December 22, 1947, Krakow, Poland. The former staff of Auschwitz - the deadliest German Nazi
concentration camp - hears their sentences read. After a month of gruesome testimonies,
23 defendants out of the 41 are sentenced to death by hanging.
One of them is Franz Kraus, another sadistic Nazi criminal.
Franz Kraus was born on September 27, 1903 in Munich. In 1931 he 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.
On one occasion he was seen personally strangling elderly Jews and grabbing them by their throats.
He also kicked people in the stomach so that they would fall to the ground.
They often did not stand up anymore.
Kraus proved his utter vileness not only to the prisoners but also to the other SS guards.
During one surprise inspection in camp’s watchtower, Kraus found some cigarettes
in the camp guard’s possessions. Kraus had him placed under arrest for two weeks.
In late 1944, Kraus accused one female prisoner of being drunk and ordered all the prisoners of
her block outside. He then ordered them to stand by the gate, squatting, with their arms stretched
forward. Subsequently, the female prisoner was sent to a camp hospital to check if she was drunk.
Even though the doctor determined that she was not drunk, Kraus placed her into standing cell
of block 11 for a night. However, this was not the end. When the camp was evacuated in January 1945,
Kraus was seen looking for this female prisoner with a gun in his head.
During 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, 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.
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.
Such crimes could not be left unpunished. After the end of the war, Franz Kraus was
arrested and had to face justice for his crimes. 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, There were no tears shed for Franz Kraus.
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