Franz Bernhard Lucas (15 September 1911, in

Osnabrück Osnabrück (; ; archaic English: ''Osnaburg'') is a city in Lower Saxony in western Germany. 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 population of 168 ...

– 7 December 1994, in Elmshorn) was a German

concentration camp A concentration camp is a prison or other facility used for the internment of political prisoners or politically targeted demographics, such as members of national or ethnic minority groups, on the grounds of national security, or for exploitati ...

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, 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 year ...

in 1933. He studied four semesters of Philology in

Münster Münster (; ) is an independent city#Germany, 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 ...

, and graduated in medical studies in

Rostock Rostock (; Polabian language, Polabian: ''Roztoc''), officially the Hanseatic and University City of Rostock (), is the largest city in the German States of Germany, state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and lies in the Mecklenburgian part of the sta ...

and Danzig 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 1 May 1937, he joined the NSDAP. On 15 November 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 (; ) was the military branch, combat branch of the Nazi Party's paramilitary ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) organisation. Its formations included men from Nazi Germany, along with Waffen-SS foreign volunteers and conscripts, volunteers and conscr ...

medical academy in

Graz Graz () is the capital of the Austrian Federal states of Austria, federal state of Styria and the List of cities and towns in Austria, second-largest city in Austria, after Vienna. On 1 January 2025, Graz had a population of 306,068 (343,461 inc ...

. Thereafter, he became a medical officer in

Nuremberg Nuremberg (, ; ; in the local East Franconian dialect: ''Nämberch'' ) is the Franconia#Towns and cities, largest city in Franconia, the List of cities in Bavaria by population, second-largest city in the States of Germany, German state of Bav ...

and

Belgrade Belgrade is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Serbia, largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers and at the crossroads of the Pannonian Basin, Pannonian Plain and the Balkan Peninsula. T ...

. Because of "defeatist remarks", Lucas had to serve a short time in a probation unit. On 27 September 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 15 December 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 Truppenarzt (military doctor) in Auschwitz I and operating in the

Auschwitz concentration camp Auschwitz, or Oświęcim, was a complex of over 40 Nazi concentration camps, concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) d ...

(Gypsy camp, Theresienstadt family camp). Afterwards, he had further short-term missions in the

Mauthausen concentration camp Mauthausen was a German Nazi concentration camp on a hill above the market town of Mauthausen, Upper Austria, Mauthausen (roughly east of Linz), Upper Austria. It was the main camp of a group with List of subcamps of Mauthausen, nearly 100 f ...

in 1944, Stutthof concentration camp in 1944,

Ravensbrück concentration camp Ravensbrück () was a Nazi 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 of 1 ...

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, Lucas fled in April 1945 to the west. On 8 December 1944, as Lagerarzt (camp doctor) and SS-Obersturmführer in Stutthof concentration camp, Lucas inspected the dead body of Justus Nussbaum, the brother of Osnabrück's famous painter Felix Nussbaum, to attest that Justus allegedly deceased in Lager-Block 13 at 6:50 a.m. on 7 December 1944 of a general cardiac insufficiency.Arolsen Archives: 1 Inhaftierungsdokumente / 1.1 Lager und Ghettos / 1.1.41 Konzentrationslager Stutthof / 1.1.41.2 Individuelle Unterlagen Stutthof / Individuelle Häftlings Unterlagen - KL Stutthof / Akten mit Namen ab NOWIKOW / DocID: 4584448 (JUSTUS NUSSBAUM)''
digital file
accessed 27 January 2024. 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." 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 had 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 Elmshorn, 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 language, German as , was a series of three trials running from 20 December 1963 to 14 June 1968, charging 25 defendants under German criminal law for their roles in the Holocaust as mid- to lower- ...

held between 1963–1965, Lucas first denied having carried out selections; he also denied that he had authorized the use of Zyklon B in the gas chambers and had supervised the killings. Testimony statements contradicted his story. On the 87th day of the trial, Helen Goldmann, a Jewish girl originally from

Czechoslovakia Czechoslovakia ( ; Czech language, Czech and , ''Česko-Slovensko'') was a landlocked country in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland beca ...

who was deported to Auschwitz in May 1944, testified that Dr. Lucas threw her two-year-old sister on the floor, selecting her mother, her sister, a second three-year-old sister, and her brother to be murdered in the gas chambers. She was told later that day, "If Doctor Lucas was at the station picking them right and left, he says, then my mother and the children are not going to be living long, they're going to be killed the same day." 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 to the gas hambersin 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 and 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 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