Oswald Kaduk was born on August 26, 1906, in Königshütte, then part of the German Empire. The son of a blacksmith, he trained as a butcher and later worked at a slaughterhouse before joining the local fire department.
When Nazi Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, Kaduk joined the General SS. In 1940, he was drafted into the Waffen-SS and sent to the Eastern Front after the invasion of the Soviet Union. Following repeated illnesses and hospital stays, he was transferred to Auschwitz in July 1941.
Auschwitz initially served as a detention center for Polish political prisoners. Over time, it expanded into a vast complex that included concentration camps, forced labor camps, and the gas chambers and crematoria at Birkenau, built for the mass murder of European Jews.
Kaduk began his camp service on guard tower duty in 1942. He was later promoted to block leader, overseeing prisoner barracks, and eventually became a report leader responsible for roll calls and discipline. In these roles, he quickly built a reputation for extreme brutality.
Holocaust survivors described Kaduk as a tall, slightly hunched man in his mid-30s who spoke Polish fluently. He was often drunk and spread fear throughout the camp. He would burst into barracks without warning, conduct aggressive searches, and beat inmates without provocation.
Kaduk also patrolled areas where prisoners had contact with civilians, looking for illegal food exchanges. When he caught such activity, civilians were detained and prisoners were sent to the penal company. Witnesses recalled that he roamed the camp drunk, firing shots above prisoners' heads simply to frighten them.
Survivor Max Malberg testified that Kaduk once forced two prisoners caught stealing meat to do knee bends until they fell onto bayonets he had planted in front of them. He also reportedly beat a camp veterinarian so severely that the man lost consciousness.
Kaduk was especially cruel toward children. Historian Andrew Roberts recounted Kaduk's practice of handing Jewish children balloons just before they were murdered with phenol injections to the heart, at a rate of ten children per minute.
Survivor Ludwik Wörl testified how a dozen young Jewish girls, ages three to eleven, begged him to save them from the gas chamber. They said they were strong and could work and did not want to die. But Kaduk, gun in hand, drove them away to the gas chamber.
Another survivor, Adam Chyżynowiecki, described an incident during an evening roll call. When Kaduk noticed someone out of line, he ordered collective punishment for the entire block. When Chyżynowiecki did not respond quickly enough, Kaduk kicked his right leg and stomped on it, fracturing his shin. Even after the war, he could not walk properly.
Survivor Norbert Oitzky witnessed countless acts of inhumanity carried out or overseen by Kaduk. These included hours-long penal exercises that pushed inmates to the brink of collapse and public floggings for minor infractions like pausing during forced labor.
Oitzky recalled one brutal winter episode when prisoners were ordered to strip naked, perform exercises in freezing temperatures, then marched through a hot shower only to be sent back into the cold, sometimes after being sprayed with icy water. He also remembered being woken in the middle of the night and forced to run past Kaduk on the way to the bath house. That night, Kaduk selected approximately 1,200 prisoners, most of them Jews, to be sent to the gas chambers.
Kaduk also took part in selections during delousing procedures, particularly in the women's camp at Birkenau. Extreme overcrowding and unsanitary conditions had led to mass infestations. Women had their hair cut, their bodies shaved, and were bathed before being forced to pass naked before a panel consisting of a doctor, an SS officer, and a block leader.
The final selection conducted in the camp was often carried out by Kaduk inside the washroom. Reportedly drunk, he sat on a small chair with a cane in one hand and half a liter of vodka beside him. He examined each prisoner and decided their fate on the spot. Those who pleased him were sent to the right and allowed to live. Those who did not were sent to the left. As he made his choices, he sometimes told those he had condemned, "You'll go to heaven. It's good there."
One of the most chilling accounts came from Stefan Malachewski, who witnessed mass executions in the summer of 1942. After two prisoners escaped from the punitive unit at Birkenau, over 200 inmates from that unit were rounded up and forced to squat in the courtyard for hours. Kaduk, alongside SS commander Hans Aumeier, personally shot the prisoners in the back of the head. By the end of the day, all 200 were dead.
Malachewski also testified about a scene he witnessed in September 1943. From a rooftop overlooking the courtyard of block 11, he watched as a group of civilian prisoners, mostly Polish women with young children from the town of Bielsko, were brought into the courtyard and executed. Kaduk and SS officer Gerhard Palitzsch carried out the shootings using compressed air guns.
One of the victims was a Polish mother with a five-year-old child. After her child was shot in front of her, she knelt and began to pray aloud. Kaduk, Aumeier, and the others laughed. Kaduk, who spoke Polish, mocked her by saying, "Pray to your God. I will wait. Let him come." Aumeier then kicked the woman in the back while she prayed, and Kaduk shot her dead.
Norbert Oitzky described another act of cruelty. After an escape incident in which a guard was reportedly given poisoned vodka, 25 prisoners were arrested. Thirteen were executed in the bunker of block 11, and the remaining twelve were hanged publicly after roll call. Kaduk stood nearby during the execution and entertained himself by swinging the bodies of the hanged prisoners.
Oitzky also shared a story he heard from a fellow inmate. An SS man had handed the inmate a severed woman's breast taken during the gassing of Jews. The SS man claimed he brought human body parts back to feed his dog. It is believed that the SS man was Oswald Kaduk.
The Second World War in Europe ended on May 8, 1945. In the chaotic aftermath, Kaduk avoided immediate capture by assuming a false identity. He found work at a sugar factory in the small German town of Loba, living quietly under the radar.
In December 1946, a former inmate recognized him, and he was arrested by a Soviet military patrol. During his detention, Kaduk reportedly confessed to personally shooting over 1,600 prisoners in the neck during the evacuation of Auschwitz in January 1945. He allegedly went so far as to claim he had killed his own family because they had become an obstacle to his escape.
In August 1947, a Soviet military tribunal sentenced him to 25 years of forced labor. He served less than half of that sentence and was pardoned in April 1956. After his release, he moved to West Berlin and found employment as a nurse at Tegel Hospital, where he became known among patients and staff as "Papa Kaduk" due to his outwardly kind demeanor.
His past caught up with him again in July 1959, when he was rearrested. Between December 1963 and August 1965, Kaduk faced justice in the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, also known as the second Auschwitz trial. He was among 24 defendants facing murder charges.
During the proceedings, witness Ludwik Wörl described Kaduk as a butcher and testified that Kaduk had driven twelve children into the gas chamber. The revelation caused outrage in the courtroom. One observer shouted, "This pig should be beaten to death." Kaduk attempted to discredit the witness by calling him a liar.
In August 1965, the Frankfurt jury sentenced Kaduk to life imprisonment for ten counts of murder and two counts of joint murder involving at least 1,020 victims. He was stripped of his civil rights for life, and multiple requests for clemency were denied.
While serving his sentence, Kaduk participated in a televised documentary about SS men stationed at Auschwitz. When asked about Holocaust denial, he gave a rare moment of public acknowledgement. He said, "I have to say, I do not consider these people normal. We have to stick to the truth. There are people denying it, but what happened happened and it is not up for dispute."
In 1984, Kaduk was transferred to an open prison and released in 1989 for health reasons. Oswald Kaduk was 90 years old when he died on May 31, 1997, in the town of Langelsheim, Germany. There were no tears shed for Oswald Kaduk.