Franz Bernhard Lucas (September 15, 1911, in

Osnabrück Osnabrück (; wep, Ossenbrügge; archaic ''Osnaburg'') is a city in the German state of Lower Saxony. It is situated on the river Hase in a valley penned between the Wiehen Hills and the northern tip of the Teutoburg Forest. With a populat ...

– December 7, 1994, in

Elmshorn Elmshorn (; nds, Elmshoorn) is a town in the district of Pinneberg in Schleswig-Holstein in Germany. It is 30 km north of Hamburg on the small river Krückau, a tributary of the Elbe, and with about 50,000 inhabitants is the sixth-largest t ...

) was a German

concentration camp Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simp ...

doctor.

Early life and education

Franz Lucas was the son of a butcher.Ernst Klee: ''Auschwitz. Täter, Gehilfen und Opfer und was aus ihnen wurde. Ein Personenlexikon'', Frankfurt am Main 2013, S. 263 After attending school in Osnabrück and

Meppen Meppen (; Northern Low Saxon: ''Möppen'') is a town in and the seat of the Emsland district of Lower Saxony, Germany, at the confluence of the Ems, Hase, and Nordradde rivers and the Dortmund–Ems Canal (DEK). The name stems from the word ' ...

, he passed his

Abitur ''Abitur'' (), often shortened colloquially to ''Abi'', is a qualification granted at the end of secondary education in Germany. It is conferred on students who pass their final exams at the end of ISCED 3, usually after twelve or thirteen yea ...

in 1933. He studied four semesters of Philology in

Münster Münster (; nds, Mönster) is an independent city (''Kreisfreie Stadt'') in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is in the northern part of the state and is considered to be the cultural centre of the Westphalia region. It is also a state d ...

, and graduated in medical studies in

Rostock Rostock (), officially the Hanseatic and University City of Rostock (german: link=no, Hanse- und Universitätsstadt Rostock), is the largest city in the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and lies in the Mecklenburgian part of the state, ...

and Danzig/Gdansk in 1942, where in the same year he was awarded his medical doctorate.

Nazi career

From June 1933 to September 1934 he was a member of the SA. On May 1, 1937, he joined the

NSDAP The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...

. On November 15, 1937, he got into the SS (No. 350 030) reaching the rank of SS First Lieutenant in 1943. In 1942, Lucas received a two-month training course under a leading contender in the

Waffen-SS The (, "Armed SS") was the combat branch of the Nazi Party's ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) organisation. Its formations included men from Nazi Germany, along with volunteers and conscripts from both occupied and unoccupied lands. The grew from th ...

medical academy in

Graz Graz (; sl, Gradec) is the capital city of the Austrian state of Styria and second-largest city in Austria after Vienna. As of 1 January 2021, it had a population of 331,562 (294,236 of whom had principal-residence status). In 2018, the popu ...

. Thereafter, he became a medical officer in

Nuremberg Nuremberg ( ; german: link=no, Nürnberg ; in the local East Franconian dialect: ''Nämberch'' ) is the second-largest city of the German state of Bavaria after its capital Munich, and its 518,370 (2019) inhabitants make it the 14th-largest ...

and Belgrade. Because of "defeatist remarks", Lucas had to serve a short time in a probation unit. On September 27, 1943, he received a letter with a new assignment. He was summoned to the Führungshauptamt - Office Group D - in order to provide medical services to the Waffen SS in Berlin beginning on October 1. As of December 15, 1943, he was transferred to the Office D III for Sanitation and Camp Hygiene of WVHA in Oranienburg, led by Enno Lolling. From mid-December 1943 to late summer 1944, Lucas was a camp doctor in I Auschwitz (Truppenarzt) and operating in the Auschwitz concentration camp (Gypsy camp,

Theresienstadt family camp The Theresienstadt family camp ( cs, Terezínský rodinný tábor, german: Theresienstädter Familienlager), also known as the Czech family camp, consisted of a group of Jewish inmates from the Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia, who were he ...

). Afterwards, he had further short-term missions in the

Mauthausen concentration camp Mauthausen was a Nazi concentration camp on a hill above the market town of Mauthausen (roughly east of Linz), Upper Austria. It was the main camp of a group with nearly 100 further subcamps located throughout Austria and southern Germany ...

in 1944, Stutthof concentration camp in 1944,

Ravensbrück Concentration Camp Ravensbrück () was a German concentration camp exclusively for women from 1939 to 1945, located in northern Germany, north of Berlin at a site near the village of Ravensbrück (part of Fürstenberg/Havel). The camp memorial's estimated figure o ...

in 1944 and Sachsenhausen in January 1945, where he served in March 1945 and appeared in Berlin with a letter of recommendation from a female Norwegian prisoner from the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Before the

Battle of Berlin The Battle of Berlin, designated as the Berlin Strategic Offensive Operation by the Soviet Union, and also known as the Fall of Berlin, was one of the last major offensives of the European theatre of World War II. After the Vistula– ...

Lucas fled in April 1945 to the west. His colleague in Ravensbrück Percy Treite said during the first Ravensbrück process about him: "Dr. Lucas was not under my responsibility, he took part in selections for the gas chamber and in shootings. After disagreements with Dr. Trommer, he went to Sachsenhausen and was sent as a punishment by all camps in Germany."Zitiert bei Silke Schäfer: ''Zum Selbstverständnis von Frauen im Konzentrationslager. Das Lager Ravensbrück.'' Berlin 2002, S. 135 The reason for this disagreement with Treite was that Lucas was issuing death certificates for the deceased prisoners from the concentration camp Uckermark, but they would never take a closer look. In addition, Treite has been present during the first shootings, after he had denied his participation and Lucas had to take over the activities; but Lucas denied this after a few days.Silke Schäfer: ''Zum Selbstverständnis von Frauen im Konzentrationslager. Das Lager Ravensbrück.'' Berlin 2002, S. 135

Post-war

Immediately after the war, Lucas escaped the denazification process and immediately got a job at the city hospital in

, first as a medical assistant, then as assistant medical director and finally as chief physician of the gynecological department. On learning of the charges against him, he lost his job in 1963 and worked in private practice.

Auschwitz trial

During the

Frankfurt Auschwitz trials The Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, known in German as ''der Auschwitz-Prozess'', or ''der zweite Auschwitz-Prozess,'' (the "second Auschwitz trial") was a series of trials running from 20 December 1963 to 19 August 1965, charging 22 defendants und ...

held between 1963–1965, Lucas first denied having carried out selections, he also denied that he had authorised the use of

Zyklon B Zyklon B (; translated Cyclone B) was the trade name of a cyanide-based pesticide invented in Germany in the early 1920s. It consisted of hydrogen cyanide (prussic acid), as well as a cautionary eye irritant and one of several adsorbents such ...

in the gas chambers and had supervised the killings. Testimony statements contradicted his story. On the 137th day of the trial, one of the defendants gave evidence for the first time as a witness against a co-defendant in a concentration camp trial. Former SS guard Stefan Baretzki: "I was not blind when Dr. Lucas had selected on the ramp. ... Five thousand men, he sent them in half an hour, and today he wants to stand as a savior." Lucas now agreed that he had been involved in four selections but claimed he had been obeying orders & had conducted the selections against his will. The jury in Frankfurt found him guilty of selecting at least one thousand people in at least four separate selections and sentenced him on 20 August 1965 to a total of three years and three months imprisonment. On 26 March 1968, Lucas was released from custody. When the verdict was reviewed by the Federal Supreme Court on 20 February 1969 it was decided that the question of the "compulsion at the ramp" of Auschwitz must be rethought due to the positive character image of Lucas presented in the trial. On 8 October 1970, he was released. During these proceedings, many prisoners spoke positively about Lucas, while the statements that led to his earlier condemnation were judged to be based on hearsay. Lucas was "involved in the extermination of human beings", but "did not deal with perpetrators, but only against his will", citing the so-called "putative emergency" according to § 52 StGB. Therefore, "no charge of guilt in the criminal sense" could be made.

Later life and death

From 1970 to 30 September 1983, he again worked in his own private practice and died on 7 December 1994.

References