As Nazi Germany unleashes mass persecution, Egon Zill emerges as one of the most feared SS camp officers. From Dachau to Ravensbrück, his name becomes synonymous with torture, humiliation, and arbitrary killing.
At Dachau, witnesses later testify that Zill personally ordered and carried out beatings, executions, and grotesque punishments. He trained dogs to attack prisoners, selected victims for death without orders, and oversaw abuse targeting Jews, clergy, political prisoners, and Soviet POWs.
As commandant at Hinzert and later at Natzweiler-Struthof and Flossenbürg, Zill presides over camps defined by forced labor, starvation, and lethal discipline. Survivors describe roll calls used as punishment and selections that led directly to execution.
After the war, Zill hides under a false identity but is arrested in 1953. Convicted in Munich for torture and murder, he dies in 1974 in Dachau, near the camp where many of his crimes were committed.
Up Next in Season 1
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Nazi Commandant of Płaszów - Arnold B...
This documentary examines the life and crimes of Arnold Büscher, an SS officer whose career moved through the heart of Nazi Germany’s concentration camp system.
After joining the Nazi Party and the SS in the early 1930s, Büscher served at Flossenbürg, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Neuengamme, and l...
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Sobibor’s Final Camp Commandant: Fran...
After the invasion of Poland in 1939, Nazi Germany escalated its campaign of terror into systematic genocide. In 1941, the regime launched Operation Reinhard, establishing extermination camps in occupied Poland, including Sobibor.
This film examines Franz Reichleitner, the last commandant of Sob...
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Shooting from the Villa: Commandant G...
30 January 1933. Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany, and the Nazi regime begins turning persecution into state policy. Across Europe, thousands of camps and ghettos are established. One of the men who rose within this system was Gustav Willhaus.
A member of the Nazi Party and the SS, Wil...
