Execution of Eduard Krebsbach - Fanatical Nazi "Doctor Injection" of Mauthausen - World War 2. June 1940, Nazi-occupied Europe. After the fall of France, Vichy French authorities turn over to the German SS and police thousands of Spanish refugees, virtually all of whom fought against General Francisco Franco's rebel troops during the Spanish Civil War, and who fled to France after Franco overthrew the Spanish Republic in 1939. The SS and police incarcerate the overwhelming majority of the Spanish Republicans, more than 7,000, in Mauthausen in 1940 and 1941 and individual members of the anti-Franco forces continue to trickle into the camp until the last weeks of the war. An estimated 197,000 prisoners of virtually every German-occupied country in World War II will pass through Mauthausen concentration camp and its subcamps during the time they are operational. Living and working conditions there lead to the death by murder, mistreatment, starvation, exposure, and disease of more than half of the prisoners. One of the perpetrators responsible for these atrocities is a German doctor Eduard Krebsbach.

Eduard Krebsbach was born on the 8th of August 1894 in Bonn, then part of the German Empire. Krebsbach attended a humanistic high school in Cologne and in 1912 began studying medicine at the University of Freiburg. In 1919 he obtained his doctorate and in the same year he was one of the co-founders of the Freiburg local anti-Semitic group. In the early 1920s, Krebsbach relocated from Freiburg and served as a company and district doctor.

After Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party came into power in January 1933, Krebsbach was dismissed from his position as a district doctor due to suspicions of opposing Nazism. However, he opened a medical practice in Freiburg later that year and also served as a contract doctor for the local police department. In the same year Krebsbach joined the Nazi Party and the SS, becoming a member of a medical squadron in Freiburg.

On the 9th – 10th of November 1938, the Nazi leaders unleashed a series of coordinated violent riots against the Jews throughout Nazi Germany and recently incorporated territories. The Nazi SA and German civilians not only ransacked 7,500 Jewish-owned businesses, homes, and schools, but also destroyed hundreds of synagogues. Furthermore, Jewish cemeteries were desecrated, and tens of thousands of Jewish men were rounded up and sent to concentration camps. This event came to be known as Kristallnacht or The Night of Broken Glass because of the shattered glass that littered the streets afterwards. In addition to the physical violence, the Nazi regime imposed severe financial penalties on the Jewish community. They held the Jews collectively responsible for the damages inflicted during Kristallnacht and used this as an opportunity to confiscate Jewish property and businesses. Krebsbach, a fanatical antisemite, could finally express his hatred towards Jews when during Kristallnacht together with several other SA and SS members set the local synagogue in Freiburg on fire.


In the autumn of 1941, Krebsbach became garrison doctor of Mauthausen concentration camp, tasked with supervising medical care and all medical personnel of the camp.

Mauthausen concentration camp had became operational from the 8th of August 1938, several months after the German annexation of Austria, when the SS transferred the first prisoners from the Dachau concentration camp. The site was chosen because of the nearby granite quarry, and its proximity to Linz. During this phase, the prisoners, all of them German and Austrian men, had to build their own camp and work in the quarry.
In December 1939 the SS ordered the construction of a second concentration camp – Gusen - just a few kilometers from Mauthausen. The Gusen camp went into operation in May 1940.
The Second world war began on the 1st of September, 1939 when Germany invaded Poland. Three months into World War II in December 1939, the number had increased to over 2,600 prisoners, primarily convicted criminals, "asocials," political opponents, and religious conscientious objectors, such as Jehovah's Witnesses.



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