The search for perpetrators

The Austrian camp commander of Sobibor (and after Sobibor also of Treblinka), Franz Stangl, managed to escape after the war, first to Syria and later to Brazil. In the 1960s he was tracked down by Simon Wiesenthal and extradited to West Germany. In 1970, Stangl received a life sentence and died in 1971, shortly after completing a series of interviews with the historian Gitta Sereny in the Düsseldorf penitentiary. "My conscience is clear. (...) I only did my duty", he maintained till his death. Another camp commander of Sobibor, Gustav Wagner, also escaped to Brazil after the war. In 1978, he was identified there by Solomon Szmajzner, a prisoner who escaped Sobibor in October 1943. Szmajzner greeted Wagner with the words "Hello Gustl", and then he was arrested. The extradition request to Germany however was refused. In 1980, Wagner committed suicide in São Paulo.

1. The Austrian Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal (1908-2005), who in 1967 succeeded in tracking down Franz Stangl, the camp commander of Sobibor and Treblinka.
2. Franz Stangl, Sobibor camp commander. The date of the photo is unknown.
3. SS-Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel) Adolf Eichmann in 1942. Eichmann was one of the key figures who planned the extermination of the Jews during the Nazi regime. In 1961, he was sentenced and executed after a trial in Jerusalem (Israel).