Eric Muhsfeldt

SS-Oberscharführer Eric Muhsfeldt (February 18, 1913 – December 22, 1947) was a senior NCO of the Sonderkommando at the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Personal life

Muhsfeldt was born on 18th February 1913, and at the time of his service in the SS Totenkopfverbande, he was reportedly married with one son, who was subsequently killed in an allied air raid. The fate of his wife is not known.

World War II

He originally served in Auschwitz I in 1940, and was then transferred to the work/extermination camp at Majdanek on 15th November 1941. When the camp at Majdanek was closed down, he was involved in the final mass murder by shooting of the camps surviving inmates, before his transfer back to Auschwitz, where he now served as supervising officer of the Jewish Sonderkommando in Crematorium II and III in Auschwitz II (Birkenau).

Although a mass murderer, he had what can only be described as a strange relationship with a Jewish Doctor there, who was forced to carry out autopsies on behalf of Dr Josef Mengele. The Hungarian Jewish Doctor, Miklós Nyiszli, survived the war and later gave evidence about what happened in the Crematoriums.

Dr Nyiszli described one incident when Muhsfeldt came to him for a routine check-up, after shooting 80 prisoners in the back of the head prior to their cremation. Dr Nyiszli commented that Muhsfeldt's blood pressure was high, and inquired as to whether this could be related to the recent increase in 'traffic', as the mass murder of transportees was euphemistically called. Muhsfeldt replied angrily that if he shot one person or eighty, it made no difference to him. If his blood pressure was too high, it was because he drank too much.

Trial and execution

After the war had ended he was arrested, tried in Kraków by the Supreme National Tribunal in 1947, where he was sentenced to death. He was executed by hanging on 22nd December 1947.