The Flawed Inspirational Story of the Good Nazi From Auschwitz
Hans Münch led everyone to believe he was an ethical SS doctor
On December 22, 1947, the Polish court announced the verdict for forty former staff of the Auschwitz concentration camps.
Twenty-one defendants were sentenced to death by hanging, eight to life imprisonment, seven to fifteen years of prison, and three to ten, five, and three years of imprisonment, respectively.
Only one defendant was acquitted of all charges. His name was Hans Wilhelm Münch (1911-2001), a defendant number eight. Nineteen Auschwitz survivors testified on his behalf and thus saved his life.
After the Auschwitz trial, the legend of the “Good Man of Auschwitz” and “a human being in an SS uniform,” grew and Münch became a kind of celebrity.
Münch worked as an SS doctor at Auschwitz
Münch was born in 1911 in a bourgeois family in Bavaria. He studied medicine and became a doctor. In 1937, he joined the Nazi Party since the membership enabled him to start a career as a bacteriologist, the career he desired…
