Wagner enjoyed this song and he forced the prisoners to sing it frequently. One of the Sobibor prisoners improvised a song which ironically described camp life (original text with English translation): As the prisoners ate the bread, Wagner laughed loudly, enjoying his joke because he knew that these Jews were pious. Inmate Eda Lichtman wrote that on the Jewish fast day of Yom Kippur, Wagner appeared at roll call, selected some prisoners, gave them bread and forced them to eat it. I lived in the room above them and due to these celebrations could not fall asleep after coming back from a journey. They were attended by Bolender, Gomerski, Karl Ludwig, Franz Stangl, Gustav Wagner, and Steubel. As it is known, these two girls lived in the forester house, and they were visited frequently by the SS men. I was blamed for being responsible for the death of the Jewish girls Ruth and Gisela, who lived in the so-called forester house. They were discussing the number of victims in the extermination camps of Belzec, Treblinka and Sobibor and expressed their regret that Sobibor "came last" in the competition.Īlso according to Bauer, Wagner participated in gang rapes of female prisoners prior to killing them: In the canteen at Sobibor I once overheard a conversation between Karl Frenzel, Franz Stangl and Gustav Wagner. I estimate that the number of Jews gassed at Sobibor was about 350,000. This atrocious spectacle was carried out before all of us, including Abraham's younger brother. When Wagner grew weary of the blows, he took out his revolver and killed him on the spot. Furious, he pulled Abraham naked off his bed and began to beat him all over his body. Suddenly Wagner came into our barrack, and Abraham did not hear him call to stand up at once before him. After a long and arduous work day, this young man collapsed on his pallet and fell asleep. I remember that one night a group of youths aged fifteen or sixteen arrived in the camp. I saw him beat two men to death with a rifle, because they did not carry out his instructions properly, since they did not understand German. He would snatch babies from their mothers' arms and tear them to pieces in his hands. In civilian life he was, no doubt, a well-mannered man at Sobibor he was a wild beast. He was a handsome man, tall and blond - a pure Aryan. Wagner was known to beat and thrash camp inmates on a regular basis, and to kill Jews without reason or restraint. Survivors of the camp described him as a cold-blooded sadist. More than any other officer at Sobibor, Wagner was responsible for the daily interactions with prisoners. When Wagner was on vacation or attending to duties elsewhere, Karl Frenzel assumed his role within the camp. Wagner was in charge of selecting which prisoners from the newly arrived transports would be used as slave laborers in and outside the camp, from among the newly arrived ghetto inhabitants. His official title was quartermaster-sergeant of the camp. Once the gassing installation, barracks, and fences were completed, Wagner became deputy commandant of the camp under Commandant Franz Stangl. Due to his experience in T4, Wagner was assigned to help establish the Sobibor extermination camp in March 1942 and oversaw the construction of the camp. In May 1940, Wagner was part of the Aktion T4 euthanasia program at Hartheim killing centre with administrative functions and cremating the bodies of murdered patients. After being arrested for proscribed National Socialist agitation, he fled to Germany, where he joined the SA and later the Schutzstaffel in the late 1930s, serving as a guard at an unknown concentration camp. He served as a soldier in the Austrian army from 1928 and joined the then illegal Nazi Party in 1931 as member number 443,217. Due to his brutality, he was known as " The Beast" and " Wolf". Wagner was a deputy commander of Sobibor extermination camp in German-occupied Poland, where 200,000-250,000 Jews were murdered in the camp's gas chambers during Operation Reinhard. Gustav Franz Wagner (18 July 1911 – 3 October 1980) was an Austrian member of the SS with the rank of Staff sergeant ( Oberscharführer). War Merit Cross 2nd Class With Swords (1942-1943)
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