Actively involved in the prisoners’ lives, Fritzsch—described as small, slight, unintelligent, and sadistic—became known for brutality and psychological torture. According to testimony from Höss, Fritzsch suggested using Zyklon B, a poisonous gas, for mass murder and tested it on Soviet prisoners of war (POWs). On January 15, 1942, he was transferred to Flossenbürg concentration camp.

After the SS conducted an internal corruption investigation, Fritzsch was arrested in October 1943 and charged with murder; whether he murdered an inmate without authorization or a fellow SS man is not clear. He was sent to the front lines as punishment (SS-Panzergrenadier-Ersatzbatallion 18). According to For He Is an Englishman: Memoirs of a Prussian Nobleman by Captain Charles Arnold-Baker, an MI6 (British foreign intelligence) officer, Arnold-Baker arrested Fritzsch in Oslo, Norway, after the war: “We picked up, for example, the deputy commandant of Auschwitz, a little runt of a man called Fritzsch whom we naturally put in the custody of a Jewish guard—with strict instructions not to damage him, of course.” In a 1966 report from the German Central Office of the State Justice Administrations for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes, Berlin inhabitant Gertrud Berendes claimed that on May 2, 1945, Fritzsch shot himself in the basement of a house at Sächsische Strasse 42 in Berlin. Berendes said that her father and a neighbor buried Fritzsch in the Preussenpark and that she sent his personal belongings to his wife. In a separate 1966 report by the Kriminalpolizei Regensburg, Fritzsch’s wife stated that she had received his wedding ring and personal letters and was convinced of her husband’s death; however, Fritzsch’s true fate has never been determined.

Matylda Getter

Matylda Getter was born in 1870 and grew up to become the mother provincial of the Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary in Warsaw. The sisters ran orphanages and educational facilities for children in Warsaw and its surrounding towns, including Anin, Wilno, and Ostrówek. During the war, they aided civilians and members of the Polish underground; arranged work, shelter, and false documents; and smuggled children from the Jewish ghetto. In this work they cooperated with Irena Sendler and members of Żegota—an underground Polish resistance organization tied to the Polish Underground State, established specifically to aid Jews. During the Warsaw Uprising, the provincial house at Hoża St. 53 became a paramedical station, a soup kitchen, and later a hospital.

During the war, the sisters rescued more than five hundred Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto. To determine if someone was willing to accept a Jewish child, Mother Matylda would speak in code by asking, “Will you accept God’s blessing?” The Jewish children adored Mother Matylda and called her Matusia, a term of endearment similar to “Mommy.” The sisters never forced conversions on Jews, unlike some Catholic civilians or religious, though forcing conversions was never an official practice of the Catholic Church during this time. As Mother Matylda simply stated, “I’m saving a human being who’s asking for help.”