Franz Stangl

Franz Stangl (March 26, 1908 – June 28, 1971) was an SS officer, commandant of the Sobibór and of the Treblinka Nazi extermination camps.

The son of a night-watchman, he was born in Altmünster, Austria, on March 26, 1908. After working as a weaver, Stangl joined the Austrian police in 1931 and soon afterwards he may have joined the then illegal Austrian Nazi Party. Shortly before his death he claimed to have joined only after the Anschluss (the inclusion of Austria into "Greater Germany" by the Nazi regime) in 1938.

After Anschluss, Stangl was quickly promoted through the ranks. In 1940 Stangl became superintendent of the T-4 Euthanasia Program at the Euthanasia Institute at Schloss Hartheim where mentally and physically handicapped people were sent to be killed.

In 1942 he was transferred to Poland where he worked under Odilo Globocnik. Stangl was commandant of extermination camps in Sobibór (March, 1942 - September, 1942) and Treblinka (September, 1942 - August, 1943). Always dressed in white riding clothes, Stangl gained a reputation as an efficient administrator and was described as the "best camp commander in Poland".

At the end of the war Franz Stangl managed to conceal his identity and although imprisoned in 1945 he was released two years later. He escaped to Italy with his colleague from Sobibór, Gustav Wagner, where he was helped by some officials of the Vatican (notably archbishop Aloïs Hudal) to reach Syria on a Red Cross passport. Stangl was joined by his wife and family and lived in Syria for three years before moving to Brazil in 1951. After years of other jobs, Stangl found work at the Volkswagen plant in Sao Paulo with the help of friends, still using his own name.

For years his responsibility in the mass murder of men, women and children had been known to the Austrian authorities but Austria did not issue a warrant for Stangl's arrest until 1961. It took another six years before he was tracked down by Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal and arrested in Brazil.

After extradition to West Germany he was tried for the deaths of around 900,000 people. He admitted to these killings but argued: "My conscience is clear. I was simply doing my duty ...". Found guilty on October 22, 1970, Stangl was sentenced to life imprisonment. He died of heart failure in Düsseldorf prison on June 28, 1971.

Franz Stangl was interviewed, while in prison waiting for his trial, by the journalist and biographer Gitta Sereny in 1970 and his history and quotes are reported in her book Into That Darkness (1974). Sereny wrote that she had been waiting and searching (with the help of prison directors) for years before she found a main perpetrator of the Holocaust who was capable and willing to talk about his experiences and that several other candidates were unable or not open enough.

References

- Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness (1974)