Commandant Franz Ziereis poses with members of the SS staff of the Mauthausen concentration camp.
Overview
- Caption
- Commandant Franz Ziereis poses with members of the SS staff of the Mauthausen concentration camp.
From left to right are Haupsturmfuehrer Erich Wasitzky (the camp apothecary); Karl Schulz, chief of "Politischer Abteilung" (Gestapo office in the camp); Standartenfuhrenfuehrer Franz Ziereis (the camp commandant); Sturmbannfuehrer Eduard Krebsbach (camp doctor); Karl Boehmichen (camp doctor) and an unidentified Obersturmfuehrer. - Photographer
- Paul Ricken
- Date
-
1940 - 1944
- Locale
- Mauthausen, [Upper Austria] Austria
- Photo Credit
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Eugene S. Cohen
Rights & Restrictions
- Photo Source
-
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Copyright: United States Holocaust Memorial MuseumProvenance: Eugene S. CohenSource Record ID: Collections: 1993.58
Keywords & Subjects
Administrative Notes
- Biography
- Franz Ziereis (1905-1945) was commandant of the Mauthausen concentration camp. Ziereis was born August 13, 1905 in Munich. After attending commercial school in Munich, he signed up as a career military officer in Germany's Reichswehr (army) on April 1, 1924 for 12 years. On September 30, 1936 he left the army with the rank of sergeant and joined the SS. He was appointed SS Obersturmführer (SS first lieutenant), and in 1937 took over the leadership of the 22nd Hundertschaft (hundred-man-unit) of the SS Death's Head detachment "Brandenburg." In the spring of 1938 Ziereis participated with SS mobile units in the occupation of Austria. On July 1, 1938 he was transferred to the SS Death's Head regiment "Thüringen" as a training instructor. Upon an order by the leader of the SS Death's Head formations and by the inspector of the concentration camps, Theodor Eicke, Ziereis was sent from Buchenwald to Mauthausen on February 9, 1939, to take over the post of Commandant of Mauthausen, replacing Albert Sauer. On August 25, 1939 Ziereis was promoted to the post of SS-Sturmbannführer (SS major), and on April 20, 1944, due to "special achievements" as camp commandant, to the rank of SS-Standartenführer (SS colonel). After May 3, 1945 Ziereis fled together with his wife, but was discovered by American soldiers at his hunting lodge on the Phyrn mountain in Upper Austria on May 23. He tried to escape but was shot and seriously wounded. After his capture he was brought to a US hospital in Gusen, where he died. Following his death, his corpse was hanged by former prisoners on the camp fence in Gusen I.
[Source: "Franz Ziereis,"
Eduard Krebsbach (1894-1947), SS concentration camp physician who initiated the mass execution of ill and unfit prisoners by heart injections. Krebsbach received his doctorate from the University of Bonn. He worked for many years as a pediatrician and in-plant doctor, before applying for membership in the SS in 1937. The following year he was inducted into the SS as Untersturmführer (SS second lieutenant). Between the fall of 1941 and the fall of 1943 Krebsbach served as Standortarzt (chief physician) of the SS and the Police at the Linz, Steyr, Wels and Gusen satellite camps of Mauthausen. In this period he initiated the mass execution of sick prisoners by heart injections (Spritzen), for which he earned the nickname "Dr. Spritzbach". (Heart injections were given at the Gusen camp twice a week until April 1945). Krebsbach's career at Mauthausen ended abruptly after he shot and killed a German soldier by the name of Josef Breitenfellner while on vacation in May 1943. Krebsbach was then transferred to the Warwara concentration camp, where he led the selections and presided over the liquidation of the camp in August 1944. Afterwards Krebsbach became "Inspector for Epidemics" in Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania and then Oberstabsarzt (chief staff doctor) in the regular army. At the end of 1944 he left that job as well and went to work as the company doctor in a textile factory in the city of Kassel. Krebsbach was captured after the war and sentenced to death by a U.S. military court in Dachau on May 5, 1946. His execution took place in Landsberg on May 28, 1947.
[Source: Mauthausen Concentration Camp Memorial
- Record last modified:
- 2007-06-14 00:00:00
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1032443
