Karl Fritzsch Signed Document - Dachau

Karl Fritzsch Signed Document - Dachau
Amazing typed document from Dachau written bySS-Obersturmfuhrer Karl Fritzsch dated 12.7.39. Karl Fritzsch was infamousfor the invention of the Gas chambers. The document reads :Karl Fritzsch Dachau on 14.7.39SS-ObersturmfuhrerSubject: Certificates and questionnaires.Enclosed I am sending my wife's certificates and questionnaire.The sealed letter from the doctor is enclosed.FritzschSS-ObersturmfuhrerKarl Fritzsch (10 July 1903 – reported missing 2 May 1945) was a Germanmember of the Nazi secret police Schutzstaffel from 1933-1945. He was adeputy- and an acting-commandant at the Auschwitz concentration camp.According to Rudolf Höss, Fritzsch first suggested using poisonous gasZyklon B for the purpose of mass murder.Karl Fritzsch was born in Bohemia into the family of a stove builder. Hisfather moved constantly on work assignments, and therefore Fritzsch neverreceived formal education. For some years he worked as a labourer on riverships along the River Danube. His marriage in 1928 to Franziska Stichproduced three children, but ended in divorce in 1942. Fritzsch joined theNazi Party and the SS (NSDAP # 261135 SS # 7287) in 1930 at the age of 27.He became a career SS man. Almost as soon as it opened, he acquired aposition at the Dachau concentration camp in 1934.Due to his camp experience, several months after the German invasion ofPoland, in May 1940 he became deputy to Rudolf Höss and the head of theeconomic operation of Auschwitz (Schutzhaftlagerführer). Fritzsch quicklyobtained a reputation as the Auschwitz horror. He used to select prisonersto die of starvation in reprisal for the escape attempts among prisoners.Together with Höss, he was responsible for the torture death of victimslocked inside standing cells in the basement of the Bunker, i.e. the Block11 or 13 prison until they died. Karl Fritzsch addressed the first 758inmates of the camp, brought in June 1940, with the following words: Youcame here not to a sanatorium, but to a German concentration camp, fromwhich there is no other way out but through the chimney. If someone doesn'tlike it, they can go straight to the wires. If there are Jews in thetransport, they have the right to live no longer than two weeks, priests amonth, the rest three months. Another time he said: For us, all of you arenot human, but a pile of dung (...). For such enemies of the Third Reich asyou, the Germans will have no favor and no mercy. We will be delighted todrive you all through the grates of the crematorium furnaces. Forget yourwives, children and families, here you all savor like dogs.On 29 July 1941, a camp count found that three prisoners were missing andFritzsch sentenced 10 remaining prisoners to immurement. One of thecondemned, Franciszek Gajowniczek, was reprieved when a fellow prisoner, theFranciscan priest Maximilian Kolbe, offered to take his place. After over 2weeks starvation, only Kolbe remained alive and the priest was killed in theunderground bunker by lethal injection. Kolbe was later canonized by PopeJohn Paul II. Fritzsch was also fond of psychological torture. FormerAuschwitz prisoner Karol Świętorzecki recalled the first Christmas Evebehind the camp barbed wire, on 24 December 1940, was also one of the mosttragic. "The Nazis set up a Christmas tree, with electric lights, on theroll-call square. Beneath it, they placed the bodies of prisoners who haddied while working or frozen to death at roll call. Lagerführer KarlFritzsch referred to the corpses beneath the tree as “a present” for theliving, and forbade the singing of Polish Christmas carols."According to testimony of his superior Rudolf Höss, it was also Fritzsch whofirst came up with the idea of using poison gas Zyklon B for the purpose ofmass murder. Fritzsch ordered the killing of Soviet POWs locked in cells inthe basement of the Bunker while Höss went away on an official trip in lateAugust 1941. Fritzsch tried out the effect of Zyklon B inside cells whichwere not air-tight, subjecting the victims to even more torturous death.Fritzsch repeated the test-killing of additional victims using Zyklon B soonthereafter in the presence of Höss. According to Höss the preferred methodfor the mass murders in Auschwitz using Zyklon B was devised on site.On 15 January 1942, Fritzsch was transferred to KZ Flossenbürg asSchutzhaftlagerführer. From early August until October 1942 he was temporarysubstitute commander of the camp. In October 1943, he was arrested as a partof an internal SS investigation into corruption. An SS court charged himwith murder. As a punishment he was transferred to front line duty(SS-Panzergrenadier-Ersatzbatallion 18). It is assumed that he fell duringthe battle of Berlin in May 1945.It is commonly believed that Fritzsch perished in the Battle for Berlin buthis final fate remained long unknown. Soviet sources claimed that MI-6caught him in Norway. In his 2007 memoirs, For He Is an Englishman, Memoirsof a Prussian Nobleman, Captain Charles Arnold-Baker recorded that as an MI6officer in Oslo he arrested Fritzsch: "We picked up, for example, the deputycommandant of Auschwitz, a little runt of a man called Fritzsch whom wenaturally put in the custody of a Jewish guard – with strict instructionsnot to damage him, of course.This Typed document from Auschwitz measures 120mm x 210mm