The confession of Franz Ziereis, Commandant of the Mauthausen concentration camp

The photo above shows a display board in the Museum at the former Mauthausen concentration camp. According to the Mauthausen Museum, this photo was taken on May 24, 1945 and it shows Mauthausen Commandant Franz Ziereis as he allegedly gave his deathbed confession. According to Hans Marsalek, a Communist political prisoner in the camp, who wrote an affidavit ten months later, in which he quoted from the confession from memory, Ziereis gave his confession, during 6 to 8 hours of interrogation on the night of May 22nd and 23rd, 1945 at the Gusen sub-camp of Mauthausen. Marsalek's affadavit was entered into the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal and was used as evidence during the trial of Ernst Kaltenbrunner, although Hans Marsalek refused to take the witness stand.

Note that Ziereis has been propped up for the photo, and a harness around his chest, with straps over his shoulders, appears to be holding his body upright. An unidentified man wearing an American Army cap is sitting very close to Ziereis while the arm and hand of another man can be seen in the upper left hand corner. Everything has been carefully posed to show Ziereis as he allegedly makes his death-bed confession, but notice that the three elements of the photo do not match; it looks like three separate photos that have been put together. This is a flash photo but there is more light on the arm in the background than on the soldier in the foreground. It appears that Ziereis was dead when the photo was taken.

The photo above, taken in the Mauthausen Museum, shows a display board right next to the photo of Franz Ziereis, which is shown at the top of this page. The first paragraph on the sign in the photo states that Ziereis was shot on 23.5.1945 and that he died several days later in a U.S. Field Hospital in Gusen. However, according to Marsalek's affidavit, Ziereis was shot on May 22, 1945.

The second paragraph on the display board shown in the photo above is a quote from the alleged confession of Franz Ziereis in which he said that a gas chamber, disguised as a bathroom, was built at Mauthausen on the order of Dr. Krebsbach; the prisoners were gassed with Cyklon-B. Besides this, there was a special vehicle which traveled between the Mauthausen main camp and the Gusen sub-camp, in which prisoners were gassed along the way.

In the official version of the story, Ziereis died in an American Army field hospital at the Gusen 1 sub-camp, 6 kilometers west of the Mauthausen main camp, but not before he talked for 6 to 8 hours, confessing to the deaths of millions of prisoners, including the killing of prisoners in the gas chamber at Mauthausen and the castle at Hartheim.

In a sworn affidavit, dated April 8, 1946, that was entered into the Nuremberg IMT as document 3870-PS, Hans Marsalek, a prisoner who worked as a clerk at the Mauthausen concentration camp, wrote the following in German, which was translated into English and entered into the IMT as Document 3870-PS:

AFFIDAVIT OF HANS MARSALEK

I, Hans Marsalek, after first being duly sworn, declare as follows:

1. I was born on 19 July 1914 in Vienna, and was in Concentration Camp Mauthausen from 29 September 1942 until my liberation. I had the function of second clerk in this camp. My present occupation is with the Directorate of Police in Vienna as the Director of Department IV. Counter-Intelligence Service of the State Police [Staatspolizeilicher Abwehrdienst], and my present address is: Vienna 19, Grinzingerstrasse 12.


2. On 22 May 1945, the Commandant of the Concentration Camp Mauthausen, Franz Ziereis, was shot while escaping by American soldiers and was taken to the branch camp of Gusen. Franz Ziereis was interrogated by me in the presence of the Commander of the 11th Armored Division (American Armored Division) Seibel; the former prisoner and physician Dr. Koszeinski; and in the presence of another Polish citizen, name unknown, for a period of six to eight hours.

The interrogation was effected in the night from 22 May to 23 May 1945. Franz Ziereis was seriously wounded -- his body had been penetrated by three bullets -- and knew that he would die shortly and told me the following:

"I joined the SS on 30 September 1936 as a training specialist with the rank of Obersturmfuehrer (Lieutenant). I was assigned to the 4th SS Regt at Oranienburg and was transferred to Mauthausen on 17 February 1939, with the rank of Hauptsturmfuehrer (Captain) and successor to the former Commandant of the camp. SS Fuehrer Saurer.


My rapid and extraordinary career is due to the fact that 1 volunteered frequently for the Front. By orders of the Reichsfuehrer SS Himmler I was forced to remain in Mauthausen. The SS complement in Mauthausen had the following organization:

There was one SS man for ten prisoners. The highest number of prisoners was about 17,000 (seventeen thousand), with the exception of the branch camps. The highest number in Camp 1 Mauthausen, the branch camps included, was about 90,000 (ninety thousand).

The total number of prisoners who died was 65,000 (sixtyfive thousand). The complement was made up of Totenkopf units, strength of 5,000 (five thousand) men, which were made up of guards and the command staff.

Later, 6,000 (six thousand) men came from the Army and the Air Forces [Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe] for guard duty and they were put into SS uniforms. Moreover, there were many "Racial Germans" [Volks Deutsche] who had been conscripted into the Wehrmacht. The recruitment of former prisoners into the SS was done on orders of Himmler. These were to fight against the enemy, particularly the Bolsheviks. For the greater part they were to be recruited as volunteers.

I have personally killed about 4,000 (four thousand) prisoners by assigning them to the Penal Company. The formation of Penal Companies was done by order of Berlin to effect a more rapid extermination of prisoners through hard labor. I always took part personally in the executions.

By order of Dr. Lohnauer, incorrigible professional criminals were transferred to Hartheim near Linz as mentally deficient, where they were exterminated by a special system of SS Captain Krebsbach. The greatest number of murdered prisoners goes to the account of Bachmeyer.

Chemielskwy and Seidler in Gusen had human skin specially tanned on which there were tattoos. From this leather they had books bound, and they had lampshades and leather cases made.

According to an order by Himmler, I was to liquidate all prisoners on behalf of SS Obergruppenfuehrer Dr. Kaltenbrunner; the prisoners were to be led into the tunnels of the factory Bergkristall and only one entrance was to be left open. Then this entrance was to be blown up by the use of explosives and the death of the prisoners was to be effected in this manner. I refused to carry out this order. This matter was the extermination of the prisoners of the so-called Mother camp, Mauthausen, and of the camps Gusen I and Gusen II. Details of this are known to Herr Wolfram and SS Obersturmfuehrer Eckermann.

A gassing plant was built in Concentration Camp Mauthausen by order of the former garrison doctor, Dr. Krebsbach, camouflaged as a bathroom. Prisoners were gassed in this camouflaged bathroom. Apart from that a specially built automobile commuted between Mauthausen and Gusen, in which prisoners were gassed while travelling. The idea for the construction of this automobile was Dr. Wasicki's, SS Untersturmfuehrer and pharmacist. I, myself, never put any gas into this automobile, I only drove it, but I knew that prisoners were being gassed. The gassing of the prisoners was done on the urging of SS Hauptsturmfuehrer Dr. Krebsbach.

Everything that we carried out was ordered by the Reich Security Main Office [Reichssicherheitshauptamt], furthermore, by SS Obergruppenfuehrer Mueller or Dr. Kaltenbrunner, the latter being Chief of the Security Police.

SS Obergruppenfuehrer Pohl gave the order that prisoners were to be driven into the woods because they were weak and had had no food, in order to pick berries there and to eat buds. The above-mentioned shortened the daily ration from 750 grms per day to 350 grms per day through the administration. SS Gruppenfuehrer Gluecks gave the order to classify weak prisoners as mentally deranged and to kill them by a gas plant which existed in the Castle Hartheim near Linz.
There, about a million or a million and a half human beings were killed. Those prisoners were reported as having died from natural causes [Normal Verstorbene]

The death reports of prisoners still alive, who were to be transported, were sent to the political department concerned previous to their transport.

The number of prisoners who were murdered in Hartheim is not known to me, but the number of victims at Hartheim is about one million or a million and a half, including the civilians who were sent to Hartheim.

The gassing plant in Mauthausen was really built by order of SS Obergruppenfuehrer Gluecks, since he was of the opinion that it was more humane to gas the prisoners than to shoot them. One day Obergruppenfuehrer Pohl sent me about 3,000 women and children without prior notice, who were without food for ten days. In December 1944, they were transported in open coal cars without blankets. The children of these transports had to be put on the march to Bergen Belsen by order from Berlin and I suppose that all of them died.

The Gauleiter Eigruber denied me food for new arrivals and all weak prisoners. He ordered that I was to turn over 50% of the potatoes which had been stored for the winter to the Gau (District).

SS Obergruppenfuehrer Gluecks was the one who gave the order to transfer those prisoners who were working in the Crematorium of Mauthausen Concentration Camp to Gusen and to have them killed by shooting them in the neck. There was a secret order whereby the Crematorium Kommando was to be killed every three weeks.

In the presence of Baldur von Schirach, Gauleiter Refiner, Dr.Ueberreiter, Dr. Juri, I received the following order from Reichsfuehrer Himmler : The Jews who were working on the South East Wall fortifications must be put on the march from all places of the South East Border of the Ostmark after finishing their work; their destination was to be Mauthausen. According to Himmler's order, 60,000 Jews were to come to Mauthausen. In point of fact only a fraction of this number arrived. As an example I mention a transport which left with 4,500 Jews but which arrived with 180. It is unknown to me from which place the transport originated. Women and children had no shoes -- they were covered with rags and had lice. In this transport there were whole families and innumerable persons were shot on the way because of general bodily weakness.

Under my administration, as Commandant, there were the following camps:

Mauthausen with about 12 prisoners
Gusen I and II with about 24,000 prisoners
Linz I with about 5,000 prisoners
Gusen III with about 300 prisoners
Linz II with about 500 prisoners
Linz III with about 300 prisoners
Ebensee with about 12,000 prisoners
Passau I with about 600 prisoners
Passau II with about 150 prisoners
Passau III with about 60 prisoners
Ternberg with about 500 prisoners
Grossramming with about 3,000 prisoners
Melk with about 10,000 prisoners
Eisenerz with about 500 prisoners
St. Lambrecht with about 350 prisoners

Schloss Lindt with about 20 prisoners
Peggau with about 500 prisoners
Klagenfurt- with about 70 prisoners
Junkerschule
Laibach with about 500 prisoners
Loiblpass with about 3,000 prisoners
Schechart- with about 4,000 prisoners
Henkelwerke
Wiener-Neustadt with about 1,500 prisoners
Mistelbach with about 1,000 prisoners
Wiener-Neudorf with about 3,000 prisoners
Florisdorf with about 1,000 prisoners
Florisdorf with about 800 prisoners
Henkelwerke
Sauerwerke Wein with about 2,000 prisoners
Steyer-Muenichholz with about 3,000 prisoners
St. Valentin with about 1,500 prisoners
Wels with about 2,000 prisoners
Amstetten with about 3,000 prisoners
Gunskirchen with about 450 prisoners
Schlier with about 1,000 prisoners

There were still several other camps, the total being about 45 (forty-five). However. I cannot remember anymore exactly now.

During the last month, or month and a half before the end, there was a Kommando of Lithographs and Graphic experts in Camp Schlier. They were exclusively occupied in printing false Pound Sterling notes, as well as with the falsification of identification papers and stamps from all over the world.

As far as I was informed, this Kommando made a total of 750,000,000. Pound notes and this Kommando was founded at the time by order of Dr. Kaltenbrunner, at Oranienburg, in the Concentration Camp Sachsenhausen.

In order to stop sexual intercourse between prisoners of the same sex, as far as possible, in the year 1942 a bordello for prisoners was opened. The visitors were asked two marks as payment -- the prostitute received fifty Pfennings [Translator's note: 1/2 mark] and the remaining 1 1/2 Mk went to the central Concentration Camp Office at Oranienburg.

The reason for the execution of the Austrians who had been in Mauthausen Concentration Camp for almost a year is the following:

On the suggestion of the Gauleiter Eigruber, Dr. Pipprater, and also the Director of the Linz Gestapo Office, Spann, the execution was carried out. A certain agent of the Gestapo, Prohaska, was put in charge of the execution.

The son of Regent [Reichsverweser] Horthy lived in arrest at Mauthausen under the covername "Maus" (Mouse), Badoglio,under the name "Brausewetter." All prominent prisoners in the arrest building at Mauthausen received these covernames. On order of the Gauleiter Eigruber, the above-mentioned were to be killed, but after further discussion with Col. Kuppert I refused to carry out this order. I sent these people to Dachau with the exception of Horthy who hid himself among the cells."

3. I, Hans Marsalek, declare in addition, as follows:

With reference to the number of one million to one and a half million murdered human beings in Hartheim, which was the number given by Franz Ziereis, it is pointed out to him by me that this number was too high.

He however insisted on this number and explained to me that actually a great number of mentally deranged from the entire Southern Area of Germany were shipped there and liquidated. This accounts for the high
number of victims. In spite of his serious injury and his knowledge that he would probably die soon, Franz Ziereis tried to put the greater part of the guilt on his subordinates.

In early summer of 1943, SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Dr. Kaltenbrunner visited the Concentration Camp Mauthausen. The Camp Commandant Ziereis, Gauleiter Eigruber, first leader of the Protective Custody camp Bachmeyer and several others accompanied Kaltenbrunner. I saw Dr.Kaltenbrunner and the people who accompanied him with my own eyes.

According to the testimony of the "Corpse Carriers" of that time, the former prisoners Albert Tiefenbacher, present address Salzburg; and Johann Polster, present address Pottendorf near Wiener Neustadt, Austria; about fifteen prisoners of the arrest class were selected by Unterscharfuehrer Winkler, in order to show Dr. Kaltenbrunner three ways of extermination, by a shot in the neck, hanging, and gassing. Women whose hair had been cut were among the executed and they were killed by shots in the neck. Above-mentioned "Corpse Carriers" were present at the execution and had to carry the corpses to the Crematorium. Dr. Kaltenbrunner went to the Crematorium after the execution and later went into the quarry.

Baldur von Schirach visited the camp in fall of 1944. He, too. went to the arrest building and also to the Crematorium. Eight or nine "political" Austrians were shown to him at the time, and he promised to discharge them soon. As a matter of fact, actually one of these men, whose name I have forgotten, was discharged soon thereafter.

4. I declare that the above testimony was given by me voluntarily and that no compulsion was exerted on me.


It conforms to the truth, to the best of my knowledge and to the best of my conscience, and I swear to it. Nurnberg, 8 April 1946.

/s/ Marsalek, Hans
/t/ Hans Marsalek

Subscribed and sworn to before me today
this 8th day of the month of April 1946.
/s/ Smith W. Brookhart Jr.
/t/ Smith W. Brookhart Jr. Lt. Col
Executive Officer, Interrogation Division
OUSCC APO 124A US Army.

U.S. Associate Trial Counsel Col. John Harlen Amen read parts of the Marsalek affidavit on April 12, 1946 at the Nuremberg IMT, including the part pertaining to an order allegedly given by Ernst Kaltenbrunner to blow up all the prisoners at the Gusen camp. Ernst Kaltenbrunner was on trial at Nuremberg, charged with Crimes against Humanity which included the gassing of prisoners, to which Ziereis had confessed, according to Marsalek's affidavit.

Kaltenbrunner objected to the reading of the affidavit, saying:

This Hans Marsalek whom, of course, I have never seen in my life, had been an internee in Mauthausen as were the two other witnesses. I have briefly expressed my views as to the value of a statement concerning me from a former concentration camp internee and my inability to speak face to face with this witness who now confronts me, and my application will be made through my counsel. I must ask here to be confronted with Marsalek. Marsalek cannot know of any such order. In spite of that he states that he did.

The "order" that Kaltenbrunner referred to was the alleged order to kill all the prisoners just before the Americans arrived. Kaltenbrunner's request to be confronted with Marsalek was denied and Marsalek never took the witness stand at Nuremberg.

The Commander of the 11th Armored Division was Richard R. Seibel, who arrived at Mauthausen some time in April 1945, before the camp was officially liberated, and stayed there for 35 days before being assigned to duty in the Austrian Alps, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Two American field hospitals were brought in, according to the USHMM.

The caption on the photo at the top of this page says that the photo on display was taken on May 24, 1945 at the Gusen camp. The soldier in the photo is not identified, but allegedly Col. Richard R. Seibel, the commander of the 11th Armored Division was present when Commandant Franz Ziereis was questioned by Hans Marsalek. Col. Seibel did not testify at the Nuremberg IMT, nor did he sign his name as a witness to the confession of Ziereis.

In the upper left hand corner of the photo at the top of this page can be seen what looks like the sleeve of a striped prison uniform on the arm of a person who is taking notes, possibly Dr. Koszeinski, a prisoner whom Marsalek alleges was present, or Marsalek himself.

The name of the photographer is not mentioned on the display, but Francois Boix, a prisoner who worked in the photography department at the main Mauthausen camp, was allegedly present when Ziereis made his confession. Boix worked in the darkroom at Mauthausen and had the means and the opportunity to put three photographs together to make a fake photo.

Boix testified at the Nuremberg IMT that Mauthausen was an extermination camp where the only way out was through the chimney, and that there were gas chambers there, but he was not asked about the confession of Franz Ziereis.

The Army Signal Corp photo below shows Boix at the main Mauthausen camp with a camera around his neck. At the Nuremberg IMT, Boix identified a photo of Ernst Kaltenbrunner, which proved that Kaltenbrunner had visited the camp.

In his alleged 6-to-8-hour confession, which was written up from memory ten months later by Hans Marsalek, Ziereis named Dr. Krebsbach as the man who was responsible for setting up the gas chamber at Mauthausen. Ziereis also allegedly confessed that he personally drove a gas van between Mauthausen and Gusen, killing prisoners with carbon monoxide on the way, and that between 1 million and 1.5 million prisoners were gassed in the 192-square-foot gas chamber at Hartheim Castle.

In the photo below, taken in the camp at Mauthausen, Commandant Franz Ziereis is the third man from the left. Sturmbannführer Eduard Krebsbach, the camp doctor at Mauthausen until June 1943, is the man standing to the left of Ziereis in the group photo.

In his book entitled "The 186 Steps," Christian Bernadac gives information which disputes the official version; Bernadac claims that Ziereis was taken prisoner and interrogated by two prisoners before he was shot.

Bernadac quotes the following information given by Razola and Constante, two Spanish prisoners at Mauthausen, regarding the death of Ziereis:

Commander Ziereis, recognized in spite of the fact that he was wearing civilian clothing, was taken prisoner and led to the camp where his interrogatory was conducted by (Hans) Marsalek and (Francisco) Boix. There was nothing courageous in his attitude. He was quibbling and sniffing, and argued that he was not responsible, and that all he did was carry out the orders of his government. He was executed by an American officer of Cuban origin who took the responsibility of seeing that justice was done and in this way made it impossible for the American authorities to intervene against the deportees (prisoners).

A variation in the story of the death of Franz Ziereis, quoted below, was written by Robert Whealey in a recent article entitled "The Spanish Holocaust and the Cover-Up that Lasted a Generation" which was published in 2008 on the History News Network web site:

The last days of SS Colonel Ziereis may be typical. On the evening of 23 May in the village of Spital, Chief Warrant Officer Walter S. Kobus (US Army) with three G.I.s and two ex-prisoners, a Spaniard and a Czech, captured Ziereis as he was preparing for suicide with a pistol. He bungled the attempt. Taken back to KL (Konzentrations Lager) Mauthausen, he was interrogated by three other ex-prisoners. Ziereis blamed his actions on his superiors: Obergruppenfuehrer (Four Star General) Oswald Pohl, Himmler and Hitler. The Czechs and Spaniards thought the US 11th Armored Division, then in charge of the stinking camp, would somehow allow Ziereis to go free, so they shot him in a trap which would allow him to believe that he could escape. The wounded Ziereis was taken by the U.S. Lt. Colonel in charge to a US field hospital where he died the next day. Ziereis's son witnessed the final hours and spat on his dying father.

The reason that the son of Ziereis allegedly spat on his dying father might have been because his father had given him a rifle for his tenth birthday. Richard Sonnenfeldt, a 22-year-old Jew, who was the chief American interpreter at the Nuremberg IMT, wrote the following in his book entitled "Witness to Nuremberg: The Chief American Interpreter at the War Crimes Trial":

One visit to Austria took us to the concentration camp at Mauthausen. We were seeking witnesses to prove that Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the senior surviving SS officer who was likely to be a defendant at Nuremberg, had personally observed the butchery going on at Mauthausen during repeated visits. Though "only" a few hundred thousand had been killed at Mauthausen, as compared to millions at Auschwitz, this concentration camp was not just an ordinary death factory. Mauthausen was infamous for the extreme cruelties and satanic tortures invented and practiced by Franz Ziereis, it's commandant. Ziereis himself had died before we arrived, wounded mortally while trying to escape. But we did talk to Ziereis's wife and teenage son.

Although I have forgotten the son's name, my conversation with him is burned in my memory. He was a fresh-faced towhead, who could have been an American kid by his looks, but not by his words or experiences. I asked him, "How did you get along with your dad?"

"My father was okay," he said. "The only thing I have against him is that he gave me a rife as a present on my tenth birthday, then had six prisoners lined up, and I had to shoot until they were dead. That took a long time and it was very hard and I did not like it."

I later found out that the gun was of very small caliber and that Commandant Ziereis had invented this particular pastime because he knew it took dozens of shots to kill prisoners this way.

Another version of this story is that Ziereis gave his son 50 prisoners to shoot as a present for his eleventh birthday. An unsubstantiated rumour is that Ziereis allowed his son to shoot prisoners from the "front porch" of his house in Austria.

Regarding the death of Ziereis, Abram L. Sachar wrote the following in his book entitled "The Redemption of the Unwanted":

On May 23, U.S. intelligence learned he was hiding in nearby Spital. Ziereis opened fire on the squad sent to arrest him and was seriously wounded in the exchange of shots. Taken to a hospital in one of the subcamps, he was put into the care of a Jewish prisoner who had been spared only because his medical skills were indispensable. The physician felt obliged by his Hippocratic oath, and his own integrity, to do his best for Ziereis. As the former commandant babbled in self-justification, hundreds of orders and records were retrieved. These, along with instruments of torture, were assembled to serve as evidence in the later trials of the war criminals. Even a cursory review of the documents indicated that between one and a half and two million prisoners had been starved or worked to death in Mauthausen and its subcamps. Ziereis himself died in the hospital before he could be condemned and probably executed.

Eye witness account of the last days of Commandant Franz Ziereis

Cpl. Donald Leake was a 21-year-old soldier with the 11th Armored Division, 21AIB, of General Patton's Third Army; he was among the first soldiers that liberated Mauthausen on May 5, 1945. Along with other U.S. soldiers, Leake was assigned to live inside the Mauthausen concentration camp and guard the prisoners in order to prevent them from killing each other and to keep them inside until the typhus epidemic could be brought under control.

In an e-mail to me on July 6, 2008, 84-year-old Donald Leake described his first day at Mauthausen when he saw the dead bodies of three guards before rigor mortis had set in:

When we arrived at the camp we found a guardhouse with 3 bodies. Apparently they thought suicide was better than the prisoners getting hold of them. They had tried glass to cut their arms and when that didn't work they wrapped their belts around their necks and fastened them to a heater radiator and slumped down so they would choke to death.

Leake was first assigned to guard a pit where potatoes were being stored. The sick prisoners at Mauthausen were being fed a thin potato soup by the Americans and Leake's job was to prevent the prisoners from stealing the potatoes and killing themselves by over eating.

After the Mauthausen camp was liberated, 3000 prisoners allegedly died from disease or from eating too much of the rich food that the Americans gave them. Leake told how he had to fire a few shots into the potato pit to ward off three starving prisoners who were trying to steal potatoes.

In one of a series of e-mails, Donald Leake wrote the following, regarding what happened to the guards at the camp:

The only one I saw had a rope around his neck and was being led around the camp by prisoners, and appeared to have his tongue cut out. He was asking for help, but could not speak well. I told an officer and he said "tough, let it be." It is difficult not to help anyone being tortured.

Donald Leake wrote in another e-mail to me that, on May 23, 1945, the U.S. soldiers at Mauthausen were alerted that there was a "disturbance" going on at a nearby village. According to Leake, several soldiers were sent to the village to take care of the problem, and Ziereis was shot 3 times in the back with a 30 cal. rifle by an American soldier with the rank of private.

Leake did not witness the shooting, but he wrote that the death of Ziereis

...was of such interest to me that I asked around and found the soldier who shot him encamped with his company nearby, and asked him the circumstances of the shooting. His squad was walking toward a house where there was a disturbance and he (Ziereis) came running out, and that was when he was told to halt 3 times, then he (the soldier) fired.

Leake saw Ziereis when he was brought into the Mauthausen main camp, and put into the room where the SS guards spent time when they were not on duty.

Donald Leake wrote the following regarding the last days of Ziereis's life:

I was told to stay in his room to guard him from the prisoners who would like to get hold of him. I heard no confession or any threats to him while I was on duty. About 2 or 3 days later the Doctor said to me "he is dying but I have many other patients to take care of. Call me if you see any change in him." After about 20 minutes he (Ziereis) began gasping and breathing heavy, so I sent a soldier to get the Dr. He came and said "since he's dying this is a last resort" and he gave him a shot directly into his heart [adrenaline?] but he died soon after.

According to Leake, the Doctor who took care of Ziereis was an American wearing civilian clothes who had only recently arrived; he was not a prisoner in the camp.

Donald Leake wrote that Commandant Franz Ziereis was unconscious when he was brought to Mauthausen and that he never recovered consciousness while Leake was on duty. Leake's job was to guard Ziereis to keep the prisoners from getting to him to exact revenge.

In answer to my question about whether Hans Marsalek could have heard a confession from Ziereis, while he was at the main Mauthausen camp, Donald Leake wrote the following in an e-mail on July 6, 2008:

He (Ziereis) was in a room the guards of the camp used for down time. No one questioned him while I was on duty. I would have seen anyone had they come into the room. I never saw him conscious or speak on my guard time. Anything could have happened on my off time but I doubt he could have conversed with anyone. My orders were "shoot to kill if any prisoner tried to get to him." I thought they just wanted to patch him up for a war trial. No one seemed excited that they had the commandant there. I thought it was very important. I also thought that 2 or 3 30 cal shots were excessive to bring a man down. One of the holes seemed to go into his armpit and possibly lodge in his lung. I certainly would have seen Marsalek if he had entered while I was on duty.

According to Donald Leake, Ziereis did not die immediately after he was shot, but lingered in an unconscious state for a couple of days before he died. Ziereis was never taken to a hospital, according to Leake. Leake believes that the photo of Franz Ziereis on his death bed was taken after he was already dead.

The official version of the death of Ziereis is that he died in a hospital in Gusen and his body was hung on the fence at Gusen by the prisoners and left there for a couple of weeks. However, Donald Leake saw the body of Ziereis hanging on a fence in the Mauthausen main camp after his death.

Regarding what happened after the death of Ziereis, Donald Leake wrote the following to me in an e-mail:

The Doctor said I could leave, and someone would take care of the body. I wasn't comfortable with this so I sent someone to my squad leader and he said to leave for other duties. I don't know how, but I later saw his body hanging on the fence with swastikas painted all over him. What else the prisoners did, I didn't see, but after a few days the odor was bad. I told an officer it was growing rank and he said he would take care of it which he did.

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