Gerhard Palitzsch (17 June 1913 – 7 December 1944) was a German non-commissioned officer (NCO) of the SS.

[3] He claimed to a fellow SS member that he was responsible for shooting some 25,000 people in the back of the head.

The prisoner Boleslaw Zbozien testified how Palitzsch murdered a family of five:″The man was holding by the hand the child standing on his left.

[3]On 3 September 1941 Palitzsch participated in the first tentative gassing using Zyklon B to murder 600 Russian POWs and 250 sick Polish prisoners.

[3] In 1942 he was Report Leader in the male camp of Auschwitz II Birkenau, where he served also at the trackside ramp when new Jewish transports were arriving.

4859) who volunteered to enter Auschwitz in September 1940, reported genocidal actions from November 1940 onwards and escaped in April 1943 it reads: "In Block 11, Palitzsch, a particularly dedicated torturer, would hunt children.

"[5] Like other concentration camp personnel he enriched himself by stealing the property robbed from the victims and because of this he was a subject of SS investigations into theft and corruption.

Accused of racial defilement and theft, Palitzsch was sentenced to several years in prison, but reprieved and instead dismissed from the SS in June 1944 and sent to a penal unit.

[citation needed] Rudolf Höss, who was not hesitant in his criticism of his staff, wrote in his memoirs: ″Palitzsch was the most cunning and slippery creature that I have ever gotten to know and experience in the many concentration camps.