Herbert Floss or Herbert Floß (25 August 1912 – 22 October 1943) was an SS functionary of

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

who served as acting commander of the

Sobibor extermination camp Sobibor (, Polish: ) was an extermination camp built and operated by Nazi Germany as part of Operation Reinhard. It was located in the forest near the village of Żłobek Duży in the General Government region of German-occupied Poland. As ...

during

the Holocaust in Poland The Holocaust in Poland was part of the European-wide Holocaust organized by Nazi Germany and took place in German-occupied Poland. During the genocide, three million Polish Jews were murdered, half of all Jews murdered during the Holocaust. ...

. He also served as cremation expert in Camp II ''Totenlager'' at the

Treblinka extermination camp Treblinka () was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The camp ...

.The Holocaust: Lest we forget: Extermination camp Sobibor
/ref> Floss joined the

NSDAP The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...

in 1930, the SA in 1931, and the SS in 1935. He served at

Sobibor Sobibor (, Polish: ) was an extermination camp built and operated by Nazi Germany as part of Operation Reinhard. It was located in the forest near the village of Żłobek Duży in the General Government region of German-occupied Poland. As an ...

from its establishment in April 1942 until the uprising on 14 October 1943. Before entering service in Sobibor, Floss was stationed in

Buchenwald Buchenwald (; literally 'beech forest') was a Nazi concentration camp established on hill near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within Germany's 1937 borders. Many actual or su ...

and several euthanasia centres. In the early period of Sobibor, Floss was the acting commander for a few weeks until he was succeeded by

Gustav Wagner Gustav Franz Wagner (18 July 1911 – 3 October 1980) was an Austrian member of the ''Schutzstaffel, SS'' with the rank of Staff sergeant (''Oberscharführer''). Wagner was a deputy commander of Sobibor extermination camp in General Government, Ge ...

. Before the victims went into the gas chambers, he took their last possessions from them. Fellow Treblinka SS officer Heinrich Matthes described this period: "Floss arrived at this time ovember 1942 who, so I presume, must previously have been in another camp. He then had the installation built for burning the corpses. The incineration was carried out by placing railroad rails on blocks of concrete. The corpses were then piled up on these rails. Brush wood was placed under the rails. The wood was drenched with gasoline. Not only the newly obtained corpses were burnt in this way, but also those exhumed from the ditches." By the end of July 1943, the Jewish "death brigade" in Camp II, supervised by Floss, had cremated about 700,000 corpses.Tregenza, Michael. ''Christian Wirth: Inspekteur der Sonderkommandos, Aktion Reinhard''. Vol. XV, Lublin 1993, p. 57. At Sobibor Floss trained the Ukrainian guards. One week after the uprising he accompanied a group of them to

Lublin Lublin is the ninth-largest city in Poland and the second-largest city of historical Lesser Poland. It is the capital and the center of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 336,339 (December 2021). Lublin is the largest Polish city east of t ...

. When the train was near

Chełm Chełm (; uk, Холм, Kholm; german: Cholm; yi, כעלם, Khelm) is a city in southeastern Poland with 60,231 inhabitants as of December 2021. It is located to the south-east of Lublin, north of Zamość and south of Biała Podlaska, some ...

he was overpowered and shot with his own machine pistol.Sobibor Interviews: Biographies of SS-men
sobiborinterviews.nl; accessed 26 April 2016.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Floss, Herbert 1912 births 1943 deaths Assassinated Nazis Sturmabteilung personnel Sobibor extermination camp personnel Treblinka extermination camp personnel People from Sächsische Schweiz-Osterzgebirge Deaths by firearm in Poland

See also

References