Karl Frenzel

Karl August Wilhelm Frenzel (20 August 1911 – 2 September 1996) was an SS noncommissioned officer in Sobibor extermination camp.

After the Second World War, he was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for war crimes, but he was ultimately released after serving 16 years in prison.

Early life Frenzel was born in Zehdenick, Templin, on 20 August 1911. His father had worked for the railroad and was a local official of the Social Democratic Party of Germany. Karl completed primary school from 1918 to 1926 in Oranienburg and then apprenticed as a carpenter. Meanwhile, he was a member of the socialist carpenter's union. However, after passing the qualifying carpentry exam in 1930 he found himself unemployed. Later, he found work for a short time as a butcher.

The Nazi Party promised that there would be more jobs after its seizure of power, a reason that motivated Frenzel to join both the party and the Sturmabteilung (SA) in August 1930. His brother, a theology student, had joined the party the previous year. His father joined the party in 1934. Frenzel claimed that anti-Semitism was an aspect of the politics to which they were indifferent. He later claimed that he was appalled by the early persecution of Jews in Germany.

In 1929, at the age of 18, Frenzel met his first girlfriend, who was Jewish. Their relationship dissolved after two years when her father heard that Frenzel was a Nazi Party member. She and her family emigrated to the United States in 1934.

In 1934, Frenzel married his wife. Both were Christians. They married in a church and went to church "if not every Sunday, at least every other or third Sunday". All of their five children were baptized. They bought the furniture for their new home from a Jewish merchant.

Sobibor Frenzel served at Sobibor for the duration of its operation and assisted in both its construction and its demolition. At Sobibor, he served as commandant of Lager I, the area in which Jewish prisoners lived and performed forced labour. He also commanded the Bahnhofkommando who greeted arriving transports. He served as Gustav Wagner's replacement as the quartermaster-sergeant of the camp when Wagner was attending to duties elsewhere or was on leave. Frenzel selected prisoners from the newly arrived transports to work inside and outside the camp and, in effect, also selected the vast majority who would go to the gas chambers.

Frenzel claimed that when he received his orders, he was told that Sobibor was merely a work camp, which he had to guard. When he found out the camp's true nature, he was forbidden from discussing it with anyone, as it was to be kept a state secret. The penalty was imprisonment at a concentration camp or death.

Erich Bauer, one of the commanders of Camp III, stated: "He [Frenzel] was one of the most brutal members of the permanent staff in the camp. His whip was very loose". A Sobibor survivor, Hershel Cukierman, described Frenzel as "a sadist and a killer without conscience. His involvement at Sobibor went much beyond the mass exterminations; he committed numerous other crimes as well".

The historian and Holocaust survivor Jules Schelvis gave the following evaluation of Frenzel's tenure:

When Frenzel was convicted in 1966, the judges concluded:

Frenzel later admitted that he had been harsh but insisted that he had always been fair.

Frenzel justified his activity at Sobibor:As I already pointed out, under the prevailing war conditions, which are now difficult to comprehend, I unfortunately believed that what was going on in Sobibor was lawful. To my regret, I was then convinced of its necessity. I was shocked that just during the war, when I wanted to serve my homeland, I had to be in such a terrible extermination camp. But then I thought very often about the enemy bomber pilots, who surely were not asked whether they wanted to carry out their murderous flights against German people in their homes in such a manner.

Quotes In a 1983 interview, Frenzel — who was at the camp from its inception to its closure — admitted the following about Sobibor:

Depictions In the 1987 movie Escape from Sobibor, Frenzel was played by Kurt Raab.

Frenzel's role as Sobibor Subcamp I Commandant was featured in the PBS TV Movie Escape from a Nazi Death Camp (2014)

Christopher Lambert played Frenzel in the Russian movie Sobibor (2018).