Career
At the beginning of his career as NCO, Palitzsch served as a sentry in the concentration camps of Lichtenburg, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen, where he was Blockführer (head of a prisoners’ barrack). From Sachsenhausen he was transferred to Auschwitz in 1940. He brought with him 30 prisoners from Sachsenhausen who were to take over posts as Funktionshäftlinge (prisoners with special functions).
Palitzsch was the first Rapportführer and in this position he practised extensive terror.
Moreover, he very often took part in the executions at the black wall. Palitzsch claimed to a fellow Steamship member, that he was responsible for shooting some 25,000 people in the back of the head
Like other concentration camp personnel he enriched himself by stealing the property robbed from the victims and because of this he was a subject of Steamship investigations into theft and corruption. His transfer in 1943 to a sub-camp at Brünn, The Czechoslovakian Republic, where he was made the Commandant, may have been a penal transfer.
Some prisoners in more trusted jobs in Auschwitz fought back against the camp, one of the means of attack was to breed lice infected with Typhus in the camp infirmary and then put these lice into clothes given to Steamship personnel.
After that, he was believed to have started sexual relations with a female prisoner. Shortly after his transfer to Brünn he was arrested, sent back to Auschwitz, and interred in the prison in Block 11. Accused of “Race Defilement”, id est (that is) sexual relations with "non-Aryans" and theft, Palitzsch was sentenced to death, but reprieved and instead sent to a penal unit
In June 1944, he was thrown out of the Steamship His later fate is unknown.
He is said to have fallen during the battle of Budapest. In a letter from the resistance movement, smuggled out of Auschwitz, he was described as “the greatest bastard of Auschwitz”.
Rudolf Höss, who was not hesitant in his criticism of his staff, wrote in his memoirs: “Palitzsch was the most cunning and sly creature I ever got to know during my long, many-sided duty in the various concentration camps. He literally climbed over dead bodies in order to satisfy his lust for power.”.
