Herbert Floss or Herbert Floß (25 August 1912 – 22 October 1943) was an SS functionary of

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

who served as acting commander of the

Sobibor extermination camp Sobibor ( ; ) was an extermination camp built and operated by Nazi Germany as part of Operation Reinhard. It was located in the forest near the village of Żłobek Duży in the General Government region of Occupation of Poland (1939–1945), ...

during

the Holocaust in Poland The Holocaust saw the ghettoization, robbery, deportation and mass murder of Jews, alongside other groups under Nazi racial theories, similar racial pretexts in Occupation of Poland (1939–1945), occupied Poland by the Nazi Germany. Over th ...

. He also served as cremation expert in Camp II ''Totenlager'' at the

Treblinka extermination camp Treblinka () was the second-deadliest extermination camp to be built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Mas ...

.The Holocaust: Lest we forget: Extermination camp Sobibor
/ref> Floss joined the

NSDAP The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party ( or NSDAP), was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor, the German Workers ...

in 1930, the SA in 1931, and the SS in 1935. He served at

Sobibor Sobibor ( ; ) was an extermination camp built and operated by Nazi Germany as part of Operation Reinhard. It was located in the forest near the village of Żłobek Duży in the General Government region of Occupation of Poland (1939–1945), ...

from its establishment in April 1942 until the uprising on 14 October 1943. Before entering service in Sobibor, Floss was stationed in

Buchenwald Buchenwald (; 'beech forest') was a German Nazi concentration camp established on Ettersberg hill near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within the Altreich (Old Reich) territori ...

and several euthanasia centres. In the early period of Sobibor, Floss was the acting commander for a few weeks until he was succeeded by Gustav Wagner. Before the victims went into the gas chambers, he took their last possessions from them. According to

Erich Fuchs Erich Fuchs (9 April 1902 – 25 July 1980) was an SS functionary who worked for the Action T4 mass-murder program, and for the Operation Reinhard phase of the Holocaust. Fuchs was charged with war crimes at the Bełżec Trial in 1963–64, fo ...

, Floss participated in the trial gassing of several dozen Jewish women at Sobibor. Fellow Treblinka SS officer Heinrich Matthes described this period: "Floss arrived at this time ovember 1942 who, so I presume, must previously have been in another camp. He then had the installation built for burning the corpses. The incineration was carried out by placing railroad rails on blocks of concrete. The corpses were then piled up on these rails. Brush wood was placed under the rails. The wood was drenched with gasoline. Not only the newly obtained corpses were burnt in this way, but also those exhumed from the ditches." By the end of July 1943, the Jewish "death brigade" in Camp II, supervised by Floss, had cremated about 700,000 corpses.Tregenza, Michael. ''Christian Wirth: Inspekteur der Sonderkommandos, Aktion Reinhard''. Vol. XV, Lublin 1993, p. 57. At Sobibor Floss trained the Ukrainian guards. One week after the uprising he accompanied a group of them to

Lublin Lublin is List of cities and towns in Poland, the ninth-largest city in Poland and the second-largest city of historical Lesser Poland. It is the capital and the centre of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 336,339 (December 2021). Lublin i ...

. When the train was near

Chełm Chełm (; ; ) is a city in eastern Poland in the Lublin Voivodeship with 60,231 inhabitants as of December 2021. It is located to the south-east of Lublin, north of Zamość and south of Biała Podlaska, some from the border with Ukraine. The ...

he was overpowered and shot with his own machine pistol.Sobibor Interviews: Biographies of SS-men
sobiborinterviews.nl; accessed 26 April 2016.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Floss, Herbert 1912 births 1943 deaths Assassinated Nazis German mass murderers German military personnel killed in World War II Sturmabteilung personnel Holocaust perpetrators in Poland Sobibor extermination camp personnel Treblinka extermination camp personnel People from Sächsische Schweiz-Osterzgebirge Deaths by firearm in Poland

See also

References