He was known as "the gentleman commandant" because he wore an impeccable white SS jacket and always sported a long riding crop while making the rounds at Treblinka, a Nazi death factory in Poland. He never personally mistreated a prisoner, and often arranged for brass bands to play while groups of 80 to 100 captives, most of them Jews, were herded into a building behind a railroad station for "showers" prior to "resettlement." The showers, of course, turned out to be sprays of gas pumped into the building by the engines from captured Soviet tanks.
Between 1942 and late 1943,...
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