Gerhard Palitzsch was one of the most feared SS officers at Auschwitz, notorious for personally executing prisoners at the Death Wall and participating in the camp’s first experimental mass killing with Zyklon B.
Born in 1913 near Dresden, Palitzsch joined the Nazi Party and SS in 1933 and served at several early concentration camps before arriving at the newly established Auschwitz in 1940. He brought with him thirty German criminal prisoners who became the camp’s first prisoner functionaries and helped establish a regime of terror.
As Rapportführer, Palitzsch became closely associated with selections, beatings, torture, and executions. Survivor testimonies described extraordinary cruelty toward Polish and Jewish prisoners, including the murder of children and entire families. At the Death Wall near Block 11, Palitzsch personally shot prisoners and later reportedly boasted that he had executed 25,000 people.
In September 1941, Palitzsch participated in the first experimental mass gassing with Zyklon B at Auschwitz. Hundreds of Soviet prisoners of war and sick Polish prisoners were confined in the basement of Block 11 and murdered, helping establish a method that would later become central to mass killing at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Despite his position within the camp hierarchy, Palitzsch eventually became the subject of an SS investigation. In 1943, accusations involving theft and a prohibited sexual relationship with a prisoner contributed to his downfall. He was removed from Auschwitz and ultimately sent to the front.
Gerhard Palitzsch died during the fighting around Budapest in December 1944, aged only 31. His career remains associated with some of the earliest and most notorious acts of violence committed at Auschwitz.
This episode is part of the series Male Fascist Guards and Camp Auxiliaries.
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