Egon Zill was born on March 28, 1906, in Plauen, then part of the German Empire. His father was a brewer who was severely injured in World War I, and as a result, Zill was apprenticed to a baker at an early age to help support the family.
In 1923, at age 17, Zill joined both the Nazi Party and the SA. Three years later, he joined the SS with membership number 535, one of the lowest numbers issued.
After Hitler came to power in January 1933, the Nazi regime quickly established the first concentration camps. Zill served at several camps over the following years, including Lichtenburg, where he was a protective custody camp leader from November 1936 to July 1937.
At Lichtenburg, Zill was considered brutal and ruthless by prisoners. The camp later became a women’s concentration camp, and one of its female guards, Maria Mondo, was known for stripping prisoners naked, tying them to wooden posts, and beating them until she could no longer lift her arm.
On May 15, 1939, Zill was sent with other Lichtenburg guards to the newly opened Ravensbrück concentration camp, the only major women’s camp established by the Nazis. Some 132,000 women passed through the camp, and over 92,000 perished there.
Zill held the position of commander’s adjutant at Ravensbrück. He was known for sexually harassing and brutally abusing female prisoners, and he once contracted a venereal disease. Due to his short stature, he was given the nickname “Little Zill.”
He remained at Ravensbrück until December 1939. His cruelty and sadism helped him climb the camp hierarchy, and his behavior became more brutal at each subsequent camp.
On December 1, 1939, Zill was deployed to Dachau as a protective custody camp leader. The protective custody section oversaw the prisoner complex and was ruled by the SS Death’s Head units.
Zill devised new and organized methods of torture. He took personal pleasure in participating in punishments or watching from the sidelines as prisoners were beaten, drowned, hung, and broken until their bodies were unrecognizable. Tags attached to their toes listed identification numbers so they could be recorded as having died from heart attacks or other medical ailments.
On one occasion, corpses of Soviet prisoners of war murdered at Hebertshausen, a shooting range near Dachau where more than 4,000 Soviet prisoners were killed, were brought to the camp crematorium. When a kapo asked Zill where to store the ashes, Zill told him to dump the dirt of the Bolshevik swine.
Zill trained his dogs to react to the raising of his arm. On special amusement days, he would have food placed in front of starving prisoners standing at attention. If a prisoner relaxed, the dogs would attack their genital areas until the prisoners were dead.
Witnesses testified that Zill personally tortured Soviet prisoners, parading them naked and whipping them mercilessly before selecting victims to shoot. He also tied prisoners to trees and set dogs on them.
Another common practice at Dachau was having Jewish prisoners sing anti-Semitic songs while digging pits to be filled with stones, only to dig them up again. At other times, bound prisoners were made to crawl on the ground grunting like pigs while fighting pigs for food.
In the autumn of 1941, Zill selected a Soviet prisoner of war from a group because of a skin condition on his face. He personally led the prisoner to the firing range for execution. The group had initially been scheduled for execution but was later pardoned and assigned to quarry work. Zill made the selection on his own initiative.
In November 1940, Zill pointed to two prisoners in a work detachment and told a senior kapo that he did not want to see them again that evening. When the two dead prisoners were brought back to camp in wheelbarrows, Zill replied, “That’s what I call prompt execution of an order.”
In December 1941, Zill became commandant of the Hinzert Concentration Camp. Between 1939 and 1945, 13,600 political prisoners between the ages of 13 and 80 were imprisoned there. Many were in transit to larger camps where most would be killed, but many were also executed at Hinzert.
In April 1942, Zill became commandant of the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in France, the only concentration camp established by the Germans in pre-war French territory. Prisoners worked in nearby granite quarries, construction projects, and camp maintenance. An estimated 22,000 deaths occurred at the camp and its subcamps.
In mid-September 1942, Zill became commandant of Flossenbürg Concentration Camp. The camp originally exploited prisoner labor for granite production, and later became a key supplier of Messerschmitt aircraft parts. The quarry occupied about half the prisoner population.
As commandant, Zill expected his guards to act with discipline while also supporting the idea that camp inmates indoctrinated into Nazism should be allowed to fight for Nazi Germany in return for their freedom. He was replaced in April 1943 by Max Koegel after being judged ineffective.
In August 1943, Zill was transferred to the 7th SS Volunteer Mountain Division Prinz Eugen, which fought a counter-insurgency campaign against communist-led Yugoslav partisan forces. He later served in the 23rd Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Kama.
His military superiors found that Zill did not stand the test. Assessments confirmed he had no basic training and insufficient military and tactical skills.
In early October 1944, Zill suggested placing selected concentration camp prisoners in the service of the Waffen SS. The suggestion was taken up by Oskar Dirlewanger, one of the most notorious perpetrators of the Nazi regime, and led to the transfer of prisoners to the Dirlewanger SS special unit.
After the war ended, Zill went into hiding and changed his name. He was exposed after putting his real name on the birth certificate of his illegitimate child. An arrest warrant was issued on August 26, 1952, and after eight months of searching, he was arrested in Hamburg on April 24, 1953.
According to post-war investigations by the Munich public prosecutor’s office, Zill tortured numerous prisoners in Dachau, and some died as a result of the abuse. Witnesses testified that Zill actively called for the killing of prisoners on several occasions or initiated the killings himself.
In 1955, a court in Munich sentenced him to life imprisonment, the highest penalty in West Germany. After an appeal, the sentence was reduced to 15 years in prison, and Zill was released in 1970.
He was 68 years old when he died on October 23, 1974, in the city of Dachau, near the camp where he once served. There were no tears.