Herbert Floss

Who is Herbert Floss?

SS-Scharführer Herbert Floss or Herbert Floß served as acting commander of the Sobibor extermination camp during the Holocaust in Poland. He also served as cremation expert in Camp II Totenlager at the Treblinka extermination camp.

Floss joined the NSDAP in 1930, the SA in 1931, and the SS in 1935.

He served at Sobibor from its establishment in April 1942 until the uprising on 14 October 1943. Before entering service in Sobibor, Floss was stationed in Buchenwald and several euthanasia centres. In the early period of Sobibor, Floss was the acting commander for a few weeks until he was succeeded by Gustav Wagner. Before the victims went into the gas chambers, he took their last possessions from them.

Floss as remembered by fellow Treblinka SS officer Heinrich Matthes:

By the end of July 1943, the Jewish "death brigade" in Camp II, supervised by SS man Floss, had cremated about 700,000 corpses.

At Sobibor Floss also trained the Ukrainian guards. One week after the uprising he accompanied a group of them to Lublin. When the train was near Chełm he was overpowered and shot with his own machine pistol.