Eight Camps, One Architect of Suffering and Camp Brutality: Egon Zill
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15m
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.
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