![]() ![]() One of the Sobibór prisoners improvised a song which ironically described camp life (original text with English translation): As the prisoners ate the bread, Wagner laughed loudly, enjoying his joke because he knew that these Jews were pious. Inmate Eda Lichtman wrote that on the Jewish fast day of Yom Kippur, Wagner appeared at roll call, selected some prisoners, gave them bread and forced them to eat it. This atrocious spectacle was carried out before all of us, including Abraham’s younger brother.” When Wagner grew weary of the blows, he took out his revolver and killed him on the spot. Furious, he pulled Abraham naked off his bed and began to beat him all over his body. Suddenly Wagner came into our barrack, and Abraham did not hear him call to stand up at once before him. After a long and arduous work day, this young man collapsed on his pallet and fell asleep. I remember that one night a group of youths aged fifteen or sixteen arrived in the camp. I saw him beat two men to death with a rifle, because they did not carry out his instructions properly, since they did not understand German. His lust to kill knew no bounds… He would snatch babies from their mothers’ arms and tear them to pieces in his hands. In civilian life he was, no doubt, a well-mannered man at Sobibor he was a wild beast. “He was a handsome man, tall and blond - a pure Aryan. Survivors of the camp described him as a cold-blooded sadist.Wagner was known to beat and thrash camp inmates on a regular basis, and to kill Jews without reason or restraint. Wagner supervised the routine and daily life at Sobibór, and he was one of the most brutal SS officers. More than any other officer at Sobibór, Wagner was responsible for the daily interactions with prisoners. Although absent during the uprising, he did help dismantle the camp, among other things by executing the Arbeitsjuden from Treblinka who tore down the barracks. Together with Frenzel he selected the prisoners who had to work in or outside the camp from the incoming transports. Wagner was in charge of selecting which prisoners from the newly arrived transports would be used as slave laborers in and outside the camp, and which would be sent to their deaths in the gas chambers. When Wagner was on vacation or attending to duties elsewhere, Karl Frenzel assumed his role within the camp. Once the gassing installations were completed, Wagner became deputy commandant of the camp under Commandant Franz Stangl. His official title was quartermaster-sergeant of the camp. ĭue to his experience in T4, Wagner was assigned to help establish the Sobibór extermination camp in March 1942. In May 1940, Wagner was part of the Action T4 euthanasia program at Hartheim with administrative functions. After being arrested for proscribed National Socialist agitation, he fled to Germany, where he joined the SA and later the SS in the late 1930s. Due to his brutality, he was known as “ The Beast” and “ Wolf”īorn in Vienna, Wagner joined the Nazi Party in 1931 as member number 443,217. Gustav Franz Wagner (18 July 1911 – 3 October 1980) was am Austrian member of the SS with the rank of Staff sergeant ( Oberscharführer). Wagner was a deputy commander of the Sobibór extermination camp in German-occupied Poland, where more than 200,000 Jews were gassed during Operation Reinhard. It is something the German government and other European and American governments should be deeply,deeply ashamed off because they escaped under their watch. It is just unfathomable how many of the most evil and vile war criminals escaped justice. ![]()
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