Chmielewski, Karl, born 16-06-1903, in Frankfurt am Main, 
joined the SS 
whilst unemployed in 1932 and joined the Nazi Party 
the following year. After initially serving in the office of Reichsführer SS. Heinrich Himmler,
he was transferred to the Columbia concentration camp 
in 1935, before moving to Sachsenhausen concentration camp 
the following year. He was promoted to Untersturmführer in 1938 and attached to the Schutzhaftlagerführung, the ‘Protective custody’ units of the SS–Totenkopfverbände. 
From 1940 to 1942 Chmielewski, by then a Hauptsturmführer, 
served as Schutzhaftlagerführer at Gusen concentration camp, 
and it was there that he developed a reputation for extreme brutality. He then became commandant of the newly established Herzogenbusch concentration camp 
in the Netherlands, where he further developed a reputation for cruelty.
Amongst the claims made against him was that during inspections he ordered the drowning of prisoners in buckets of water. Fellow camp commandant Franz Ziereis 
claimed after the war that Chmielewski had used the skin of prisoners to make things such as wallets and book bindings, something Ziereis claimed was strictly forbidden by the Nazi authorities. 
Ziereis died shortly after interrogation on 24-05-1945 (aged 39) in Mauthausen-Gusen by a former inmate of Mauthausen, socialist Hans Maršálek 
.
In a confession, he had implicated several leading perpetrators at the camp, including SS Obersturmbannführer Eduard Krebsbach, 
who had ordered the building of the gas chamber at Mauthausen, SS-Sturmbannführer 
Erich Wasicky, 
who had built the gas van there, and Gauleiter Eigruber, August “Eileiter Gaugruber”,
who was chiefly responsible for the conditions since the area fell under his jurisdiction. His corpse was later hung on the fence of Gusen I by former prisoners of Gusen. Krebsbach, Wasicky, and Eigruber were later tried at the Mauthausen Trial and executed on After the end of World War II, Wasicky was captured. He was found guilty at the Mauthausen trial in Dachau and sentenced to death. The sentence was carried out on 28-05-1947, at Landsberg Prison. Hans Maršálek, age 36, was an Austrian typesetter, political activist, detective, and historian. A staunch socialist and active in the resistance, he was arrested by the Nazis and imprisoned in the Mauthausen concentration camp. After the war, he joined the Austrian political police and played a key role in tracking down and convicting numerous Nazi criminals. He also became the foremost chronicler of the camp’s history, helped establish the Mauthausen Memorial Museum, and published several books.
During his reign at Herzogenbusch, Chmielewski gained a reputation for corruption, and he was eventually tried for personally enriching himself through stealing diamonds from prisoners. He was deprived of his position and rank in 1943, being succeeded as commandant by Adam Grünewald. 
In 1944, an SS court sentenced Chmielewski to 15 years in prison for rape and embezzlement. He spent the rest of the war as an inmate at Dachau concentration camp.
Chmielewski disappeared into Austria after the war. By 1953, he was back in Germany, under an assumed identity, where he had taken up farming. He was tried that year for perjury, fraud, and bigamy, and sentenced to a year in prison. After his real identity was established, he was arrested by West German police in January 1959, accused of nearly two hundred counts of murder. At his trial in 1961, he was found guilty of causing the deaths of prisoners through his brutality, and was sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labour. The court pronounced him a sadist who took pleasure in killing prisoners, whom he did not see as human, by scalding them with boiling water.
Chmielewski had one son “The Son of the Devil”: Walter Chmielewski, 
Death and burial ground of Chmielewski, Karl.
Chmielewski “middle photo” on the right.
He was released from prison in March 1979, on mental health grounds, and spent his last years in a care institution at Chiemsee, for another twelve years. 
Karl Chmielewski died 01-12-1991, age 88, in Bernau am Chiemsee and is buried in a family grave on the local cemetery of Bernau am Chiemsee. Ferdinand-Bonn-Straße 3-5, 83233 Bernau am Chiemsee, Germany.
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