Execution of Franz Kraus
- Bestial Nazi SS Officer at Auschwitz Concentration Camp - Holocaust - WW2

12 April 2022

Category: High Ranking Nazi Representatives

Franz Kraus joined the Nazi Party and in 1932 he joined the SS. Kraus served as administration leader in various concentration camps, but he committed his worst atrocities in Auschwitz concentration camp. With his arrival, a change for better was expected but the reality was very different. He was active in selections on the rail ramp, and he enjoyed beating the elderly inmates. Kraus proved his utter vileness not only to the prisoners but also to the other SS guards.nDuring the liquidation of the women’s camp in January 1945, Kraus searched the poor women and divested them of food items provided to them from the camp inventory. He was also seen beating them in the process.

During the evacuation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, Franz Kraus was seen searching for prisoners with a revolver in each hand. Kraus and his SS team were seen shooting at prisoners they came across including the camp’s doctor who was taking care of those suffering from typhus. He was also responsible for blowing up the last crematoria. Nine days before the Soviets arrived in Auschwitz, the SS evacuated around 58,000 prisoners from Auschwitz and its sub camps to concentration camps in Germany and Austria. The Nazi regime needed the prisoners as slave labor and the Nazis wanted to remove all the evidence of the horrors and brutality the poor inmates had experienced.

Horrible death marches

This forced transfers would become known as “ death marches “. Thousands of prisoners died of starvation, and exhaustion. Those who could no longer walk, were killed. Approximately 15,000 prisoners died on this particular march. After the end of the war, Franz Kraus was arrested and he was tried at the Auschwitz Trial which began on November 24, 1947 and lasted one month. The Supreme National Tribunal in Polish Krakow sentenced Franz Kraus to death by hanging. He was 44 years old when he was executed on 24 January 1948.

For more information,
do not forget to check our video above.