Victor Capesius

Born to a Saxon family in Reußmarkt, Transylvania, son of a doctor and pharmacist, Capesius began his academic studies in 1924 at the University of Cluj after graduating from high school. Capesius earned his undergraduate degree in general pharmacology from King Ferdinand I University on June 30, 1930.Patricia Posner The Pharmacist of Auschwitz: The Untold Story Crux, London 2017, {{ISBN|978-1-909979-41-3}} He worked towards a pharmacy degree and then transferred to the University of Vienna, where in 1933, he received his Doctorate of Pharmacy. He was married in June 1934 and worked for a subsidiary of IG Farben selling products to doctors and pharmacists.

After the start of World War II in 1939, Capesius joined the Romanian army and rose to the rank of captain while serving at a military hospital's pharmacy. In January 1942, for reasons not made clear in his military records, he was granted leave to restart his civilian job as a national sale representative for IG Farben and Bayer. He traveled so much that at times he lived in both Klausenburg and Sighisoara before finally buying a sixth-floor condominium on Brezoianu Street in an upper-class Bucharest neighborhood. He moved his family there.Patricia Posner The Pharmacist of Auschwitz: The Untold Story Crux, London 2017, {{ISBN|978-1-909979-41-3}}

As an ethnic German, Capesius moved to the Waffen-SS after Romania joined the Axis powers in 1940.Paul Milata: Between Hitler, Stalin, and Antonescu. Romania in the German Waffen-SS. Böhlau, Cologne 2007, {{ISBN|978-3-412-13806-6}} After training at the SS-Zentrale Sanitäranlage (Central Sanitary Facility) in Warsaw, he was sent to Dachau Concentration Camp in September 1943; he worked there until his subsequent transfer to Auschwitz Concentration Camp in December 1943. In Auschwitz, he acted as the chief KZ-Apotheker (pharmacist) starting in February 1944 after his predecessor was executed for "spreading defeatism."Patricia Posner The Pharmacist of Auschwitz: The Untold Story Crux, London 2017, {{ISBN|978-1-909979-41-3}} Capesius remained as the chief pharmacist until the camp was evacuated in January 1945.Dieter Schlesak Capesius, the Auschwitz pharmacist Dietz, Bonn 2006. {{ISBN|3-8012-0369-7}} . Capesius worked closely with Josef Mengele and together they were heavily involved in the selection of inmates for the gas chamber beginning in the spring of 1944 when the Hungarian and Transylvanian Jews were sent to the camp. He was the only SS selector who was recognized at the arrival ramp by Jews who had known him personally or through his pharmaceutical work before the war.Patricia Posner The Pharmacist of Auschwitz: The Untold Story Crux, London 2017, {{ISBN|978-1-909979-41-3}}Ernst Klee : The Encyclopedia of persons to the Third Reich. Who was before and what after 1945?. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2003, {{ISBN|3-10-039309-0}} In Auschwitz, he had risen to the rank of SS-Sturmbannführer, in November 1944, and was in charge and control of the poisonous chemicals used in the extermination of the Jews, such as phenol and Zyklon B. This was during the mass murder of almost 400,000 Hungarian Jews.degob.org/index.php?showarticle=2023

During his time at Auschwitz, Capesius stole valuables from the personal belongings of arriving Jews at the railhead and also secreted away gold pulled from the dental fillings of corpses. He had access to the gold since it was under the control of the camp's dentists, with whom he shared his pharmaceutical dispensary. Capesius sent the stolen gold to his sister for safekeeping until after the war.Patricia Posner The Pharmacist of Auschwitz: The Untold Story Crux, London 2017, {{ISBN|978-1-909979-41-3}}

After the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, he went into hiding in Schleswig-Holstein and fell into British captivity from which he was discharged after one year. He then began to study electrical engineering at the Technical University in Stuttgart. During a visit to Munich in 1946, Capesius was recognized by a former Auschwitz political prisoner, Leon Czekalzki, and was arrested at the main train station, Hauptbahnhof, by American military police and interned in the camps of Dachau and Ludwigsburg. After U.S. occupation authorities deemed his case unfit for prosecution, he was released in August 1947. He then went through denazification proceedings. He was found to be a major offender but managed to get that overturned by omitting his service at Auschwitz.Patricia Posner The Pharmacist of Auschwitz: The Untold Story Crux, London 2017, {{ISBN|978-1-909979-41-3}} He found a job in a Stuttgart pharmacy. In October 1950, he used the gold he had stolen from Auschwitz to open a pharmacy in Göppingen and a beauty parlour in Reutlingen.Patricia Posner The Pharmacist of Auschwitz: The Untold Story Crux, London 2017, {{ISBN|978-1-909979-41-3}}

A camp survivor, Hermann Langbein, and Germany's first postwar Jewish prosecutor, Fritz Bauer, were persistent in trying to compile enough evidence to make a case against Capesius. As a result of their work, Capesius was arrested in Göppingen in early December 1959 and remained in custody without bail or bond.Patricia Posner The Pharmacist of Auschwitz: The Untold Story Crux, London 2017, {{ISBN|978-1-909979-41-3}} On 20 August 1965 he was indicted in the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials by the Landgericht Frankfurt am Main Community for aiding and abetting the murder of at least four cases of 2,000 people. He was convicted and sentenced to nine years in prison.Hermann Langbein : People in Auschwitz, Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Vienna, 1980. {{ISBN|3-548-33014-2}}{{Cite web|url=http://www.stuttgarter-zeitung.de/inhalt.ludwigsburg-vom-schinder-zum-apotheker.b8e9e402-f713-427a-b41a-68e4539ff3e7.html|title = Ludwigsburg: Vom Schinder zum Apotheker}} Capesius served only eight years and was released from prison in January 1968.archive.jta.org/article/1968/01/25/2944304/nazi-convicted-of-auschwitz-murders-released-after-three-years-of-prison

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Capesius died from natural causes on 20 March 1985, in his home at Göppingen.Erich Stockhorst : 5000 heads - who was what in the Third Reich Arndt, Kiel 2000. {{ISBN|3-88741-116-1}} He was unrepentant until his death. His wife, Friederike (Fritzi), died in 1998.Patricia Posner The Pharmacist of Auschwitz: The Untold Story Crux, London 2017, {{ISBN|978-1-909979-41-3}}

Capesius is buried in Göppingen's main cemetery. His widow and a daughter were interred beside him. Just a few meters from the family grave is the Jewish section of the cemetery, which also commemorates several people murdered in Auschwitz.

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Literature by and about Victor Capesius in the catalog of the [https://web.archive.org/web/20070616090200/http://d-nb.de/eng/index.htm German National Library]

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Category:1907 births

Category:1985 deaths

Category:People from Miercurea Sibiului

Category:Romanian people of German descent

Category:University of Vienna alumni

Category:German pharmacists

Category:Romanian military personnel of World War II

Category:SS-Sturmbannführer

Category:Dachau concentration camp personnel

Category:Waffen-SS personnel

Category:Holocaust perpetrators in Poland

Category:People convicted in the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials

Category:German prisoners of war in World War II held by the United Kingdom