Gustav Wagner (soldier)

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Gustav Franz Wagner (July 18, 1911 – October 1980) was an SS-Oberscharführer from Vienna, Austria. He was deputy commandant of the Sobibór extermination camp in Poland, where more than 200,000 were gassed during Operation Reinhard.

After World War II, Wagner was sentenced to death in absentia by the Nuremberg Trials, but escaped with Franz Stangl to Brazil. Wagner was admitted as a permanent resident on April 12, 1950, and lived there under the pseudonym Günther Mendel until his arrest on May 30, 1978. Extradition requests from Israel, Austria and Poland were rejected by Brazil's Attorney General. On June 22, 1979, the Brazilian Supreme Court also rejected a West German extradition request.

Wagner, in a 1979 BBC interview, showed no remorse for his activities in running the camp, remarking:

"I had no feelings.... It just became another job. In the evening we never discussed our work, but just drank and played cards".

According to his attorney, Wagner committed suicide in São Paulo in October 1980. His body was found knifed in the chest.

[edit] Literature

• Arad, Yitzhak: Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: the Operation Reinhard death camps. Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1987, p. 191f.