Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Holocaust Almanac: Commandant Franz Ziereis - "Baby Face"
Followup-To: alt.revisionism
Organization: The Nizkor Project 
Keywords: Mauthausen,Ziereis
X-Data: http://ftp.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi?camps/mauthausen

Archive/File: camps/mauthausen/mauthausen.02
Last-Modified: 1993/11/02

"Mauthausen's commandant, Franz Ziereis, dubbed Baby Face, had come up
through the ranks and was named chief in 1939. He always appeared
immaculately uniformed and bemedaled. Since Himmler had taken him from a
mental asylum, Ziereis imitated his mentor by drawing the members of his
personal staff from among vicious criminals. He conducted seminars to
refine techniques in brutality and never denied that he shared in the
satisfactions of maltreating the prisoners. He confessed to the charge that
book covers and screens had been made from the skins of the camp victims,
but claimed that this was the work of two of his demented fellow officers.
<16> To Ziereis it was apparently entertaining to have the kitchen staff
overturn pots of watery soup so that the starved creatures who shambled up
for their `meal' would be forced to lick the spillage before it was
absorbed into the filthy floor. ... In his confessions he noted that he
gave fifty Jews for target practice as a birthday present to his son. <17>

...

"...Even a cursory review of the documents indicated that between one and a
half and two million prisoners had been starved or worked to death in
Mauthausen and its subcamps."

<16> Poliakov, "Harvest of Hate" p. 206
<17> Presser, "Destruction of the Dutch Jews" p. 54

Extracted from--------------------------------------------------- 
"THE REDEMPTION OF THE UNWANTED", Abram L.  Sachar (New York: St.
Martin's/Marek, 1983.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Home ·  Site Map ·  What's New? ·  Search Nizkor