Horrible Death of Franz Ziereis
- Nazi Commandant of Mauthausen & Gusen Concentration Camps - WW2

30 September 2022

Category: High Ranking Nazi Representatives

On the 1st of April 1924 Franz Ziereis signed up as a career military officer in the Reichswehr – the German Army. Hitler and the Nazi Party came into power in 1933 and 3 years later in September 1936, Ziereis left the army with the rank of sergeant and joined the SS. He attained the rank of SS-Obersturmführer, which was equivalent to first lieutenant, and was assigned as a training instructor to the SS Death's Head Units, established in 1934 by Theodor Eicke. When in the spring of 1938 Adolf Hitler annexed the Federal State of Austria into the German Reich, Ziereis participated in this operation with Death's Head mobile units.

The Anschluss, as it became known, took place over three days between the 11th and 13th of March 1938. On the 9th of February 1939, by order of Theodor Eicke, Inspector of Concentration Camps, Ziereis was sent to take over the post of Commandant of Mauthausen concentration camp located in Upper Austria, 20 kilometres east of Linz. Ziereis replaced Albert Sauer who was removed from the camp service due to negligence and excessive mildness to the concentration camp inmates.

The Mauthausen main camp operated from the 8th of August 1938, several months after the German annexation of Austria, when the SS transferred the first prisoners from the Dachau concentration camp. In December 1939 the SS ordered the construction of a second concentration camp – Gusen - just a few kilometres from Mauthausen. The Gusen camp went into operation in May 1940. Living and working conditions in Mauthausen, as in Gusen, were harsh, which led to the death by murder, mistreatment, starvation, exposure, and disease of more than half of the prisoners.

Franz Ziereis was the commandant of the Mauthausen concentration camp from 1939 until 1945 On the 5th of May 1945 the US Army reached Gusen and Mauthausen. By the time of its liberation, most of the guards in Mauthausen had fled and around 30 of those who remained were killed by the prisoners. A similar number were also killed in Gusen. After the liberation, some prisoners were in such a weakened state that many still died in the days and weeks that followed the liberation. An estimated 197,000 prisoners passed through the Mauthausen concentration camp and its subcamps between August 1938 and May 1945. At least 95,000 died there, and more than 14,000 of them were Jewish.

Failed escape

Franz Ziereis had fled the camp together with his wife on the 3rd of May, 1945 two days before the liberation. However, he was discovered by American soldiers at his hunting lodge in the Phyrn mountain in Upper Austria on the 23rd of May. While trying to escape, he was shot three times in the stomach. After his capture he was brought to a US hospital in Gusen. On the following day, the dying Ziereis was interrogated by the authorities and confessed to everything. How the inmates had been killed by gassing, hard labor, or through benzine injections or how at an outside temperature of minus 12 degrees they made the inmates bath in water and then stand in the open stark naked until they died.

Some inmates had to haul stones until they collapsed, then they were shot, and their record was annotated "Trying to escape". Others were driven into a barbed-wire fence or were literally torn to pieces by the dog named "Lord". In most cases, Ziereis himself took part in the executions which according to his testimony were carried out on the order of Heinrich Himmler - the head of the SS, Ernst Kaltenbrunner – the Chief of the Reich Security Main Office, and Heinrich Müller - Director of the Gestapo. During the interrogation, which took more than 6 hours, he lay in terrible pain before finally succumbing to his gunshot wounds.

Franz Ziereis was 39 years old when he died on the 24th of May, 1945. Following his death, his corpse, naked except for the bandage on his left arm, was hanged by former prisoners on the camp fence in Gusen. On his back in red they had painted “ Heil Hitler “ and on his behind they had painted Swastikas. Ziereis remained there for several days in such a way that his torso and legs dangled aimlessly over the wire. And only due to the stench of his decay an army officer eventually ordered the body removed. There were no tears shed for Franz Ziereis.

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