Anton Burger Anton " Toni " Burger ( 19 November 1911 – 25 December 1991 ) was a Sturmbannführer ( Major ) in the German Nazi SS and " Lagerkommandant " of Theresienstadt concentration camp . Military career . Anton Burger was born in Neunkirchen , Austria , the son of a stationery dealer . He joined the Austrian Army in 1930 and the Austrian Nazi Party in 1932 . In June 1933 the Nazi Party was officially banned in Austria by the government of Engelbert Dollfuss and Burger was dishonorably discharged from the army in July . He moved illegally to Lechfeld near Augsburg , Germany where he became a member of the , a paramilitary group composed of pro - Nazi Austrian expatriates . Shortly afterward he joined the " Sturmabteilung " ( SA ) . In 1935 he received German citizenship and moved into the SA barracks . Burger went to Vienna to participate with the Austrian Legion in the " Anschluss " on 12 March 1938 . He was inducted into the SS and assigned to the Central Agency for Jewish Emigration in Vienna , where he was a member of the Reich Security Main Office Special Action Command " Eichmann " ( RSHA Sondereinsatzkommando under Adolf Eichmann ) . In the summer of 1939 , he was transferred to the Central Agency for Jewish Emigration in Prague , where he participated in the expropriation of about 1 , 400 Jewish households . In April 1941 he was promoted to " Obersturmführer " ( Second Lieutenant ) . In the spring of 1941 he was promoted to head of the RSHA branch office in Brno . In 1942 Burger was ordered to Brussels by Eichmann to coordinate efforts to deport Belgian , Dutch and French Jews . Burger served at Auschwitz concentration camp in 1943 before becoming the Commandant of Theresienstadt concentration camp from July 3 , 1943 to February 7 , 1944 . He was known for his cruelty as a camp commander ; on 11 November 1943 he ordered the entire camp population of approximately 40 , 000 people to stand in freezing weather during a camp census . About 300 prisoners died of hypothermia as a result . In February 1944 he was sent to Greece by Eichmann to replace Dieter Wisliceny , with whom Eichmann was dissatisfied . As head of the " Sicherheitsdienst " in Athens under Colonel Walter Blume , Burger organized the deportations of Romaniote and Sephardi Jews from Rhodes , Kos , Athens Ioannina , and Corfu ( a total of over 3 , 000 people ) , earning a promotion to SS - " Hauptsturmführer " ( Captain ) by June 1944 . Capture and escapes . After the war , Burger was arrested in Altaussee , Austria and held in an internment camp near Salzburg . He was then convicted " in absentia " by the People ' s Court in the Czech Litoměřice and sentenced to death . In June 1947 , shortly before the execution of the death sentence , Burger escaped from the detention center . He lived under an assumed name in his hometown of Neunkirchen until his second arrest in March 1951 after which he was held in Austrian custody in Vienna . On 9 April 1951 he again managed to escape and disappeared without a trace . Following his second escape he lived on the border of Germany and Austria under eight different aliases . From 1960 to 1961 he worked as a warden on a mountain near the river Alm . After 1961 , despite poorly forged documents , Burger moved with his wife Elfriede to the city of Essen and began working as a salesman under the name Wilhelm Bauer . After being laid off in 1974 and suffering a heart attack he lived out his days in Essen until his death from natural causes on Christmas Day 1991 . His identity was not uncovered until 1994 , three years after his death . This was confirmed to the Vienna Simon Wiesenthal Center by the Bavarian " Landeskriminalamt " . In 2011 , it was revealed that Burger had in fact not made up the " Wilhelm Bauer " name all by himself . Wilhelm Bauer was a Jewish prisoner at Theresienstadt who Burger had personally murdered in 1944 . Bauer at the time had been collaborating with the Nazis and making a propaganda film , believing that collaboration meant survival . Burger strongly disliked Bauer because he wore glasses , and to Burger , that meant weakness , despite the fact that his superior Heinrich Himmler wore glasses regularly and Adolf Hitler himself had a pair of reading glasses .