A famous photograph taken in 1945 shows an SS man standing in a mass grave at the Bergen-Belsen camp. That man was Fritz Klein, a Nazi doctor. The image has been blurred because it may be disturbing and sensitive to some viewers.
Fritz Klein was born on 24 November 1888 in Făgăraș, in the Halmeu region of Austria-Hungary. He was an ethnic German but a Romanian citizen. He studied medicine at the University of Budapest and became a doctor, practicing in three places all near Kronstadt.
In 1939, as a Romanian citizen, he was drafted into the Romanian army. On 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland and started World War II. After the outbreak of the war, the Kingdom of Romania officially remained neutral.
On 23 November 1940, Romania joined the Axis powers allied with Germany. Hitler considered the Soviet Union his natural enemy. On 22 June 1941, Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. Nazi Germany, with Romanian support, attacked the Soviet Union.
Klein served as a paramedic on the Eastern Front. The battles on the Eastern Front were fought between the Axis powers and the Soviet Union and its allies. They marked a turning point in the history of World War II and eventually became the main reason for the defeat of Nazi Germany and the Axis nations.
The war on the Eastern Front became the largest military conflict in history. It produced the most horrific atrocities, the highest casualties, mass deportations, starvation, disease, and massacres. In the Soviet Union it was known as the Great Patriotic War.
In May 1943, Romania, on a demand from Hitler to release ethnic Germans in the Romanian army, drafted them into the German army. A treaty between the German and Romanian governments provided that all those belonging to the German minorities should continue their service in the German army.
Klein joined the Waffen SS because it was impossible to join the proper German Wehrmacht without German nationality. He was listed in the SS personnel main office and posted to Yugoslavia.
On 15 December 1943, Klein arrived at the Auschwitz concentration camp, where he initially worked as a camp doctor in the women's camp at Birkenau. Rudolf Höss was the camp commandant at the time, and Dr. Wirths was the chief SS camp doctor.
From summer 1942, the SS at Auschwitz carried out regular selections of Jews for the gas chambers. Klein also participated in numerous selections. When transports arrived, the people were divided into two groups: those fit to work and those not fit because of age or weakness, including children up to the age of 15.
Those selected as unfit for work by camp doctors were sent to the gas chambers and the crematoria. Medical experiments were also conducted by SS doctors. Klein experimented by injecting his victims with benzene to harden their arteries, killing thousands of men, women, and children.
The fate of the experimental subjects was a matter of concern for SS doctors. To cover their tracks, they often ordered their experiment victims killed by lethal injections or in the gas chambers. Klein later worked as a camp doctor in the Gypsy camp.
In December 1944, he was transferred to Neuengamme concentration camp. At the end of January 1945, he was sent to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
In the last weeks of the war, thousands of new prisoners arrived at Bergen-Belsen as the Nazi Germans continued to evacuate camps that were soon to be liberated by the Allied forces. Overcrowding, food shortages, and poor sanitation caused outbreaks of typhus and other diseases. As a result, hundreds of prisoners died every day in the Belsen camp.
When the British and Canadians advanced on Bergen-Belsen in 1945, the German army negotiated a truce and an exclusion zone around the camp to prevent the spread of typhus. Heinrich Himmler agreed to hand over the camp to the Allied forces without a fight. Most of the SS were allowed to leave.
Only a small number of SS men and women, including camp commandant Kramer, remained to maintain order in the camp. Belsen camp commandant Josef Kramer told camp personnel that they had to stay on their jobs until the British troops arrived.
On 15 April 1945, the Bergen-Belsen camp was liberated by Allied forces. Klein remained at the camp with commandant Josef Kramer and assisted in handing it over to British troops. British and Canadian soldiers found 60,000 prisoners inside, most of them severely ill and starving, and over 13,000 unburied bodies lying around the camp.
The British forced the former SS camp staff to help bury thousands of bodies in mass graves. The British Army film and photographic unit number five photographed Klein standing in the mass grave.
When asked how he reconciled his actions with his ethical obligations as a physician, Klein famously stated, "My Hippocratic oath tells me to cut a gangrenous appendix out of the human body. The Jews are the gangrenous appendixes of mankind. That's why I cut them out."
Klein and 44 other camp staff were tried in the Belsen trial by a British military court at Luneburg, officially called the trial of Josef Kramer and 44 others. He was accused of crimes committed at Auschwitz and Belsen. During the trial, Anita Lasker testified that Klein took part in selections for the gas chamber.
Klein said, "When transport arrived at Auschwitz, it was the doctor's job to pick out those who were unfit or unable to work. This included children, old people, and the sick. I have seen the gas chambers and crematoria at Auschwitz, and I knew that those I selected were to go to the gas chamber. But I only acted on orders given by Dr. Wirth to pick out those who were unfit."
He was found guilty of crimes at both Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen and sentenced to death. Fritz Klein was hanged at Hamelin Prison by Albert Pierrepoint on 13 December 1945.