English source-aligned edition
Erich Mußfeldt
Erich Mußfeldt served as head of the crematorium and corpse-disposal detail at Lublin-Majdanek concentration camp, later a crematoria supervisor at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The profile reconstructs the person’s function in Majdanek, Lublin and Auschwitz-Birkenau through documented office, decisions, supervision or operational conduct. It does not assign every crime committed by an institution or region to one individual.
Confirmed findings
- From summer 1942, he headed the crematorium and the prisoner detail responsible for corpses at Lublin-Majdanek concentration camp; he supervised the detail's work together with subordinate SS personnel.
- On 19 February 1943, he was sent to Auschwitz to learn the technique of burning corpses on open-air pyres. After returning to Majdanek, he participated under Commandant Hermann Florstedt in exhuming and burning bodies as part of operations intended to erase traces of the crimes.
- After the Aktion Erntefest mass shooting on 3 November 1943, his detail, acting on orders from higher superiors, began collecting wood on 4 November and burning the victims' bodies on 5 November. Mußfeldt organised the disposal of the bodies, but the sources do not identify him as the person who ordered the shooting itself.
- In May 1944, he was transferred to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he was subordinate to Otto Moll and supervised work in two crematoria during the day. He participated in the mechanism for disposing of bodies during the deportation and murder of Hungarian Jews.
- In the first Auschwitz trial, the Supreme National Tribunal sentenced him to death on 22 December 1947. The sentence was carried out in Kraków on 24 January 1948.
Place in the chain of responsibility
Mußfeldt represents a technical and operational link in mass murder: managing prisoner details, operating crematoria, exhuming and destroying bodies. This agency must be distinguished from issuing the order to shoot during Aktion Erntefest, which came from a higher level.
Key events and mechanisms
- taking charge of the crematorium and corpse-disposal detail at Majdanek in summer 1942
- the training visit to Auschwitz on 19 February 1943 and the subsequent introduction of burning bodies on open-air pyres
- organising the burning of bodies after Aktion Erntefest from 4–5 November 1943
- transfer to Auschwitz-Birkenau and supervision of crematoria from May 1944
- trial before the Supreme National Tribunal in 1947, the death sentence and execution on 24 January 1948
The circle records authority, function and agency. Several profiles may describe different parts of the same persecution chain, so profile-level totals must not be added together.
Postwar accountability
After the war, he was tried in Kraków with other members of the Auschwitz staff. The Supreme National Tribunal found him guilty in the first Auschwitz trial and sentenced him to death on 22 December 1947. He was hanged at a prison in Kraków on 24 January 1948.
Limits of the evidence
Sources use the spellings Mußfeld, Muhsfeldt and Mussfeldt; these are orthographic variants referring to the same person, not pseudonyms. Some technical details derive from postwar statements by Mußfeldt and his subordinates, given in their own interests during criminal proceedings, and therefore require comparison with camp documentation. The profile does not attribute to him the order to begin Aktion Erntefest and does not construct a personal victim tally.
Sources
The source set combines institutional, archival, trial or scholarly material from at least two independent publishers.