Karl Fritzsch | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1903-07-10)10 July 1903 |
| Died | Missing from 2 May 1945(1945-05-02) (aged 41) |
| Allegiance |  Nazi Germany |
| Branch |  Schutzstaffel |
| Service years | Dachau 1934–1939 Auschwitz 1940–1941 Flossenbürg 1942–1943 |
| Rank | SS-Hauptsturmführer |
| Unit | SS-Totenkopfverbände |
| Commands | Schutzhaftlagerführer Auschwitz Camp Deputy[1] |
| Children | 3 |
| Other work | First suggested and experimented with usingZyklon B gas for the purpose of mass murder |
Karl Fritzsch (10 July 1903 – 2 May 1945) was a GermanSS official who served as deputy and actingcommandant at theAuschwitz concentration camp from 1940 to 1941. He is best known as the official responsible for the death of priestMaximilian Kolbe and, according toRudolf Höss, first suggesting using poisonous gasZyklon B and experimenting withgas chambers for the purpose of mass murder at Auschwitz. Fritzsch served at a number ofNazi concentration camps until 1944 when he was implicated in acorruption scandal and dismissed from his positions. Fritzsch was sent tofront line duty and is believed to have died at theBattle of Berlin on 2 May 1945, but this is unconfirmed, and his fate is unknown.
Karl Fritzsch was born on 10 July 1903 inNassengrub in theKingdom of Bohemia inAustria-Hungary (present-day Mokřiny,Czech Republic) into aBohemian German family. His father was astove builder and moved constantly on work assignments, so Fritzsch never receivedformal education. For some years, he worked as a sailor for First Danube Steamship Company, which operatedriver boats on theDanube. Fritzsch's marriage in 1928 to Franziska Stich produced three children but ended in divorce in 1942.[1]
In July 1930, at the age of 27, Fritzsch joined theNazi Party (membership number 261,135) and itsparamilitary wing theSchutzstaffel (SS) (membership number 7287). He became a career SS man and acquired a position at theDachau concentration camp in 1934, almost as soon as it opened, as a member of the 1stSS-Totenkopf Regiment "Upper Bavaria".[1] By September 1939, Fritzsch had moved into thecommandant's office at Dachau and headed thepostal censorship office there.
In May 1940, due to his camp experience, Fritzsch became deputy toRudolf Höss and head of the economic operation (Schutzhaftlagerführer) ofAuschwitz. Fritzsch quickly obtained a fearsome reputation in Auschwitz, selecting prisoners to die ofstarvation in reprisal for escape attempts. Together with Höss, he was responsible for thetorture death of victims locked insidestanding cells in the basement of the Bunker, i.e. theBlock 11, or 13 prison, until they died.[1] Fritzsch addressed the first 758 inmates of the camp, brought in June 1940, with the following words: "You came here not to asanatorium, but to a German concentration camp, from which there is no other way out but through thechimney. If someone doesn't like it, they can go straight tothe wires. If there are Jews in the transport, they have the right to live no longer than two weeks, priests a month, the rest three months." Another time he said: "For us, all of you are not human, but a pile of dung (...). For such enemies of theThird Reich as you, the Germans will have no favor and no mercy. We will be delighted to drive you all through the grates of thecrematorium furnaces. Forget your wives, children and families, here you all savor like dogs."[2]
On 29 July 1941, when a headcount found that three prisoners were missing, Fritzsch sentenced 10 remaining prisoners toimmurement. One of the condemned,Franciszek Gajowniczek, was reprieved when a fellow prisoner,Franciscan priestMaximilian Kolbe, offered to take his place. After over two weeks of starvation, only Kolbe and three others remained alive. They were killed in the underground bunker bylethal injection. Kolbe was latercanonized byPope John Paul II for his actions. Fritzsch was also fond ofpsychological torture. FormerAuschwitz prisoner Karol Świętorzecki recalled the first Christmas Eve behind the camp barbed wire, in 1940, was also one of the most tragic. "The Nazis set up aChristmas tree, with electric lights, on the roll-call square. Beneath it, they placed the bodies of prisoners who had died while working or frozen to death at roll call.Lagerführer Karl Fritzsch referred to the corpses beneath the tree as 'a present' for the living, and forbade the singing of PolishChristmas carols."
According to testimony of Höss, it was also Fritzsch who came up with the idea of usingZyklon B for the purpose of mass murder at Auschwitz. While Höss was on an official trip in late August 1941, Fritzsch ordered the killing ofSovietprisoners of war by being locked in cells in the basement of the Bunker. Fritzsch tested Zyklon B inside the cells, which were not air-tight, subjecting the victims to even more torturous death. He repeated the tests on additional victims in the presence of Höss. According to Höss, the preferred method for the mass murders in Auschwitz using Zyklon B was devised on site.[1]
On 15 January 1942, Fritzsch was transferred toFlossenbürg asSchutzhaftlagerführer, and from early August until October 1942 he was temporary substitute commandant of the camp.
By 1944, Fritzsch had been arrested as part of an internal SS investigation intocorruption among the leadership at severalNazi concentration camps. An SS court charged him with murder and, as punishment, he was transferred tofront-line duty in theSS-Panzergrenadier Ersatzbatallion 18.[1] It is commonly believed that Fritzsch waskilled in action in theBattle for Berlin on 2 May 1945, a week beforeGerman surrender, but his final fate had long remained unknown. Soviet sources claimed thatMI6 caught Fritzsch inNorway. In his 2007 memoirs,For He Is an Englishman, Memoirs of a Prussian Nobleman, CaptainCharles Arnold-Baker recorded that as an MI6 officer inOslo, he arrested Fritzsch: "We picked up, for example, the deputy commandant of Auschwitz, a little runt of a man called Fritzsch whom we naturally put in the custody of a Jewish guard – with strict instructions not to damage him, of course."[3]
On 4 May 2015, Dutch journalistWierd Duk [nl] published an article on his investigation of Fritzsch's disappearance. In it he cites a report from 1966 by theCentral Office of the State Justice Administrations for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes in which Berlin inhabitant Gertrud Berendes claims that Fritzsch had shot himself on 2 May 1945 in the basement of a house at Sächsische Strasse 42 in Berlin. She mentioned that her father and a neighbour had buried Fritzsch in thePreußenpark and she had sent his personal belongings to his wife. In a separate report from 1966 by theKriminalpolizeiRegensburg, Fritzsch's wife states that she had no reason to doubt her husband's death and that she had received his wedding ring and personal letters.[4]However, Duk's bookDe Beul en de Heilige on Fritzsch that was supposed to be launched first at the end of 2015 and then in 2016 at publisherPrometheus, was postponed indefinitely and has since been removed from the publishers' list of forthcoming books.[5]
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