- published: 10 Jan 2016
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Kurt Hubert Franz (17 January 1914 — 4 July 1998) was an SS officer and one of the commanders of the Treblinka extermination camp. Franz was one of the major perpetrators of genocide during the Holocaust.
Kurt Franz was born in 1914 in Düsseldorf. He attended public school in Düsseldorf from 1920 to 1928, and then worked as a messenger. He started an apprenticeship as a cook beginning at the age of fifteen (1929) for the restaurant "Hirschquelle", and then at the Hotel Wittelsbacher Hof, before he gave his final exam.
Franz's father, a merchant, died early. Franz also had a sister. His mother was an observant Catholic. When she re-married, it was to a man with a strong right-wing nationalist outlook. Franz joined several right-wing national groups and served in the voluntary labor corps. He also trained with a master butcher for one year.
Franz joined the Nazi Party in 1932, and enlisted in the German army in 1935. He fulfilled his military obligation and after his discharge, in October 1937, he joined the SS-Totenkopfverbände. First he received training with the Third Death Head Regiment Thuringia at Weimar, and then served as cook and guard at the Buchenwald concentration camp, where he attained the rank of Unterscharführer (Corporal).