Eric Muhsfeldt - World War II

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.

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