Fritz Klein
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| “ | My Hippocratic oath tells me to cut a gangrenous appendix out of the human body. The Jews are the gangrenous appendix of mankind. That's why I cut them out. | „ |
| ~ Fritz Klein |
Fritz Klein (24 November 1888 - 13 December 1945) was a German doctor who was hanged for atrocities committed at Bergen-Belsen during The Holocaust.
Career edit
Klein's career started in Transylvania, but he was drafted into the German army following an order from Romanian dictator Ion Antonescu. Before this, he had been a paramedic.
From 15 December 1943 to December 1944, Klein served as camp doctor in the gypsy camp at Auschwitz Birkenau, where he participated in "Selektionen", or selections, for who would be put into the Gas Chamber. In 1945, he was transferred to the Bergen-Belsen camp.
While he was working as a doctor at Belsen, Klein participated in Selektionen for the gas chamber. He also killed off individual prisoners by injecting them with hypodermic syringes. He was there when the Allies liberated the camp and was forced to bury the bodies in mass graves. The British Army Film and Photographic Unit took a photo of Klein standing among the bodies, which is displayed on the right-hand side of this page.
Fritz Klein and 44 other camp staff were charged by a British military court with atrocities committed at Auschwitz as well as at Bergen-Belsen. Klein and 29 other defendants were convicted and most of them were sentenced to prison. Klein however, was one of the eleven defendants, the so-called "Beasts of Belsen", who were sentenced to death. On December 13, 1945, Fritz Klein was hanged.