| Original caption: “Doctor [Fritz] Klein is seen amongst some of his victims.” Schutzstaffel SS-Untersturmführer (“Junior Storm Leader” equivalent to Lieutenant) Doctor Fritz Klein (November 24, 1888 – December 13, 1945) stands amid thousands of bodies in an open pit grave. He and other SS guards were arrested when the British discovered the horrors of Bergen Belsen and were made to bury bodies without personal protective equipment. On May 24, 1945, Klein was made to give a statement to the press. Klein was a Transylvanian Saxon who received his doctorate from the University of Budapest and served as a lieutenant doctor in the Romanian Army during World War I and from 1939 to 1943. When Germany demanded ethnic Germans be transferred to the Wehrmacht (“Nazi German Armed Forces”), he joined the Waffen-SS on May 26, 1943. In a “provisional employment relationship” he was assigned to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp as a military doctor and was deployed in the women’s camp, the “gypsy camp” and the ” family camp.” There he carried out, among other things, the selections for the gas chambers. Doctor Ella Lingens-Reiner (November 18, 1908 – December 20, 2002), who was imprisoned in the Auschwitz concentration camp for favoring Jews, recalled his desire to annihilate Jews. Pointing to the chimneys in the distance, she asked Klein, “How can you reconcile that with your [Hippocratic] oath as a doctor?” Klein answered, “Of course I am a doctor and I want to preserve life. And out of respect for human life, I would remove a gangrenous appendix from a diseased body. The Jew is the gangrenous appendix in the body of mankind.” Yet Jewish and political prisoners who were doctors assigned to Auschwitz’s medical staff recounted how Klein could build a perverse “Stockholm Syndrome” relationship with his inmate staff. Klein would sometimes address inmate doctors as “Herr Kollege” (“My colleague”) or “Herr Doktor Kollege,” (“My doctor colleague”) how “friendly” and “very kind” Klein was. The point was that he and other prisoner doctors were manipulated and exploited in the relationship. They didn’t beat the inmate doctors. There was no need for them to do it because they were very obedient. They were slaves. They always stood to attention in his presence. He clicked his heels and brought himself to attention and they did too. Participating in the fortnightly selections at Auschwitz, the Nazi Doctor Klein and his inmate doctors found the situation “unreal,” and the experience shared through coercion and terror formed a sense of shared fate. He could be kind to his staff; in more than 1 case, he granted favors, including saving the family members of the inmate doctors. Hungarian inmate doctor Olga Lengyel (October 19, 1908 – April 15, 2001) said Klein protected her from SS Aufseherin Irma Grese (October 7, 1923 – December 13, 1945), but as 1 of the as “one of the fervent zealots” who ran the Nazi annihilation project, he was “the only German in Auschwitz who never shouted.” Klein was said to enjoy the selections. Klein was under pressure from his superiors to murder more Jews. He demanded more information from his inmate doctors about sick patients that could be sent to the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Klein told his staff about sending people to their death, “It’s not honest in life to ask from a man such things. Maybe you have to be a holy man to say no. I’m not optimistic about my own behavior, you see. And still I am not a bad man. Really not. But life asks me, ‘You or me?’ and I say, ‘Me.’” When the “evacuation” of the Auschwitz concentration camp began, he was taken to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on the death marches at the end of January 1945. He was deployed to the Neuengamme concentration camp from February 10 to mid-March 1945, but returned to Bergen-Belsen before the camp was liberated. Little was 1 of the few who did not flee, but waited for the arrival of the British troops together with the Commandant Hauptsturmführer (“Head Storm Leader” equivalent to Captain) Josef Kramer (November 10, 1906 – December 13, 1945) and handed over the camp. Klein was sentenced to death by a British military court in the Bergen-Belsen Trial which took place from September 17, to 16 November 16, 1945, in Lüneburg, and was hanged on December 13, 1945, in the Hameln Penitentiary by the United Kingdom executioner Albert Pierrepont (March 30, 1905 – July 10, 1992). | |
| Image Filename | wwii0570.jpg |
| Image Size | 491.64 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 1684 x 1684 |
| Photographer | Harry Oakes |
| Photographer Title | Number Five United Kingdom Royal Army Film and Photo Section, Army Film and Photographic Unit |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | April 21, 1945 |
| Location | Konzentrationslager Bergen-Belsen |
| City | Bergen |
| State or Province | Lower Saxony |
| Country | Germany |
| Archive | Imperial War Museum |
| Record Number | BU 4260 |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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