Erich Fuchs

Erich Fuchs (9 April 1902 – 25 July 1980) was an SS functionary who worked for the Action T4 mass-murder program, and for the Operation Reinhard phase of the Holocaust.

He was charged with participation in the Holocaust and on 20 December 1966, found guilty of being an accessory to the mass murder of at least 79,000 people.

Following the outbreak of World War II, in 1940 Fuchs was assigned to the clandestine Action T4 euthanasia program.

[2] When the Final Solution was set in place at Wannsee, Fuchs was transferred to the newly built Bełżec extermination camp in German-occupied Poland for six weeks to install the killing apparatus there.

[4] He later testified: Upon our arrival in Belzec, we met Friedel Schwarz and the other SS men, whose names I cannot remember.

[5]After the successful installation of the gassing motor at Belzec, in April 1942 Fuchs was moved to the next secret construction site at the Sobibor extermination camp.

The gas-fueled, two-hundred-horse-power engine was allocated for him already in nearby Lvov by the SS men of Operation Reinhard.

[4] In Fuchs's own words: Sometime in the spring of 1942 I received instructions from Wirth to fetch new camp staff from Lublin by lorry.

One of these was Erich Bauer (also Stangl and one or two other people) ... On Wirth's instructions I left by lorry for Lemberg and collected a gassing engine there which I then took to Sobibor.

Now an SS-Scharführer (Sergeant), Fuchs went to Treblinka extermination camp, under the command of his old boss Eberl.

Then, from December to February 1943 he was stationed at Wiesloch psychiatric institution, where he was involved in "euthanasia research" and again, present during the gassing operations.

On 20 December 1966, Fuchs was found guilty of being an accessory to the mass murder of at least 79,000 Jews and sentenced to four years imprisonment.