Kurt Hubert Franz (17 January 1914 – 4 July 1998) was an SS officer and one of the commanders of the Treblinka extermination camp.

The verdict against Franz stated that "a large part of the streams of blood and tears that flowed in Treblinka can be attributed to him alone.

First he received training with the Third Death Head Regiment Thuringia at Weimar, and then served as cook and guard at the Buchenwald concentration camp, where he attained the rank of Unterscharführer (Corporal).

[3] In late 1939 Franz was summoned to Hitler's Chancellery and detailed to take part in the Action T4 euthanasia program.

He was promoted to serve as the last camp commandant from mid August until November 1943 to conclude the Holocaust in Poland.

[5][8] In the testimony (27 February 1946) of one Samuel Rajzman at the major war crimes trial held in Nuremberg, Franz was "the commander of the camp" and orchestrated the building of the railway station at Treblinka.

Rajzman said, "When the persons descended from the trains, they really had the impression that they were at a very good station from where they could go to Suwalki, Vienna, Grodno, or other cities."

Rajzman also stated that Franz was responsible for the death of renowned psychologist Sigmund Freud's sister.

[9] At first, Kurt Franz supervised work commandos, the unloading of transports, and the transfer of Jews from the undressing rooms to the gas chambers.

After the prisoners' uprising in August 1943 I ran the camp more or less single-handedly for a month; however, during that period no more gassings were undertaken.

Despite visible damage to the camp during the revolt, the gas chambers were left intact and the killing of Polish Jews under Kurt Franz continued, albeit at a reduced speed with only ten boxcars "processed" at a time until the last transport of victims arrived on 19 August with 7,600 survivors of the Białystok Ghetto Uprising.

For this reason, he frequently bit his victims in the buttocks, in the abdomen and often, in the case of male inmates, in the genitals, sometimes partially biting them off.

[5][13] As reported by lower-ranking SS officers and soldiers, Kurt Franz also wrote the lyrics to a song which celebrated the Treblinka extermination camp.

[12] This song was taught to the few newly arriving Jews who were not killed immediately and were instead forced to work as slave laborers at the camp.

He ordered a roll call and announced that if there were further attempted escapes, and especially if they were successful, ten prisoners would be shot for every escapee.

Undoubtedly, [Kurt Franz] was the most terrifying of all the German personnel in the camp... witnesses agree that not a single day passed when he did not kill someone.

He said he heard Franz say at the time that children were “all headed for heaven.” He also said that the German guards would cut open pregnant Jewish women after they were gassed to make sure 'the fruit of their wombs' were also dead.

"[17] Franz was promoted to Untersturmführer (Second Lieutenant) and became an appointed official on 21 June 1943 on the orders of Heinrich Himmler.

On 2 August 1943, Franz along with four SS men and sixteen Ukrainians went for a swim in the nearby Bug River, which depleted the security at Treblinka significantly and helped to improve the chances of success of the prisoner revolt that took place at the camp that day.

Kurt Franz served as his replacement, and he was instructed to dismantle the camp and to eliminate every trace of evidence that it had ever existed.

[1] Franz had at his disposal some SS men, a group of Ukrainian guards and about 100 Jewish prisoners who had remained after the uprising.

The physical work was carried out by the Jews during September and October 1943, after which thirty to fifty prisoners were sent to Sobibor to finish dismantling there, and the remainder were shot and cremated on Franz's orders.

After Treblinka, in late autumn 1943, Franz was ordered to Trieste and northern Italy, where he participated in the persecution of partisans and Jews until the war's end.

At the Treblinka Trials in 1965, Franz denied having ever killed a person, having ever set his dog on a Jew, and claimed to have only beaten a prisoner once.