Fritz Klein

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For other people named Fritz Klein, see Fritz Klein (disambiguation).
Fritz Klein
Belsen trial
Criminal penaltyDeath
Details
VictimsThousands
Span of crimes
1943–1944
CountryPoland
Location(s)Auschwitz concentration camp
Military career
Allegiance Germany
Service/branch Schutzstaffel
Klein surrounded by bodies. The British Army liberating Bergen-Belsen forced German camp personnel to bury the corpses of prisoners.

Fritz Klein (24 November 1888 – 13 December 1945) was a Romanian-German

Nazi doctor and war criminal, hanged for his role in atrocities at Auschwitz concentration camp and Bergen-Belsen concentration camp during the Holocaust
.

Early life, education, and Nazi soldier

Klein was born in Feketehalom, Austria-Hungary (now Codlea in central Romania).[1]

Klein was considered a

Siebenbürgen (Transylvania), Romania.[citation needed
]

In 1939, as a Romanian citizen, he was drafted into the Romanian army, where, after the outbreak of the war with the Soviet Union in 1941, he served as a paramedic on the eastern front. In May 1943, Romanian fascist dictator Marshal

SS-Personalhauptamt, and posted to Yugoslavia.[citation needed
]

Nazi camp doctor and execution

On 15 December 1943, he arrived in

Selektionen") on the ramp. In December 1944 he was transferred to Neuengamme concentration camp, from where he was sent to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in January 1945. He remained at the camp with commandant Josef Kramer and assisted in handing it over to British troops. Klein was imprisoned and forced to help bury all unburied corpses in mass graves. The British Army Film and Photographic Unit
Number 5 photographed Klein standing in a mass grave, in a well-known 1945 photo (seen on the right).

In Auschwitz, when asked by

Ella Lingens-Reiner how he reconciled his actions with his ethical
obligations as a physician, Klein famously stated:

"My

appendix out of the human body. The Jews are the gangrenous appendix of mankind. That's why I cut them out."[2][3][4]

Klein and 44 other camp staff were tried in the

Belsen Trial by a British military court at Lüneburg. The trial lasted several weeks, from September to November 1945. During the trial Anita Lasker testified that Klein took part in selections for the gas chamber.[5]

Klein was sentenced to death and

Hamelin prison [de] by Albert Pierrepoint on 13 December 1945.[6][7]

References

  1. ^ Onciu, Camelia "Bestia in halat alb", monitorulexpres.ro, 15 April 2008; retrieved 15 October 2010. (in Romanian)
  2. ^ Brueggemann, Rudy Mad Science And Criminal Medicine Archived 20 February 2006 at the Wayback Machine
  3. ISBN 978-0-8133-7532-8
    .
  4. ^ Lingens-Reiner, Ella (1948). Prisoners Of Fear. pp. 1–2.
  5. ^ Law reports of trials of war criminals, selected and prepared by the United Nations War Crimes Commission. – Volume II, The Belsen Trial (PDF). London: United Nations War Crimes Commission. 1947. p. 21f.
  6. ISSN 0362-4331
    .
  7. Christian Science Monitor
    ; accessed 7 April 2018.

External links

Further reading

  • Lifton, Robert Jay (1986). The Nazi doctors: medical killing and the psychology of genocide. Basic Books.
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