Rudolf Mildner (10 July 1902, Janov – unknown) was an Austrian-German SS-Standartenführer. He served as the chief of the Gestapo at Katowice and was the head of the political department at Auschwitz concentration camp, conducting "third degree" methods of interrogation from March 1941 until September 1943. As such, he frequently sent prisoners to Auschwitz for incarceration or execution. He visited Auschwitz on several occasions. In December 1944, he was appointed chief of the SiPo, Gestapo and SD in Vienna. After the war, Mildner testified at the Nuremberg Trials and remained in custody until 1949. Early life Born in Johannestal, Austrian Silesia, Mildner served as a volunteer in the Austro-Hungarian Navy during World War I. After the war, Mildner served in the Freikorps Sudetenland. Mildner trained to become a police officer in Salzburg. In 1925, he entered the Austrian police service. During that time Mildner furthered his education by attending night school. Nazi career He became a member of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in 1931 with number 614,080. He achieved a doctorate of law at the University of Innsbruck in 1934. In 1935 he was forced to leave Austria and move to Germany. There he became a German citizen and entered the SS (number 275,741). Milder obtained a position in the political police department in Munich. After the 1938 Anschluss, Mildner became chief of the Gestapo in Linz and in 1939 in Salzburg, Austria. From December 1939 to early 1941 he led the Gestapo at Chemnitz. In March 1941 he was named as the head of the Gestapo in Katowice. It was through this office that Mildner became connected with the Auschwitz concentration camp and served as head of a "kangaroo court", which sentenced some 2,000 Poles to death. At the Nuremberg Main Trial on 2 January 1946, a letter dated 3 December 1941 from the Prosecutor General in Katowice to the Reich Minister of Justice on police executions without criminal proceedings was submitted as part of the indictment: "About 3 weeks ago, in Tarnowitz, in connection with the destruction of a highly treacherous organization of 350 members, the 6 (partly Ethnic Germans)main perpetrators were hanged by the police without the judiciary being aware of it. Such executions have already taken place in the past on criminal perpetrators in the district of Bielitz without the knowledge of the responsible law enforcement authority. On December 2, 1941, the head of the Katowice