Karl Steubl

Karl Steubl
Sturmbannführer Karl Steubl (Steubel) before his 1945 suicide
Born	October 25, 1910
Died	September 21, 1945(1945-09-21) (aged 34) Linz, Austria
Allegiance	Nazi Germany
Service/branch	Schutzstaffel
Years of service	until 1945
Rank	Sturmbannführer
Unit	Totenkopfverbände

SS-Sturmbannführer Karl Steubl, Steubel, or Steibel^[1] (October 25, 1910 – September 21, 1945) was a Nazi, perpetrator of euthanasia programme dubbed Action T4, and commander of transportation at the Sobibor extermination camp during Operation Reinhard, the most deadly phase of the Holocaust. Arrested after the war, Steubl committed suicide in Linz, Austria.^[2]

Career highlights

Before his last assignment at Sobibor in occupied Poland, Steubl was a senior male nurse at Schloss Hartheim, the biggest mass extermination centre outside Eastern Europe set up at Alkoven in Upper Austria. The killing program Action T4 was performed there between 1939 and 1945. Already by August 1941, long before the war's end, a grand total of 18,269 mentally and physically handicapped patients including many others, were murdered at gas chambers of Hartheim Euthanasia Centre and cremated on site in the course of his service there.^[3]

From August 1942, Steubl was one of the Austrian commanders of Sobibor extermination camp, which he also helped organize as an expert in gassing. He was present, and most likely took part in the execution of the last Sonderkommando Jews who were sent to Sobibor for clean-up after demolition of the Treblinka extermination camp nearby.^[4]

Arrested by the Allies, Steubl was the first of three SS men from Sobibor who committed suicide after World War II. The second one was Kurt Bolender; recognized by a Holocaust survivor in Germany and arrested in 1961. Bolender committed suicide in prison before sentencing. He was accused of participating in the murder of approximately 86,000 Jews. The third one was SS-Oberscharführer Gustav Wagner ("the Beast of Sobibor") also from Austria originally. He killed himself in 1980 exposed by Simon Wiesenthal in Brazil. By the same token, half of the 13 Sobibor mass murderers tried in 1965–66 at the Sobibor Trial in Hagen, West Germany were cleared of all charges and set free.^[1]

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