Victor Capesius (February 1907 in Szerdahely, Austria-Hungary – 20 March 1985 Göppingen, West Germany) was a Nazi SS-Sturmbannführer (Major) and KZ-Apotheker (concentration camp pharmacist) in the concentration camps of Dachau (1943–1944) and Auschwitz (1944–1945). Early life Born to a Saxon family in Reußmarkt, Transylvania, son of a doctor and pharmacist, Capesius began his academic studies in 1924 at the University of Cluj after graduating from high school. Capesius earned his undergraduate degree in general pharmacology from King Ferdinand I University on June 30, 1930. He worked towards a pharmacy degree and then transferred to the University of Vienna, where in 1933, he received his Doctorate of Pharmacy. He was married in june 1934 and worked for a subsidiary of IG Farben selling products to doctors and pharmacists. World War II After the start of World War II in 1939, Capesius joined the Romanian army and rose to the rank of captain while serving at a military hospital's pharmacy. In January 1942, for reasons not made clear in his military records, he was granted leave to restart his civilian job as a national sale representative for IG Farben and Bayer. He traveled so much that at times he lived in both Klausenburg and Sighisoara before finally buying a sixth-floor condominium on Brezoiano Street in an upper-class Bucharest neighborhood. He moved his family there. As an ethnic German, Capesius moved to the Waffen-SS after Romania joined the Axis powers in 1940. After training at the SS-Zentrale Sanitäranlage (Central Sanitary Facility) in Warsaw, he was sent to Dachau Concentration Camp in September 1943; he worked there until his subsequent transfer to Auschwitz Concentration Camp in December 1943. In Auschwitz, he acted as the chief KZ-Apotheker (pharmacist) starting in February 1944 after his predecessor was executed for "spreading defeatism." Capesius remained as the chief pharmacist until the camp was evacuated in January 1945. Capesius worked closely with Josef Mengele and together they were heavily involved in the selection of inmates for the gas chamber beginning in the spring of 1944 when the Hungarian and Transylvanian Jews were sent to the camp. He was the only SS selector who was recognized at the arrival ramp by Jews who had known him personally or through his pharmaceutical work before the war. In Auschwitz, he had risen to the rank of SS-Sturmbannführer, in November 1944, and was in charge and control of the poisonous chemicals used in