Ziereis, Franz

Franz Ziereis (13 Aug. 1905 – 24 May 1945), SS Sturmbannführer, was the commandant of the Mauthausen Camp from 1939 until the end of the war. He fled on May 3 and tried hiding in his hunting lodge in the Alps, but was discovered there and, when trying to flee, was shot and badly wounded. He was then apparently incarcerated for a short time but died in custody.

Two documents exist whose authors claim them to be summaries of an interrogation presumably carried out with Ziereis while he was slowly bleeding to death. None of them have his signature, and their contents are so absurd that it boggles the mind how any of it could have been taken seriously. Yet still, one of them, an affidavit by the former Mauthausen inmate Hans Maršálek, got accepted into evidence at the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal. Since these documents’ contents cannot be attributed to Ziereis, they will not be discussed here. See the entry on Hans Maršálek for more details.