Franz Xaver Ziereis (13 August 1905 – 24 May 1945) was the commandant of 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 ...

from 1939 until the camp was liberated by the American forces in 1945.

Early life and SS career

Ziereis was born on 13 August 1905 in

Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

Kingdom of Bavaria The Kingdom of Bavaria ( ; ; spelled ''Baiern'' until 1825) was a German state that succeeded the former Electorate of Bavaria in 1806 and continued to exist until 1918. With the unification of Germany into the German Empire in 1871, the kingd ...

German Empire The German Empire (),; ; World Book, Inc. ''The World Book dictionary, Volume 1''. World Book, Inc., 2003. p. 572. States that Deutsches Reich translates as "German Realm" and was a former official name of Germany. also referred to as Imperia ...

(now in

Bavaria Bavaria, officially the Free State of Bavaria, is a States of Germany, state in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the list of German states by area, largest German state by land area, comprising approximately 1/5 of the total l ...

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), where he spent 8 years in elementary school and then began as an apprentice and messenger boy in a department store. In the evenings he studied commerce. In 1922 he went to work as a labourer in a carpentry shop. Ziereis joined Germany's

Reichswehr ''Reichswehr'' (; ) was the official name of the German armed forces during the Weimar Republic and the first two years of Nazi Germany. After Germany was defeated in World War I, the Imperial German Army () was dissolved in order to be reshaped ...

(army) on 1 April 1924, for a period of 12 years. He was discharged with the rank of sergeant in 1936 and joined the SS on September 30 of the same year. He attained the rank of SS-Obersturmführer and was assigned as a training instructor to the

SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV; or 'SS Death's Head Battalions') was a major branch of the Nazi Party's paramilitary (SS) organisation. It was responsible for administering the Nazi concentration camps, concentration camps and extermination camps of Nazi Germany ...

. In 1937 he was given command of a Totenkopfverbände unit and later became a training instructor.''Ziereis, Franz''. In: Erich Stockhorst: ''5000 Köpfe. Wer war was im 3. Reich''. VMA-Verlag, Wiesbaden 1967.

Concentration camp commandant

Zeireis replaced Albert Sauer as commandant of Mauthausen on 9 February 1939 by order of

Theodor Eicke Theodor Eicke (17 October 1892 – 26 February 1943) was both a senior SS functionary and a Waffen-SS divisional commander in Nazi Germany. He was a key figure in the development of Nazi concentration camps. Eicke served as the second com ...

, Inspector of Concentration Camps. On 25 August 1939, Ziereis received a promotion to the rank of SS-Sturmbannführer and, on 20 April 1944 he received his final promotion to SS-Standartenführer.

Post-war flight and death

Ziereis fled with his wife on 3 May 1945, but was tracked down 100 miles (160 km) away by an American army unit on 23 May 1945. As he attempted to escape, American soldiers proceeded to shoot Ziereis three times in the stomach and brought him to a U.S. military hospital set up at the former Gusen I concentration camp. Enraged prisoners had to be stopped from beating him to death. Ziereis died shortly after interrogation by a former inmate of Mauthausen, socialist Hans Maršálek. In a confession, he had implicated several leading perpetrators at the camp, including Eduard Krebsbach, who had ordered the building of the gas chamber at Mauthausen, Erich Wasicky, who had built the gas van there, and

Gauleiter A ''Gauleiter'' () was a regional leader of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) who served as the head of a ''Administrative divisions of Nazi Germany, Gau'' or ''Reichsgau''. ''Gauleiter'' was the third-highest Ranks and insignia of the Nazi Party, rank in ...

August Eigruber August Eigruber (16 April 1907 – 28 May 1947) was an Austrian-born Nazi Gauleiter and ''Reichsstatthalter'' of Reichsgau Oberdonau (Upper Danube) and Landeshauptmann of Upper Austria. He was convicted of war crimes at Mauthausen-Gusen c ...

, who was chiefly responsible for the conditions since the area fell under his jurisdiction. His corpse was later hung on the fence of Gusen I by former prisoners of Gusen. Krebsbach, Wasicky, and Eigruber were later tried at the Mauthausen Trial and executed.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ziereis, Franz 1905 births 1945 deaths Mauthausen concentration camp personnel SS-Standartenführer Deaths by firearm in Austria Reichswehr personnel German military personnel killed in World War II German prisoners of war in World War II held by the United States Nazi concentration camp commandants who died in prison custody Prisoners who died in United States military detention