Kleinicke was named Righteous Among the Nations in 2018; he is one of the few Nazi Party members to be given this award, along with Oskar Schindler, Hans Walz, Karl Plagge and Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz.

[2] In 1941, Kleinicke was recruited into the team who started the planning and construction near Auschwitz concentration camp.

[2][4] Having just married a woman named Cilly, eleven years his junior,[2][3] he moved to Chrzanów, close to the camp.

[2] On many occasions, he warned Jews about upcoming roundups,[5] rescued them from being deported, hid them in his attic and his shed, or helped them flee across the border.

[4] In a September 2015 documentary, Holocaust survivor Josef Königsberg testified that Kleinicke saved his life by removing him from a queue of men who were going to be deported.

[1][5] The ceremony was held on 14 January 2020 at Yad Vashem, making Kleinicke the 628th German to be honoured by the organisation.