Karl Fritzsch (10 July 1903 – reported missing 2 May 1945) was a German member of the Nazi secret police Schutzstaffel (SS) from 1933–1945. He was a deputy and acting commandant at the Auschwitz concentration camp. According to Rudolf Höss, Fritzsch first suggested using poisonous gas Zyklon B for the purpose of mass murder. Early and personal life Karl Fritzsch was born in Bohemia into the family of a stove builder. His father moved constantly on work assignments, so Fritzsch never received formal education. For some years he worked as a labourer on river ships along the Danube. His marriage in 1928 to Franziska Stich produced three children, but ended in divorce in 1942. Nazi career Fritzsch joined the Nazi Party and the SS (NSDAP # 261135 SS # 7287) in 1930 at the age of 27. He became a career SS man. Almost as soon as it opened, he acquired a position at the Dachau concentration camp in 1934. Due to his camp experience, in May 1940 he became deputy to Rudolf Höss and head of the economic operation of Auschwitz (Schutzhaftlagerführer). Fritzsch quickly obtained a fearsome reputation in Auschwitz, selecting prisoners to die of starvation in reprisal for escape attempts. Together with Höss, he was responsible for the torture death of victims locked inside standing cells in the basement of the Bunker, i.e. the Block 11, or 13 prison, until they died. Fritzsch addressed the first 758 inmates of the camp, brought in June 1940, with the following words: "You came here not to a sanatorium, but to a German concentration camp, from which there is no other way out but through the chimney. If someone doesn't like it, they can go straight to the wires. If there are Jews in the transport, they have the right to live no longer than two weeks, priests a month, the rest three months." Another time he said: "For us, all of you are not human, but a pile of dung (...). For such enemies of the Third Reich as you, the Germans will have no favor and no mercy. We will be delighted to drive you all through the grates of the crematorium furnaces. Forget your wives, children and families, here you all savor like dogs." On July 29, 1941, a camp count found that three prisoners were missing and Fritzsch sentenced 10 remaining prisoners to immurement. One of the