Franz Wolf (SS member)

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Franz Wolf

Franz Wolf (born April 9, 1907 in Krummau , Austria-Hungary ; † unknown) was a German SS squad leader who was sentenced to eight years in prison in the Sobibor trial . His brother Josef Wolf , with whom he in a common SS command in the Sobibor extermination camp exercised Service, was in rebellion of Sobibor killed by fleeing inmates.

Life

After training as a forester, Wolf worked in his father's photo shop until 1939. In the late 1920s and again briefly in autumn 1938, he was a member of the Czechoslovak army . Wolf became a member of the SdP in 1936 . After the incorporation of the Sudetenland into the German Reich as a result of the Munich Agreement , he was drafted into the Wehrmacht. After the beginning of the Second World War he took part in the Polish and western campaigns as a member of the Wehrmacht .

Nazi killing centers

In January 1940, Wolf was summoned to Berlin by the Führer’s office as part of “ Aktion T4 ” . From there he was transferred to the Nazi killing center in Hadamar in the fall of 1940 . As a photographer, he took pictures of the mentally ill before they became victims of euthanasia. In autumn 1941 he was ordered back to Berlin, where he continued his work as a photographer for “Aktion T4”. From the summer of 1942 until the spring of 1943 he was employed as a photographer at the Heidelberg University Hospital .

Extermination camp

In March 1943 Wolf was ordered to Lublin, where he took up his service in the Sobibór extermination camp in March 1943 in the sorting barracks and also with the forest command as part of the “ Aktion Reinhardt ” . Wolf and his brother, SS-Unterscharfuhrer Josef Wolf, had the task of collecting the clothing of the Jews, which they had to remove before going to the gas chamber (called hose) or to the barracks to have their hair cut, and through an entrance to the nearby baggage and To have the sorting barrack brought. There the clothing was sorted by the work details and sorted according to money and valuables under the supervision of the SS. It is known that Franz Wolf mocked the women on the way to the gas chambers in Sobibór:

"Dalli, Dalli, ladies, work makes life sweet!"

Sometimes Wolf was with the forest command, which had to cut wood in the nearby forest. It is not clear whether he was present when prisoners were shot or whether he shot himself. He was feared because of his whip, showed submissiveness upwards and cynical-sarcastic behavior downwards.

After 1943

After the "Aktion Reinhardt" ended, Wolf was transferred to the Adriatic Coastal Operation Zone in Trieste in November 1943, as was most of the "Aktion Reinhardt" staff . Here he was a member of the " Special Department, Operation R ", which served the "extermination of Jews", the confiscation of Jewish property and the fight against partisans . After the defeat of the German Reich , he fled to Austria , where he was captured by the US Army and taken to an internment camp near Weiden . After his release he worked as a photographer for the US Army until May 1946.

Wolf later lived in Eppelheim and was arrested in the course of the investigation in the early 1960s. In 1966 he was indicted in the Sobibor Trial and sentenced to eight years in prison for his involvement in the murder of an unknown number of people - at least 39,000.

literature

  • Barbara Distel : Sobibor . In: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 8: Riga, Warsaw, Vaivara, Kaunas, Płaszów, Kulmhof / Chełmno, Bełżec, Sobibór, Treblinka. CH Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-57237-1 , p. 376 ff.
  • Jules Schelvis : Sobibór extermination camp. Unrast-Verlag . Hamburg / Münster 2003, ISBN 3-89771-814-6 .
  • Henry Friedlander : The Origins of Nazi Genocide - From Euthanasia to the final Solution , Chapel Hill 1995, ISBN 0-8078-2208-6 , p. 240
  • Information material from Bildungswerk Stanislaw Hantz e. V .: Schöne Zeiten - Material collection on the extermination camps of Aktion Reinhardt Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka . Reader
  • Dick de Mildt: In the Name of the people: Perpetrators of Genocide in the Post-War Prosecution in West-Germany - The 'Euthanasia' and 'Aktion Reinhard' Trial Cases . Kluwer law International, Netherlands 1996, ISBN 90-411-0185-3 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dick de Mildt: In the Name of the people: Perpetrators of Genocide in the Post-War Prosecution in West Germany - The 'Euthanasia' an 'Aktion Reinhard' Trial Cases . Netherlands 1996, p. 215 f.
  2. ^ Henry Friedländer: The Origins of Nazi Genocide - From Euthanasia to the final Solution . Chapel Hill 1995, p. 240.
  3. ↑ a b c Short biography of Franz Wolf on deathcamps.org
  4. ↑ Schelvis: Sobibór extermination camp , Hamburg / Münster 2003, p. 82.
  5. ↑ a b Schelvis: Sobibór extermination camp . P. 313.
  6. ↑ Ferdinand Ranft: Without shame and without remorse . In: Die Zeit , No. 13/1966
personal data
SURNAME Wolf, Franz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS-Unterscharführer in the Sobibor extermination camp
DATE OF BIRTH April 9, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Krummau
DATE OF DEATH 20th century or 21st century