Kurt Franz
Encyclopedia
Kurt Hubert Franz was an SS officer and one of the commanders of the Treblinka extermination camp
. Franz was one of the major perpetrators of genocide
during the Holocaust
.
. He attended public school in Düsseldorf from 1920 to 1928, and then worked as a messenger. He started an apprenticeship as a cook beginning at the age of fifteen (1929) for the restaurant "Hirschquelle", and then at the Hotel Wittelsbacher Hof, before he gave his final exam.
Franz's father, a merchant, died early. Franz also had a sister. His mother was an observant Catholic. When she re-married, it was to a man with a strong right-wing nationalist outlook. Franz joined several right-wing national groups and served in the voluntary labor corps. He also trained with a master butcher for one year.
Franz joined the Nazi Party in 1932, and enlisted in the German army in 1935. He fulfilled his military obligation and after his discharge, in October 1937, he joined the SS-Totenkopfverbände
. First he received training with the Third Death Head Regiment Thuringia at Weimar
, and then served as cook and guard at the Buchenwald concentration camp
, where he attained the rank of Unterscharführer
(Corporal).
and detailed to take part in the Action T4
euthanasia
program. Franz worked as a cook at Hartheim
, Brandenburg
, Grafeneck and Sonnenstein. In late 1941, he was assigned as cook at T4 headquarters.
On 20 April 1942, Franz was promoted to Oberscharführer
(Staff Sergeant). In spring of 1942, Franz, along with other veterans of Action T4, went to Lublin and was posted to the Bełżec extermination camp, where he stayed until the end of August 1942.
death camp system, Franz was transferred to Treblinka extermination camp
. He initially took over command of the Ukrainian guard squads, but quickly became the camp's deputy commandant on the orders of Christian Wirth
.
Kurt Franz supervised work commandos, the unloading of transports, and the transfer of Jews from the undressing rooms to the gas chambers. Franz had a baby-like face, and for this he was nicknamed "Lalke" ("doll" in Yiddish) by the prisoners. But Franz's appearance belied his true nature. He was the dominant personality in day-to-day interactions with prisoners in Treblinka, and he became the most feared man at Treblinka for the cruelty which he visited upon them.
, Barry, along with him. Barry was trained to follow Franz's command, and Franz's command was usually to bite the genitalia or buttocks
of the prisoners.
Barry's first owner was Paul Groth, an SS officer at Sobibor
. Depending on his mood, Franz set the dog on inmates who for some reason had attracted his attention. The command to which the dog responded was, "Man, grab that dog!" By "man" Franz meant Barry; the "dog" was the inmate whom Barry was supposed to attack. Barry would bite his victim wherever he could catch him. The dog was the size of a calf so that, unlike smaller dogs, his shoulders reached to the buttocks and abdomen of a man of average size. For this reason he frequently bit his victims in the buttocks, in the abdomen and often, in the case of male inmates, in the genitals, sometimes partially biting them off. When the inmate was not very strong, the dog could knock him to the ground and maul him beyond recognition. But when Kurt Franz was not around, Barry was a different dog. With Franz not there to influence him, the dog allowed himself to be petted and even teased, without harming anyone.
. The music was written in a happy way, as though the deaths were a joyful process rather than one of mourning, in the key of D major
. Franz's lyrics for the song are listed below:
Franz enjoyed shooting at prisoners or those still in the rail cars with his pistol or a hunting rifle. He frequently selected bearded men from the newly arriving transports and asked them whether they believed in God. When the men replied "yes", Franz told each man to hold up a bottle as a target. He would then say to them, "If your God indeed exists, then I will hit the bottle, and if He does not exist, then I will hit you." Then Franz would shoot at them with a gun.
Kurt Franz also had experience as a boxer before arriving at Treblinka. He put this training to sadistic use by victimizing Jews as punching bags. On occasion he would "challenge" a Jew to a boxing duel (of course the prisoner had to oblige), and gave the prisoner a boxing glove, keeping one for himself and giving the other glove to the prisoner, to give the illusion of a fair fight. But Franz kept a small pistol in the glove that he kept for himself, and he would proceed to shoot the prisoner dead once the gloves were on and they had assumed the starting boxing position.
Oscar Strawczinski wrote:
Franz also frequently enjoyed kicking and killing babies from the arriving transports.
Franz was promoted to Untersturmführer
(Second Lieutenant) and became an appointed official on 21 June 1943 on the orders of Heinrich Himmler
. On 2 August 1943, Franz along with four SS men and sixteen Ukrainians went for a swim in the nearby Bug River
, which depleted the security at Treblinka significantly and helped to improve the chances of success of the prisoner revolt that took place at the camp that day. After the revolt, the camp's commandant Franz Stangl
left. Kurt Franz served as his replacement, and he was instructed to dismantle the camp and to eliminate every trace of evidence that it had ever existed. Franz had at his disposal some SS men, a group of Ukrainian guards and about 100 Jewish prisoners who had remained after the uprising. The physical work was carried out by the Jews during September and October 1943, after which thirty to fifty prisoners were sent to Sobibor
to finish dismantling there, and the remainder were shot and cremated on Franz's orders.
After Treblinka, in late autumn 1943, Franz was ordered to Trieste
and northern Italy, where he participated in the persecution of partisans and Jews until the war's end.
for 10 years until his arrest on 2 December 1959. A search of his home found a photo album of the Treblinka horrors with the title, "Beautiful Years".
At the Treblinka Trials
in 1965, Franz denied having ever killed a person, having ever set his dog on a Jew, and claimed to have only beaten a prisoner once. On September 3, he was found guilty of collective murder of at least 300,000 people, 35 counts of murder involving at least 139 people, and for attempted murder. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. He was released in 1993 for health reasons. Kurt Franz died in Wuppertal
in 1998.
Treblinka extermination camp
Treblinka was a Nazi extermination camp in occupied Poland during World War II near the village of Treblinka in the modern-day Masovian Voivodeship of Poland. The camp, which was constructed as part of Operation Reinhard, operated between and ,. During this time, approximately 850,000 men, women...
. Franz was one of the major perpetrators of genocide
Genocide
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...
during the Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
.
Early life
Kurt Franz was born in 1914 in DüsseldorfDüsseldorf
Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...
. He attended public school in Düsseldorf from 1920 to 1928, and then worked as a messenger. He started an apprenticeship as a cook beginning at the age of fifteen (1929) for the restaurant "Hirschquelle", and then at the Hotel Wittelsbacher Hof, before he gave his final exam.
Franz's father, a merchant, died early. Franz also had a sister. His mother was an observant Catholic. When she re-married, it was to a man with a strong right-wing nationalist outlook. Franz joined several right-wing national groups and served in the voluntary labor corps. He also trained with a master butcher for one year.
Franz joined the Nazi Party in 1932, and enlisted in the German army in 1935. He fulfilled his military obligation and after his discharge, in October 1937, he joined the SS-Totenkopfverbände
SS-Totenkopfverbände
SS-Totenkopfverbände , meaning "Death's-Head Units", was the SS organization responsible for administering the Nazi concentration camps for the Third Reich....
. First he received training with the Third Death Head Regiment Thuringia at Weimar
Weimar
Weimar is a city in Germany famous for its cultural heritage. It is located in the federal state of Thuringia , north of the Thüringer Wald, east of Erfurt, and southwest of Halle and Leipzig. Its current population is approximately 65,000. The oldest record of the city dates from the year 899...
, and then served as cook and guard at the Buchenwald concentration camp
Buchenwald concentration camp
Buchenwald concentration camp was a German Nazi concentration camp established on the Ettersberg near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937, one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps on German soil.Camp prisoners from all over Europe and Russia—Jews, non-Jewish Poles and Slovenes,...
, where he attained the rank of Unterscharführer
Unterscharführer
Unterscharführer was a paramilitary rank of the Nazi Party used by the Schutzstaffel between 1934 and 1945. The SS rank was created after the Night of the Long Knives...
(Corporal).
Action T4
In late 1939 Franz was summoned to the Führer's ChancelleryHitler's Chancellery (Kanzlei des Führers)
Die Kanzlei des Führers , also known as Privatkanzlei des Führers, was the Chancellery responsible for the Nazi Party and associated organizations and their dealings directly with Hitler...
and detailed to take part in the Action T4
Action T4
Action T4 was the name used after World War II for Nazi Germany's eugenics-based "euthanasia" program during which physicians killed thousands of people who were "judged incurably sick, by critical medical examination"...
euthanasia
Euthanasia
Euthanasia refers to the practice of intentionally ending a life in order to relieve pain and suffering....
program. Franz worked as a cook at Hartheim
Hartheim Euthanasia Centre
The Hartheim Euthanasia Centre was a Nazi killing centre that was part of their euthanasia programme, since also referred to as Action T4. It was housed in Hartheim Castle in the municipality of Alkoven near Linz in Austria.- Statistics :...
, Brandenburg
Brandenburg Euthanasia Centre
The Brandenburg Euthanasia Centre , officially known as the Brandenburg an der Havel State Welfare Institute The Brandenburg Euthanasia Centre , officially known as the Brandenburg an der Havel State Welfare Institute The Brandenburg Euthanasia Centre , officially known as the Brandenburg an der...
, Grafeneck and Sonnenstein. In late 1941, he was assigned as cook at T4 headquarters.
On 20 April 1942, Franz was promoted to Oberscharführer
Oberscharführer
Oberscharführer was a Nazi Party paramilitary rank that existed between the years of 1932 and 1945. Translated as “Senior Squad Leader”, Oberscharführer was first used as a rank of the Sturmabteilung and was created due to an expansion of the enlisted positions required by growing SA membership...
(Staff Sergeant). In spring of 1942, Franz, along with other veterans of Action T4, went to Lublin and was posted to the Bełżec extermination camp, where he stayed until the end of August 1942.
Treblinka
With a change of command in the Operation ReinhardOperation Reinhard
Operation Reinhard was the code name given to the Nazi plan to murder Polish Jews in the General Government, and marked the most deadly phase of the Holocaust, the use of extermination camps...
death camp system, Franz was transferred to Treblinka extermination camp
Treblinka extermination camp
Treblinka was a Nazi extermination camp in occupied Poland during World War II near the village of Treblinka in the modern-day Masovian Voivodeship of Poland. The camp, which was constructed as part of Operation Reinhard, operated between and ,. During this time, approximately 850,000 men, women...
. He initially took over command of the Ukrainian guard squads, but quickly became the camp's deputy commandant on the orders of Christian Wirth
Christian Wirth
Christian Wirth was a German police and SS officer who was one of the leading contributors to the program to exterminate the Jewish people of Poland, known as Operation Reinhard....
.
Kurt Franz supervised work commandos, the unloading of transports, and the transfer of Jews from the undressing rooms to the gas chambers. Franz had a baby-like face, and for this he was nicknamed "Lalke" ("doll" in Yiddish) by the prisoners. But Franz's appearance belied his true nature. He was the dominant personality in day-to-day interactions with prisoners in Treblinka, and he became the most feared man at Treblinka for the cruelty which he visited upon them.
Barry the dog
Franz was known for his unusual amount of cruelty and sadism. Franz made his rounds of the camp, often riding a horse, and he would take his St. Bernard dogSt. Bernard (dog)
The St. Bernard is a breed of very large working dog from the Italian and Swiss Alps, originally bred for rescue. The breed has become famous through tales of alpine rescues, as well as for its large size.-Appearance:The St. Bernard is a large dog...
, Barry, along with him. Barry was trained to follow Franz's command, and Franz's command was usually to bite the genitalia or buttocks
Buttocks
The buttocks are two rounded portions of the anatomy, located on the posterior of the pelvic region of apes and humans, and many other bipeds or quadrupeds, and comprise a layer of fat superimposed on the gluteus maximus and gluteus medius muscles. Physiologically, the buttocks enable weight to...
of the prisoners.
Barry's first owner was Paul Groth, an SS officer at Sobibor
Sobibór extermination camp
Sobibor was a Nazi German extermination camp located on the outskirts of the town of Sobibór, Lublin Voivodeship of occupied Poland as part of Operation Reinhard; the official German name was SS-Sonderkommando Sobibor...
. Depending on his mood, Franz set the dog on inmates who for some reason had attracted his attention. The command to which the dog responded was, "Man, grab that dog!" By "man" Franz meant Barry; the "dog" was the inmate whom Barry was supposed to attack. Barry would bite his victim wherever he could catch him. The dog was the size of a calf so that, unlike smaller dogs, his shoulders reached to the buttocks and abdomen of a man of average size. For this reason he frequently bit his victims in the buttocks, in the abdomen and often, in the case of male inmates, in the genitals, sometimes partially biting them off. When the inmate was not very strong, the dog could knock him to the ground and maul him beyond recognition. But when Kurt Franz was not around, Barry was a different dog. With Franz not there to influence him, the dog allowed himself to be petted and even teased, without harming anyone.
The Treblinka song
As reported by lower-ranking SS officers and soldiers, Kurt Franz also wrote the lyrics to a song, which celebrated the Treblinka extermination camp. This song was taught to the few newly arriving Jews who were not killed immediately and were instead forced to work as slave laborers at the camp (Sonderkommandos). These Jews were forced to memorize the song by nightfall of their first day at the camp. The melody for the song came from an SS officer at Buchenwald concentration campBuchenwald concentration camp
Buchenwald concentration camp was a German Nazi concentration camp established on the Ettersberg near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937, one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps on German soil.Camp prisoners from all over Europe and Russia—Jews, non-Jewish Poles and Slovenes,...
. The music was written in a happy way, as though the deaths were a joyful process rather than one of mourning, in the key of D major
D (musical note)
D is a musical note a whole tone above C, and is known as Re within the solfege system.When calculated in equal temperament with a reference of A above middle C as 440 Hz, the frequency of middle D is approximately 293.665 Hz. See pitch for a discussion of historical variations in...
. Franz's lyrics for the song are listed below:
Looking squarely ahead, brave and joyous, at the world. The squads march to work. All that matters to us now is Treblinka. It is our destiny. That's why we've become one with Treblinka in no time at all. We know only the word of our Commander. We know only obedience and duty. We want to serve, to go on serving until little luck ends it all. Hurray!
- lyrics by Kurt Hubert Franz
- testimony of SS-Unterscharführer (Corporal) Franz Suchomel, who worked at Treblinka
Further torment of prisoners
Kurt Franz reviewed the prisoner roll call and participated in meting out punishments. For instance, when seven prisoners attempted to escape the camp, Franz had them taken to the Lazarett and shot. He ordered a roll call and announced that if there were further attempted escapes, and especially if they were successful, ten prisoners would be shot for every escapee.Franz enjoyed shooting at prisoners or those still in the rail cars with his pistol or a hunting rifle. He frequently selected bearded men from the newly arriving transports and asked them whether they believed in God. When the men replied "yes", Franz told each man to hold up a bottle as a target. He would then say to them, "If your God indeed exists, then I will hit the bottle, and if He does not exist, then I will hit you." Then Franz would shoot at them with a gun.
Kurt Franz also had experience as a boxer before arriving at Treblinka. He put this training to sadistic use by victimizing Jews as punching bags. On occasion he would "challenge" a Jew to a boxing duel (of course the prisoner had to oblige), and gave the prisoner a boxing glove, keeping one for himself and giving the other glove to the prisoner, to give the illusion of a fair fight. But Franz kept a small pistol in the glove that he kept for himself, and he would proceed to shoot the prisoner dead once the gloves were on and they had assumed the starting boxing position.
Oscar Strawczinski wrote:
Franz also frequently enjoyed kicking and killing babies from the arriving transports.
Franz was promoted to Untersturmführer
Untersturmführer
Untersturmführer was a paramilitary rank of the German Schutzstaffel first created in July 1934. The rank can trace its origins to the older SA rank of Sturmführer which had existed since the founding of the SA in 1921...
(Second Lieutenant) and became an appointed official on 21 June 1943 on the orders of Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
. On 2 August 1943, Franz along with four SS men and sixteen Ukrainians went for a swim in the nearby Bug River
Bug River
The Bug River is a left tributary of the Narew river flows from central Ukraine to the west, passing along the Ukraine-Polish and Polish-Belarusian border and into Poland, where it empties into the Narew river near Serock. The part between the lake and the Vistula River is sometimes referred to as...
, which depleted the security at Treblinka significantly and helped to improve the chances of success of the prisoner revolt that took place at the camp that day. After the revolt, the camp's commandant Franz Stangl
Franz Stangl
Franz Paul Stangl was an Austrian-born SS commandant of the Sobibor and Treblinka extermination camps during the Operation Reinhard phase of the Holocaust. He was arrested in Brazil in 1967, extradited and tried in West Germany for the mass murder of 900,000 people, and in 1970 was found guilty...
left. Kurt Franz served as his replacement, and he was instructed to dismantle the camp and to eliminate every trace of evidence that it had ever existed. Franz had at his disposal some SS men, a group of Ukrainian guards and about 100 Jewish prisoners who had remained after the uprising. The physical work was carried out by the Jews during September and October 1943, after which thirty to fifty prisoners were sent to Sobibor
Sobibór
Sobibór is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Włodawa, within Włodawa County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. It lies close to the Bug River, which forms the border with Belarus and Ukraine. Sobibór is approximately south-east of Włodawa and east of the regional capital...
to finish dismantling there, and the remainder were shot and cremated on Franz's orders.
After Treblinka, in late autumn 1943, Franz was ordered to Trieste
Trieste
Trieste is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is situated towards the end of a narrow strip of land lying between the Adriatic Sea and Italy's border with Slovenia, which lies almost immediately south and east of the city...
and northern Italy, where he participated in the persecution of partisans and Jews until the war's end.
After the war
Following the war, Kurt Franz first worked as a laborer on bridges until 1949, at which point he returned to his former occupation as a cook and worked in DüsseldorfDüsseldorf
Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...
for 10 years until his arrest on 2 December 1959. A search of his home found a photo album of the Treblinka horrors with the title, "Beautiful Years".
At the Treblinka Trials
Treblinka trials
Two judicial trials directly concerning the Treblinka extermination camp have been held after World War II, both of them in Düsseldorf, Germany. These Treblinka trials belong to similar trials held during the early 1960's, such as the Jerusalem Adolf Eichmann trial and the Frankfurt Auschwitz...
in 1965, Franz denied having ever killed a person, having ever set his dog on a Jew, and claimed to have only beaten a prisoner once. On September 3, he was found guilty of collective murder of at least 300,000 people, 35 counts of murder involving at least 139 people, and for attempted murder. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. He was released in 1993 for health reasons. Kurt Franz died in Wuppertal
Wuppertal
Wuppertal is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located in and around the Wupper river valley, and is situated east of the city of Düsseldorf and south of the Ruhr area. With a population of approximately 350,000, it is the largest city in the Bergisches Land...
in 1998.