1. Gustav Franz Wagner was an Austrian member of the SS with the rank of Staff sergeant.
23 Facts About Gustav Wagner
1. 2.
Gustav Wagner served as a soldier in the Austrian army from 1928 and joined the then illegal Nazi Party in 1931 as member number 443,217.
3.
In May 1940, Gustav Wagner was part of the Aktion T4 euthanasia program at Hartheim killing centre with administrative functions and cremating the bodies of murdered patients.
4.
Once the gassing installation, barracks, and fences were completed, Gustav Wagner became deputy commandant of the camp under Commandant Franz Stangl.
5.
Gustav Wagner was in charge of selecting which prisoners from the newly arrived transports would be used as slave laborers in and outside the camp, from among the newly arrived ghetto inhabitants.
6.
When Gustav Wagner was on vacation or attending to duties elsewhere, Karl Frenzel assumed his role within the camp.
7.
Gustav Wagner was known to beat and thrash camp inmates on a regular basis, and to kill Jews without reason or restraint.
8.
Suddenly Gustav Wagner came into our barrack, and Abraham did not hear him call to stand up at once before him.
9.
When Gustav Wagner grew weary of the blows, he took out his revolver and killed him on the spot.
10.
Inmate Eda Lichtman wrote that on the Jewish fast day of Yom Kippur, Gustav Wagner appeared at roll call, selected some prisoners, gave them bread and forced them to eat it.
11.
Gustav Wagner enjoyed this song and he forced the prisoners to sing it frequently.
12.
Gustav Wagner was not present at the camp on the day of the Sobibor revolt on 14 October 1943, having taken a holiday with his then wife Karin to celebrate the birth of a daughter, Marion.
13.
Gustav Wagner was considered the strictest in terms of prisoner supervision at the camp.
14.
Gustav Wagner helped to dismantle and remove evidence of the camp by ruthlessly commanding the Jewish prisoners who performed this task.
15.
Heinrich Himmler considered Gustav Wagner to be "one of the most deserving men of Operation Reinhard".
16.
Gustav Wagner found labouring work on houses and eventually was sentenced to death in absentia.
17.
Later both men with Stangl's wife and children fled to Brazil, where Gustav Wagner was admitted as a permanent resident and Brazilian passport was issued in the name of "Gunther Mendel".
18.
Gustav Wagner worked as a house-helper for a wealthy Brazilian family and then as a maker of concrete fence posts on a farm.
19.
Gustav Wagner married a local woman who was a widow and raised her children and lived outside Sao Paulo.
20.
Gustav Wagner was arrested on 30 May 1978 after an investigation by Simon Wiesenthal.
21.
When Stangl had been put on trial in Germany, he testified that Gustav Wagner was living in Brazil, but the Brazilian police failed to locate him.
22.
However, Gustav Wagner instead surrendered himself to the Brazilian authorities, who then refused extradition requests from Israel, Austria, Yugoslavia, West Germany, and Poland.
23.
In October 1980, Gustav Wagner was found dead with a knife in his chest in Atibaia.