Dieter Wisliceny


Dieter Wisliceny was a member of the Schutzstaffel, and a key executioner in the final phase of the Holocaust.

Crimes against humanity

Joining the Nazi Party in 1933 and enlisting in the SS in 1934, Wisliceny eventually rose to the rank of SS-Hauptsturmführer in 1940. During implementation of the Final Solution, his task was the ghettoization and liquidation of several important Jewish communities in Nazi-occupied Europe, including those of Greece, Hungary and Slovakia. Wisliceny also re-introduced the yellow star in occupied countries; the yellow star being used to distinguish Jews from non-Jews. He was involved in the deportation of the Hungarian Jews in 1944.
Wisliceny was an important witness at the Nuremberg trials, and his testimony would later prove important in the prosecution of Adolf Eichmann for war crimes in Israel in 1961.
Wisliceny was extradited to Czechoslovakia, where he was tried and hanged for war crimes in 1948.