned rank or appointment in many militaries around the world. In Commonwealth countries, Sergeants Major are usually appointments held by senior non-commissioned officers or warrant officers...

position.

Source

• Zentner, Christian & Bedürftig, Friedemann, The Encyclopedia of the Third Reich, (Macmillan), New York (1991)