About Franz Wolf
Lived 1907 – 1999 (aged 92). Franz Wolf was a German photographer.
SS-Oberscharführer Franz Wolf (9 April 1907 – 9 October 1999) was a German Nazi senior squad leader serving with the Action T4 forced euthanasia program, and later, at the Sobibór extermination camp in occupied Poland during the most deadly phase of the Holocaust, codenamed Operation Reinhard. Leading a normal life in West Germany for the next twenty years, Wolf was arrested in 1964,
Wolf was not an SS-Officer, nor was he a member of the SS-Totenkopfverbände, which ceased to exist as a unit in 1940. The men of the extermination camp were under the command of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD). The guards in regular KZ/KL was under the command of SS-WVHA Amt D, which also was part of the Waffen-SS.
Career Little is known about his private life except that Wolf came from Krummau. He was in the Czechoslovak Army and in the German Wehrmacht, before he was posted to Hadamar Euthanasia Centre and the Heidelberg Psychiatric Clinic where the killing of patients deemed beyond the reach of therapy was taking place. In the name of science, Wolf photographed the mentally ill before they were gassed. mostly Jewish prisoners were murdered there. Wolf was in Sobibór until the prisoner uprising. He liked to hang around the victims' "barber shop" where his brother was a squad leader and watch naked women having their hair shorn off by the Sonderkommando. cutting trees for the fuelling of corpse cremation pyres in the camp's killing zone.
Arrest Wolf was presented with an arrest warrant in 1964 at Eppelheim as one of a selected twelve former members of the SS camp personnel, which constituted about a quarter of the German staff there. The rest went on to live normal lives. In 1966 the court in Hagen sentenced Wolf to eight years in prison for his role as an overseer of a slave labour commando that sorted the belongings of victims already "processed". Wolf, in his work as the warehouse clerk, was charged with personally killing one Jew and with helping to murder an additional 115,000 Jews. He was found guilty of having assisted in the murder of "at least 39,000 Jews", a number chosen arbitrarily for judicial purposes. Sentenced to eight years in prison, Wolf, age 58 (at the time of his arrest), likely served at least a part of the sentence. This is all that is known about him,
Notes and references
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Important facts
Contemporaries
People whose lives overlapped Franz Wolf's
Frequently asked questions
Who was Franz Wolf?
Holocaust perpetrator from Sobibor
When was Franz Wolf born?
Franz Wolf was born on 9 April 1907 in Český Krumlov.
When did Franz Wolf die?
Franz Wolf died on 9 October 1999 in Palling.
What was Franz Wolf's occupation?
Franz Wolf was a photographer.
What nationality was Franz Wolf?
Franz Wolf was German.
Sources & further reading
· DBpedia: Franz Wolf (SS officer)
Cite this page
APA: Biography.guide. (2026). Franz Wolf. https://biography.guide/franz-wolf/
MLA: "Franz Wolf." Biography.guide, https://biography.guide/franz-wolf/.
Chicago: "Franz Wolf." Biography.guide. https://biography.guide/franz-wolf/.
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