Gerhard Palitzsch: Auschwitz SS Executioner Who Claimed He Shot 25,000 Prisoners

World History: True Stories of the 20th Century · Sep 3, 2026 · 12m

Gerhard Palitzsch was one of the most feared SS officers at Auschwitz, notorious for personally executing prisoners at the Death Wall and participating in the camp’s first experimental mass killing with Zyklon B.

Born in 1913 near Dresden, Palitzsch joined the Nazi Party and SS in 1933 and served at several early concentration camps before arriving at the newly established Auschwitz in 1940. He brought with him thirty German criminal prisoners who became the camp’s first prisoner functionaries and helped establish a regime of terror.

As Rapportführer, Palitzsch became closely associated with…