Franz Reichleitner
| Franz Reichleitner | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Birth name | Franz Karl Reichleitner |
| Born |
2 December 1906 Ried im Traunkreis, Austria |
| Died | 3 January 1944 (aged 37) Fiume, Italy |
| Allegiance |
 Nazi Germany
|
| Service/branch |
 Schutzstaffel
|
| Years of service | 1937–1944 |
| Rank |
 SS-Hauptsturmführer (Captain) |
| Unit |
 SS-Totenkopfverbände
|
| Commands held | Sobibór, 1 September 1942 — 17 October 1943 |
Franz Karl Reichleitner (2 December 1906 – 3 January 1944) was an Austrian SS-Hauptsturmführer (Captain) who served in Operation Reinhard during the Holocaust. Reichleitner served as the second and last commandant of Sobibór extermination camp from 1 September 1942 until the camp's closure on or about 17 October 1943. As the commanding officer of the camp, Franz Reichleitner directly perpetrated the genocide of Jews.
Reichleitner joined the Nazi Party in 1936 as member number 6,369,213 and the Schutzstaffel in 1937 as member number 357,065. He began his career as a Kriminalsekretär of the Gestapo in Linz. Later Reichleitner was assigned to work in the Action T4 euthanasia program at the nearby Hartheim Euthanasia Centre. He first served as an assistant supervisor (together with Franz Stangl) under officer Christian Wirth before assuming Wirth's position of chief supervisor at Hartheim. Reichleitner was also partly responsible for getting Stangl a supervising job in T-4.
Reichleitner was married to Anna Baumgartner from Steyr.
On 1 September 1942, at the rank of SS-Obersturmführer (First Lieutenant), on the orders of Wirth and Odilo Globocnik, Reichleitner took command of the Sobibór extermination camp with Franz Stangl's departure to Treblinka. Reichleitner rarely showed his face in the camp, and it has been claimed that he was a heavy drinker, but his reign of Sobibór was even more strict than that of his predecessor. Moshe Bahir, a camp inmate, wrote:
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