He Begged for Mercy: The End of the Theresienstadt Commandant Seidl JJ
12 March 1938. German troops cross the Austrian border without resistance, and within hours swastika flags hang from public buildings across Vienna. Crowds gather in the city centre, cheering, saluting, and welcoming the union with Nazi Germany. Loudspeakers broadcast triumphant speeches, church bells ring, and the atmosphere is filled with excitement, fear, and uncertainty at the same time. For many Austrians, this moment promises opportunity and advancement within the expanding structures of the Third Reich. For others,
especially Jews and political opponents, it marks the beginning of exclusion, humiliation, and persecution. In this rapidly transforming city, careers are reshaped overnight, loyalties are tested, and ambitious young men who had already committed themselves to National Socialism see their path suddenly open before them. One of them is a young man who will soon play a central role in the machinery of deportation and death in Central Europe. His name is Siegfried Seidl. Siegfried Seidl was born on 24 August 1911 in the town of Tulln an der Donau, then part of
Austria – Hungary. He grew up without a father, who went missing during the First World War which began on 28 July 1914. After the war ended in November 1918, Seidl lived in a society that was shaken by the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire. The newly established Austrian republic experienced political instability, economic crisis, and deep divisions between the political left and right. Like many young men of his generation, Seidl was drawn early to radical nationalist ideas. On 15 October 1930, the 19-year-old Seidl joined the Nazi Party with party
number 300 738 and in September 1931 he entered the SA, the Nazi paramilitary formation that used violence to intimidate political opponents. In May 1932 he transferred to the infamous SS, another Nazi paramilitary organisation that would become responsible for repression, racial policy, and the concentration camp system. His decision to join these organisations long before the annexation of Austria, shows that his commitment to Nazism was not opportunistic but ideological. From 1935 until 1938 Seidl studied history and German studies at the University of Vienna.
The annexation of Austria into the German Reich in March 1938, known as the Anschluss, transformed Austrian political life. Opponents were soon persecuted and Jews were rapidly excluded from public life. On 2 March 1939 Seidl married Elisabeth Stieber, a former kindergarten teacher and a devoted member of the Nazi Party and of the National Socialist Women’s League, an organisation that mobilised women in support of the Nazi regime. The couple had three children. Their private life unfolded alongside Seidl’s growing role
inside a system that was preparing for war and mass persecution and murder. The Second World War started on 1 September 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Soon after the outbreak of war, Seidl was called into police service because of his SS membership. In January 1940 he was attached to the Reich Security Main Office also known as the RSHA – the central authority that coordinated the secret police, the criminal police, and the intelligence services of the Nazi regime. Within the organization he worked in Department IV B4 under Adolf Eichmann,
who was responsible for organising the deportation of Jews from across Europe. After joining the RSHA Seidl was sent to Poznań, in German-occupied Poland, where he was responsible for the resettlement of Poles and Jews from the newly annexed territories of the Third Reich. In October 1941, Eichmann ordered Seidl to establish the Theresienstadt Ghetto in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, roughly 60 kilometres — about 37 miles — north of Prague. The Protectorate had been created after Germany occupied the Czech lands in March 1939 and
Czechoslovakia was destroyed. Theresienstadt was intended to serve several purposes. It functioned as a transit camp for Jews from Germany, Austria, and the Protectorate who were to be deported to extermination camps in Eastern Europe. At that time, it was used for propaganda, presented as a model Jewish settlement to mislead the international community including representatives of the international Red Cross. From November 1941 until July 1943 Seidl served as commandant of the Theresienstadt Ghetto. Under his authority, approximately 121,000 people were
deported to Theresienstadt of which around 25,000 died there and almost 44,000 people were deported further East where most of them were murdered. The Theresienstadt Ghetto was overcrowded from the beginning – food was scarce, medical care insufficient, and sanitation was poor. The majority of inmates were elderly, making them especially vulnerable. Seidl exercised wide powers. He insisted on strict discipline and demanded to be addressed formally as Mr. Camp Commandant. He shaped the early regulations of the camp and also, he used his
power to ban heating or lighting in the barracks, measures that had devastating consequences for the old and sick. People over seventy were assigned to cleaning duties, and those who disobeyed orders risked torture or inclusion on the next transport to the East. Witnesses described Seidl as elegant and outwardly cultivated, interested in music and stamp collecting. Together with his family he lived in a 3-bedroom apartment at a nearby hotel, owned a riding horse, enjoyed hunting, and owned a sports car and a Mercedes company
car. This contrast between his private comfort and the suffering within the camp reflects a wider pattern within the SS leadership. Many perpetrators combined bourgeois lifestyles with direct participation in persecution and mass murder. Seidl was also often present during the arrival of transports. Survivors testified that he used a whip to force exhausted prisoners to move faster. Once Seidl beat the blind invalid war veteran named Oskar Löwy with a riding whip and punched him in the face so hard that his prosthetic eye
broke. The only reason he beat him was that Oskar asked him about the possibility of storing his luggage in the locker. On another occasion he had a prisoner named Arthur Müller, who arrived in the Theresienstadt ghetto on the 13th transport from Vienna, beaten so severely that he died a few days later. Müller’s ‘offence’ was that had played a role in the sale of his parents’ mill. Under orders from Eichmann, Seidl also organised the public hanging of sixteen Jews accused of smuggling letters outside the camp. He carried out the order without
hesitation. In the autumn of 1942, when thousands of elderly prisoners died, he reportedly commented that the clock was ticking correctly, a remark that revealed his indifference to mass death. On 3 July 1943 Seidl was transferred to the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen in northern Germany. At that time the camp was still developing and held relatively few prisoners compared to its later overcrowded state. Seidl served in Bergen-Belsen as head of the camp Gestapo and was responsible also for the Jews from neutral countries and regions such as
Spain or South America who were interned there. Allegedly he interfered with personal documents and placed some individuals on deportation lists to Auschwitz, where extermination was systematic. From Bergen-Belsen, he transferred to the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria to prepare for the deportation of Hungarian Jews. In March 1944 Seidl travelled to Budapest and joined the Fifth Einsatzgruppe, a mobile SS killing formation. He became part of the Special Deployment Command of Eichmann, which coordinated the deportation of
Hungarian Jews. Between 15 May and 9 July 1944, in less than 60 days, approximately 440 000 Jews were deported from Hungary. The majority were transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and upon their arrival, around eighty percent were sent directly to the gas chambers. Crematoria could not keep up with the number of bodies, and open pits were used to burn the dead. Seidl participated in the organisation of confiscations and deportations in the city of Debrecen and later oversaw Hungarian Jews held in forced labour camps and concentration camps in Vienna and Lower Austria.
The war in Europe ended on 8 May 1945. After the collapse of Nazi Germany, Seidl attempted to hide in Austria. He was living under a false name in Vienna, but he was arrested in July 1945 and initially held by American occupation forces before being transferred to Austrian custody. Czechoslovakia requested his extradition because of his crimes in Theresienstadt, but Austrian authorities refused, arguing that many victims had been Austrian Jews. In October 1946 Seidl was brought before the Austrian People’s Court,
a special tribunal established to prosecute Nazi crimes and collaboration. He faced charges related to executions and abuses committed during his leadership of Theresienstadt. He was acquitted of specific murder counts but convicted of high treason and crimes against humanity. During the trial he first claimed that he had only followed orders, a common defence among former SS officers. Later he admitted his part in the atrocities and as a consequence of his wartime crimes, the doctorate he had received in 1941 was formally revoked.
Seidl was sentenced to death and ordered to forfeit all of his property. After hearing the verdict, he calmly bowed, but he turned pale and started trembling. In the days that followed, he begged for mercy—despite having shown none to his own victims. Even his wife and mother petitioned the president for clemency, saying he had three children. However, the petition was rejected. On 4 February 1947, at six o’clock in the morning, the 35-year-old Siegfried Seidl was hanged in Vienna. As the noose was placed around his neck, Seidl told his executioner he was not sorry for
the Jews he had killed and that he had “nothing to regret.” He was pronounced dead 7 minutes later. Thanks for watching the World History Channel. Be sure to like and subscribe and click the bell notification icon so you don’t miss our next episodes. We thank you and we’ll see you next time on the channel.