History of Sorts

Medical Doctors generally work closely together with Pharmacists. During the Holocaust this was not much different.

Victor  Capesius was born to a doctor of German descent in 1907, in a part of Romania which then belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He studied in Romania and Vienna where, in 1933, he completed his doctorate in pharmacy. In 1943, Capesius was drafted into the German Wehrmacht where he initially served as an “SS pharmacist” in Warsaw. Later, he was transferred to Dachau and on 12 February 1944 he arrived in Auschwitz concentration camp, first as a locum but soon taking the position of chief camp pharmacist,after his predecessor was executed for “spreading defeatism.

Capesius worked closely with Josef Mengele , the pair were heavily involved in the selection of inmates for the gas chamber beginning in the spring of 1944 when the Hungarian and Transylvanian Jews were sent to the camp. He…