Gustav Wagner

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Gustav Wagner (born July 18, 1911 in Vienna – died 1980) was an SS officer and deputy commandant of Sobibór death camp in Poland, where more than 200,000 were gassed during Operation Reinhard.

After the war, he was sentenced to death in absentia by the Nuremberg Trials, but escaped with Franz Stangl to Brazil. Wagner was admitted as a permanent resident on April 12, 1950, and lived there under the pseudonym Günther Mendel until his arrest on May 30, 1978. Extradition requests from Israel, Austria (where Wagner had been a citizen) and Poland were rejected by Brazil's Attorney General. On June 22, 1979, the Brazilian Supreme Court also rejected a West German extradition request.

Wagner, in a 1979 BBC interview showed no remorse for his activities in running the camp, remarking:

"I had no feelings.... It just became another job. In the evening we never discussed our work, but just drank and played cards".

According to his attorney, Gustav Wagner committed suicide in October 1980. His body was found knifed in the chest.

[edit] Literatur

• Arad, Yitzhak: Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: the Operation Reinhard death camps. Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1987, p. 191f.