History of Sorts

The surname Klein has always intrigued me, likely because it’s my name. At some point, one of my ancestors altered it from Klein to de Klein for reasons that remain unknown to me. While Klein is traditionally a Jewish surname, it is also carried by others, such as Dr. Fritz Klein.

When you search for “Fritz Klein,” you’ll discover two very different individuals who share this name.

One is Fred “Fritz” Klein (December 27, 1932–May 24, 2006), an Austrian-born American psychiatrist and sex researcher renowned for his groundbreaking work on bisexuality and human sexuality. He developed the Klein Sexual Orientation Grid, a tool to measure the fluidity of sexual orientation. He argued that researchers often underestimated the number of men who engaged in sexual experiences with both sexes.

Klein believed that sexual orientation could evolve throughout a person’s life. In 1998, he founded the American Institute of Bisexuality, which continues to advance bisexual-inclusive research, public education, and cultural awareness. Born in Vienna to Orthodox Jewish parents, Klein fled to New York City with his family as a child, escaping the rise of antisemitism.

However, this blog will focus on a very different Dr. Fritz Klein—the camp doctor at Bergen-Belsen.

When the world speaks of the Holocaust, the name Bergen-Belsen evokes chilling memories of suffering, starvation, and mass death. Among the many individuals who played a role in this unfathomable tragedy, one figure stands out for the perverse contrast between his profession and his actions: Fritz Klein, a medical doctor turned SS officer. Klein’s story is a grim testament to how the Nazi regime co-opted professionals to serve its genocidal agenda.

Who Was Fritz Klein?

Born in 1888 in Austro-Hungary, Fritz Klein pursued medicine, a field dedicated to healing and preserving life. Before the war, his career was that of an unremarkable rural physician. However, with the outbreak of World War II and his allegiance to the Nazi Party, Klein’s path took a sinister turn. He joined the Waffen-SS, the armed wing of the Schutzstaffel (SS), and became complicit in the systematic atrocities that defined the Holocaust.

Klein at Bergen-Belsen

Klein served at several concentration camps, including Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, notorious for their inhumanity. At Bergen-Belsen, he was a camp doctor from December 1944 until its liberation in April 1945. In this capacity, he had the authority and responsibility to oversee the medical conditions of prisoners. However, rather than mitigating the horrifying conditions, Klein actively participated in the machinery of death.

The camp was overcrowded, plagued by disease, and starving under brutal Nazi policies. Instead of using his medical knowledge to alleviate the suffering, Klein helped orchestrate the systematic extermination of inmates. He rationalized his actions with chilling logic, claiming that his role was necessary to serve the Nazi vision of racial purity. His presence illustrated the corruption of medicine under Nazi ideology, where a doctor’s oath to “do no harm” was replaced by blind loyalty to an oppressive regime.

A Haunting Symbol of Complicity

Fritz Klein’s most infamous moment came shortly after the liberation of Bergen-Belsen by British forces in April 1945. In the now-iconic photograph, we see Klein standing amidst a mass grave of emaciated corpses. His posture, unrepentant and composed, became a powerful image of the banality of evil. To the liberators and the world, this scene epitomized the horrors of the Holocaust.

Klein’s defense at the subsequent war crimes trial was disturbingly matter-of-fact. He claimed that he was merely following orders and that his actions were consistent with his understanding of medical and military duty. Despite his attempts to evade responsibility, Klein’s role as an enabler of genocide was undeniable.

Trial and Execution

After the war, Klein was put on trial during the Belsen Trials in 1945. Witnesses recounted his role in the selection process, where he decided who would live or die—a grotesque parody of medical decision-making. His actions left no room for ambiguity. Found guilty of war crimes, Fritz Klein was sentenced to death and hanged on 13 December 1945 by Albert Pierrepoint.

Legacy and Lessons

Fritz Klein’s life serves as a stark warning about the dangers of uncritical loyalty to ideology and authority. His transformation from a healer to an enabler of genocide underscores how ordinary professionals can become instruments of immense evil when ethical principles are abandoned.

Moreover, Klein’s story highlights the role of medical professionals in Nazi Germany’s genocidal policies. Under the Third Reich, doctors like Klein played pivotal roles in the euthanasia program, human experiments, and the selection of victims for extermination. Their participation lent a veneer of legitimacy to atrocities, illustrating how science and medicine can be corrupted in service of hate.

Fritz Klein remains a haunting figure in the annals of Holocaust history. His legacy is not just one of horror but also caution. It reminds us of the moral obligations that accompany power and knowledge and the catastrophic consequences when those obligations are ignored. As we remember Bergen-Belsen and the countless lives lost, Klein’s story is a sobering reminder of the human capacity for cruelty and the importance of vigilance against ideologies that dehumanize and destroy.

Sources

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/photo/dr-fritz-klein-stands-among-corpses-in-a-mass-grave

https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205194194

https://www.auschwitz.org/en/history/medical-experiments/other-doctor-perpetrators/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Klein

http://www.bergenbelsen.co.uk/pages/Staff/Staff.asp?CampStaffID=36

http://www.bergenbelsen.co.uk/pages/trial/trial/trialdefencecase/Trial_027_Klein.html

https://bi.org/en/klein-grid

https://www.bisexuality.org/thekleingrid