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A war criminal, he had been a member of the SS since 1936. He joined the SS-Totenkopfverbände, the corps troops that were created by Theodor Eicke. These troops were responsible for the management and guard service in German concentration camps. Franz Ziereis became commandant of the Mauthausen camp as early as February 1939.
A native of Munich, he was educated in commerce. He joined the Reichswehr, in which he served for 12 years, reached the rank of sergeant and left the service in 1936. Then he tied his career to the SS – Ziereis succeeded Albert Sauer as commandant of the Mauthausen camp, who was sent with the outbreak of war to occupied Poland to organize the resettlement of the Polish and Jewish populations from areas incorporated into the Third Reich.
Ziereis was responsible for the conditions that existed in the camp. Prisoners were forced to perform torturous labor in the quarries, and the hard work combined with scandalous sanitary conditions, as well as poor food, created a deadly mix for the people imprisoned there.
Ziereis personally abused and then murdered his victims. Survivors’ accounts reveal that he allowed his minor son to shoot prisoners with a shotgun. The commandant also took part in killing people in the gas chamber, which had been operating at Mauthausen since 1942.
Franz Ziereis wished to impress Heinrich Himmler himself not only with the lethal efficiency of the camp he ran, but also by conducting archaeological research. For it happened that one of the Polish prisoners, Kazimierz Gelinek, while working on the construction of a railroad embankment, came across archaeological finds, which he informed the camp authorities about. The German Institute for the Protection of Monuments commissioned the research, a camp museum was even established in the Gusen sub-camp, and Gelinek, who led the excavations, was commissioned to prepare a monograph on the monuments found. Five copies of the book were made, and one of them was given to Himmler when he visited the camp.
Faced with the approaching American army in 1945, Ziereis fled with his wife and son and hid in the mountains of Upper Austria. However, he was found by the Americans, who shot him several times as he tried to flee. The wounded Ziereis was taken to Gusen, where the Allies set up a hospital. The former commandant of the Mauthausen camp was operated on, although his condition steadily deteriorated. Before his death, he managed to be interrogated, and the American military was accompanied by a group of Polish prisoners who documented the interrogation. During his final “confession,” Ziereis recounted the crimes in the camp. He admitted that he had killed people with his own hands. He even stated:
Despite the fact that all corporal punishment had to be approved by Berlin, I often beat prisoners for pleasure.
At the same time, in his testimony, which he gave voluntarily, he blamed the crimes in his subordinate camps on his superiors. He described crimes in other camps, and how camp headquarters from Oranienburg sent camp commanders to Sachsenhausen for training in how to kill as efficiently and quickly as possible.
The Mauthausen commandant died an hour and a half after the interrogation.