Dirlewanger participated in the Wola massacre, together with police units rounding up and shooting some 40,000 civilians, most of them in just two days. In the same Wola district, Dirlewanger burned three hospitals with patients inside, while the nurses were "whipped, gang-raped and finally hanged naked, together with the doctors" to the accompaniment of the popular song "In München steht ein Hofbräuhaus". Later, "they drank, raped and murdered their way through the Old Town, slaughtering civilians and fighters alike without distinction of age or sex." In the Old Town – where about 30,000 civilians were killed – several thousand wounded in field hospitals overrun by the Germans were shot and set on fire with flamethrowers. SS-Obergruppenführer Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, overall commander of the forces pacifying Warsaw – and Dirlewanger's former superior officer in Belarus – described Dirlewanger as having "a typical mercenary nature." In recognition of his work to crush the uprising and intimidate the population of the city, Dirlewanger received his final promotion, to the rank of SS-Oberführer, on 15 August 1944. In October, he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, recommended for it by his superior officer in Warsaw, SS-Gruppenführer Heinz Reinefarth (after the war, Reinefarth lied about his role in Warsaw, even denying Dirlewanger had been under his command). Dirlewanger then led his men in joining the efforts to put down the Slovak National Uprising in October 1944, eventually being posted on the front lines of Hungary and eastern Germany to fight against the advancing Red Army. In February 1945, the unit was expanded again and re-designated as an SS Grenadier division. That same month, Dirlewanger was shot in the chest while fighting against the Soviet forces near Guben in Brandenburg and sent to the rear. It was his twelfth and final injury in the war. On 22 April, he went into hiding. Dirlewanger is invariably described as an extremely cruel person by historians and researchers, including as "a psychopathic killer and child molester" by Steven Zaloga, "violently sadistic" by Richard Rhodes, and "an expert in extermination and a devotee of sadism and necrophilia" by J. Bowyer Bell. Death Dirlewanger was arrested on 1 June 1945 near the town of Altshausen in Upper Swabia by the French occupation zone authorities while he was wearing civilian clothes, using a false name and hiding in a remote hunting lodge. He was recognised by a Jewish