Erich Mußfeldt

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Erich Mußfeldt, photo from 1947
Incineration furnace in the Majdanek concentration camp crematorium

Erich Mußfeldt , also often written to Erich Muhsfeldt (born February 18, 1913 in Neubrück near Hennigsdorf , Brandenburg , † January 24, 1948 in Krakow ) was a German SS Oberscharführer and head of the crematoria in the Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps .

Life

Mußfeldt was a baker by profession. He joined the SA in 1933 and was a member of the NSDAP from 1939 . Then he joined the SS .

After the start of the Second World War , he was assigned to the SS Totenkopf Division in January 1940 . After completing a “qualifying” course, he began his service in the main camp of Auschwitz in mid-August 1940 , first as head of prisoner detachments and later as block leader.

On November 15, 1941, he was transferred to the Majdanek concentration camp and soon afterwards worked as a commando for the cremation of the corpses. In 1942, he completed a seven-day cremation course on Kori- brand stoves in Sachsenhausen concentration camp . After the crematorium was put into operation in Majdanek in June 1942 , he became its director. In order to be able to exhume the bodies of prisoners buried at the beginning on the camp grounds and the surroundings of the Majdanek concentration camp and to be able to burn them effectively in open pits in the course of special operation 1005 , he and Anton Endres were transferred to Auschwitz by camp commandant Hermann Florstedt on February 19, 1943 -Birkenau sent for training in the combustion technology practiced there. Florstedt's intention in sending the specialists was, according to Angrick, to take over the "procedural interlocking of murders and eliminations" for the Majdanek extermination camp. Mußfeldt had a command officer explain the gassing process and the subsequent cremation of the corpses while he was taking part in a corpse cremation at the open pit at the White House . After returning to the Majdanek concentration camp, Mußfeldt remained head of the crematorium and, according to his post-war testimony, was also responsible for the exhumation and cremation of the prisoners' corpses and Endres for operating the gas chamber there. From February 1943 he was in charge of the “excavation and cremation of thousands of corpses”. The Jewish inmates of the corpse cremation squad were murdered after a short time and replaced by new ones. The prisoners of the last cremation squad were also murdered in October 1943 after the landings and corpses were burned. He received support from twelve colleagues from the Auschwitz concentration camp who were experienced in soil removal, such as Franz Hößler . At the beginning of June 1943 he was promoted to Oberscharführer. He was involved in murders and selection of prisoners in Majdanek . For example, he is said to have "joyfully pushed stubborn people into the fiery furnace even while they were alive". In the Majdanek concentration camp he was an eyewitness to the harvest festival , in which almost 18,000 Jewish prisoners were murdered, and filed a report on this after the end of the war.

In the course of the evacuation of the Majdanek concentration camp, he was transferred to Auschwitz-Birkenau in May 1944. From then on he worked under Otto Moll , the agent for the extermination of the Hungarian Jews (so-called Hungary Action ), as head of the Birkenau Crematoria II and III . Robert Seitz , already an employee of Mußfeldt in Majdanek, took over the management of crematoria IV and V. After the end of the Hungary campaign , Mußfeldt is said to have been director of all crematoria in late summer 1944. The Auschwitz survivor Filip Müller , who was assigned to the Sonderkommando , described Mußfeldt as a “staid and harmless” looking man who was “graceful”.

He then did military service with the Waffen SS and took part in the battle for Hungary . After being injured in the war, he was transferred back to the camp SS. From March 1945 he worked as a report leader in the Flossenbürg concentration camp . In April 1945 he accompanied a column of prisoners during the evacuation of the camp. During this death march he was responsible for the removal of corpses and is also said to have shot prisoners who were unable to march himself.

After his arrest, Mußfeldt was sentenced to life imprisonment by a US military court on January 22, 1947 for his actions in the Flossenbürg concentration camp in the main Flossenbürg trial. Mußfeldt was then extradited to Poland and sentenced to death in the Kraków Auschwitz Trial before the Supreme National Tribunal of Poland on December 22, 1947 . Witnesses described him as extremely cruel and brutal in the course of the trial, for example he is said to have drowned prisoners in sewers in Majdanek.

"The arriving transports were always subjected to a selection [...] Those unable to work were killed with the help of gas in the gas chamber ."

The ruling was on January 24, 1948 Krakow Montelupich prison by hanging enforced . His body was then made available to medical students at the University of Krakow as illustrative material.

Mußfeldt first became known to a wider public through the concentration camp drama Die Grauzone , in which he is played by Harvey Keitel . The film is based on the memories of the Jewish Auschwitz survivor Miklós Nyiszli , who in his function as a prisoner doctor often spoke to Mußfeldt and therefore had relatively personal contact with him. In his memoirs, which appeared in 1946, Nyiszli describes two experiences with Mußfeldt that were very memorable for him. Mußfeldt had Nyiszli examine him once for headaches and heart problems. Nyiszli attributed these complaints to the execution (shot in the neck) of eighty men immediately beforehand by Mußfeldt. Mußfeldt denied this with the remark that he didn't mind shooting 5 or 100 people, and justified the complaints with his alcohol consumption. Nyiszli also reports on a girl of about sixteen who was found breathing by the prisoners of the Sonderkommando after a gassing operation. The summoned Nyiszli was able to bring the girl back to consciousness. Mußfeldt, who noticed this situation, was asked by Nyiszli to let the girl live and put her in a women's detachment outside the crematoria. Mußfeldt thought this solution was too risky and had the girl shot by a subordinate SS man.

literature

  • Elissa Mailänder: A specialist: the daily work of Erich Muhsfeldt, chief of the crematorium at Majdanek concentration and extermination camp, 1942-44 . In: Élisabeth Gessat-Anstett, Jean-Marc Dreyfus (Ed.): Destruction and human remains. Disposal and concealment in genocide and mass violence , Manchester University Press 2014, ISBN 978-0-7190-9602-0 , pp. 46-68.
  • Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum (ed.): Auschwitz in the eyes of the SS. Oświęcim 1998, ISBN 83-85047-35-2 .
  • Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum (ed.): Auschwitz death books . Volume 1: Reports , KG Saur Verlag, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-598-11263-7 .
  • Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich: Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .
  • Ernst Klee: Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices, victims and what became of them. A dictionary of persons , S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2013, ISBN 978-3-10-039333-3 .
  • Hermann Langbein : People in Auschwitz. Frankfurt am Main, Berlin Vienna, Ullstein-Verlag, 1980, ISBN 3-548-33014-2 .
  • Andrej Angrick : “Aktion 1005” - Removal of traces of Nazi mass crimes 1942–1945: A “secret Reich matter” in the area of ​​conflict between the turn of the war and propaganda. Wallstein, 2018, two volumes, 1381 pages. ISBN 978-3-8353-3268-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h Ernst Klee: Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices, victims and what became of them. An encyclopedia of persons , Frankfurt am Main 2013, p. 293
  2. ^ Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum (ed.): Auschwitz death books . Volume 1: Reports , Munich 1995, section perpetrator biographies, p. 291
  3. ↑ State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau (ed.): Auschwitz in the eyes of the SS. Oświęcim 1998, sections of short biographies of Nazi criminals , p. 238 f.
  4. ^ Andrej Angrick: "Aktion 1005" - Removal of traces of Nazi mass crimes 1942–1945: A "secret Reich affair" in the area of ​​conflict between the turn of the war and propaganda , Göttingen 2018, p. 281
  5. ^ Andrej Angrick: "Aktion 1005" - Removal of traces of Nazi mass crimes 1942–1945: A "secret Reich affair " in the area of ​​conflict between the turn of the war and propaganda , Göttingen 2018, p. 281ff.
  6. ↑ Andrej Angrick: “Aktion 1005” - Removal of traces of Nazi mass crimes 1942–1945: A “secret Reich affair” in the area of ​​tension between the turn of the war and propaganda , Göttingen 2018, p. 283ff.
  7. ↑ Andrej Angrick: "Aktion 1005" - Removal of traces of Nazi mass crimes 1942–1945: A "secret Reich affair" in the area of ​​conflict between the turn of the war and propaganda , Göttingen 2018, p. 288
  8. ↑ Wolfgang Benz : The Holocaust. 7th edition, Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-39822-3 , p. 107f.
  9. ^ Andrej Angrick: "Aktion 1005" - Removal of traces of Nazi mass crimes 1942–1945: A "secret Reich affair" in the area of ​​conflict between the turn of the war and propaganda , Göttingen 2018, p. 993
  10. ^ Stefan Hördler: Order and Inferno. The concentration camp system in the last year of the war , Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-8353-1404-7 , p. 435
  11. ↑ State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau (ed.): Auschwitz in the eyes of the SS. Oświęcim 1998, p. 238 f.
  12. ^ Elissa Mailänder: A specialist: the daily work of Erich Muhsfeldt, chief of the crematorium at Majdanek concentration and extermination camp, 1942-44 . In: Élisabeth Gessat-Anstett, Jean-Marc Dreyfus (Ed.): Destruction and human remains. Disposal and concealment in genocide and mass violence , Manchester University Press 2014, p. 57
  13. ↑ United States vs Friedrich Becker et al. - Case 000-50-46, Review and Recommendations, May 21, 1947, p. 49 f
  14. ^ Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich: Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 425
  15. ↑ SS-Oberscharführer Erich Mußfeld during an interrogation , quoted in: Holocaust Reference .
  16. ↑ Procedure of the executions on www.geocities.com ( Memento of January 13, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  17. ↑ SoKos - The Gray Area ( Memento of the original from February 1, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. - a film by Tim Blake Nelson  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.sonderkommando-studien.de
  18. ^ Hermann Langbein: People in Auschwitz. Frankfurt am Main, 1980, p. 464 ff.
personal data
SURNAME Mußfeldt, Erich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Muhsfeldt, Erich (wrong name form)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS Oberscharführer and head of the crematoria in the Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps
DATE OF BIRTH February 18, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Neubrück near Hennigsdorf , Brandenburg
DATE OF DEATH January 24, 1948
Place of death Krakow