Franz Stangl
Franz Stangl was an Austrian-born Nazi, active in the T4 euthanasia program, and commandant of the Sobibor and Treblinka extermination camps in Poland during Operation Reinhard. In each of these roles, he was responsible for massive numbers of deaths. Stangl’s escape from justice was successful for a time; however, he was eventually tried and convicted for his war crimes.
Born in 1908, Stangl became a police officer in the Austrian federal police in 1930. In 1931, he joined the Austrian Nazi Party; this was illegal for federal police at the time. He denied his early entrance into the party following the war. Following the Anschluss of Austria in 1938, he joined the SS.
Stangl began his work for the Public Service Foundation for Institutional Care, at his own request, in 1940. This organization served as a front for the T4 Euthanasia program. The T4 Euthanasia program sought to eliminate large numbers of disabled individuals, including both adults and children. The program began with disabled children; later, it was expanded to include institutionalized disabled adults. In total, around 200,000 disabled individuals died at the hands of the Nazi Party, through the T4 program and other initiatives.
Following is role in Aktion T4, Stangl was stationed at Sobibor, with the goal of speeding up the completion of the extermination camp. While Stangl only served as commandant of Sobibor briefly, approximately 100,000 individuals were killed during those few months. Following his time at Sobibor, Stangl moved on to work at Treblinka. Between the summer of 1942 and summer of 1943, Stangl supervised improvements to the camp at Treblinka. In speaking of this experience, Stangl referred to those being killed as “cargo”.
Stangl was initially detained at the end of the war, but like many others, escaped. He first reached Italy, and with the assistance of the ratlines, fled to Syria. In 1951, accompanied by his family, he moved to Brazil and found work. The Austrian government issued a warrant for his arrest in 1961; however, it took several years for hunter Simon Wiesenthal to locate Stangl.. Stangl was arrested in 1967, using his own name. He was extradited and tried for the murders of 900,000 individuals. Sentenced to life in prison in 1970, Stangl died of natural causes six months later.