Franz Hoessler

SS-Oberssturmfuehrer Franz Hoessler (1906 - 1945), German law enforcer, notorious for his crimes inside the Auschwitz camp and also in Bergen-Belsen. Born somewhere in Oberdorf, Germany. During the inflation in 1931 he joined the Nazi Party and the SS. During the early days of the Second World War, in 1941, he was assigned the selected more than 500 disabled prisoners to transport them to the Gas Chambers at Sonnenstein, a euthanasia center for the disabled during the infamous T4 Euthanasia Programme of 1939-41. Hoessler, together with Moll and Aumeier, took part in the killing of the 168 survivors of the uprising of the punishment company on June 1942. He also participated in the gassings in the old crematory in the Stammlager. At the same year, he supervised the emaciation of more than 100,000 corpses to empty the mass graves and incinerate them. The task lasted for 5 months. He is also responsible on the gassing of 1,600 Belgian Jews on October 1942. The incident was described in the diary of Johann Kremer, a former SS Physician. In 1943, he was transferred to the women's camp and he was assigned there to supervise the gassings. After the liberation of Auschwitz on January 1945, he moved to Belsen camp on April 8. In Belsen, he directly shot prisoners until the liberation of the camp and led to his arrest of the same month. Hoessler was found guilty of crimes against humanity and of perpetrating the Holocaust, and was hanged on December 21, 1945.