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.
Read more about this topic: Eric Muhsfeldt
Famous quotes containing the words world and/or war:
“Nobody can deny but religion is a comfort to the distressed, a cordial to the sick, and sometimes a restraint on the wicked; therefore whoever would argue or laugh it out of the world without giving some equivalent for it ought to be treated as a common enemy.”
—Mary Wortley, Lady Montagu (1689–1762)
“In peacetime, they had all been normal decent, cowards, frightened of their wives, trembling before their bosses, terrified at the passing of the years, but war had made them gallant. They had been greedy men. Now they were self-sacrificing. They had been selfish. Now they were generous. War isn’t hell at all. It’s man at his best, the highest morality he is capable of.”
—Paddy Chayefsky (1923–1981)