Eric Muhsfeldt

SS-Oberscharführer Eric Mußfeldt (18 February 1913 – 28 January 1948) was a senior NCO of the Sonderkommando at the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Personal life

Mußfeldt was born on 18 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. According to Dr. Nyiszli's book 'A Doctor's Eyewitness Account' it was his wife killed in the air raid and his son sent to the Russian front.

World War II

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

Although a mass murderer, he had an unusual relationship at Auschwitz with renowned Jewish-Hungarian pathologist Dr. Miklós Nyiszli, who was forced to carry out autopsies on behalf of Dr Josef Mengele. Dr. Nyiszli survived the war and later gave evidence about what happened at Auschwitz.

Dr Nyiszli described one incident when Mußfeldt 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 Mußfeldt'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 newly arrived victims was euphemistically called. Mußfeldt 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 28 January 1948.