Erwin Busta Erwin Julius Busta ( April 12 , 1905 – 1982 ) was an Austrian SS - " Hauptscharführer " and concentration camp functionary . During World War II Busta was also closely associated with the German V - weapons program ; serving on the SS staff at the Peenemunde Army Research Center and the V - 2 rocket production facility at Mittelwerk . He was convicted of war crimes by a West German court in 1970 . Early life and Nazi involvement . Erwin Busta was born in the city of Leoben , Austria ( then part of the Austro - Hungarian Empire ) on April 12 , 1905 and originally worked as a mason and carpenter . He joined both the Austrian Nazi Party and the " Sturmabteilung " ( SA ) in 1928 and became a member of the SS in 1930 . In July , 1933 the Nazi Party was officially banned in Austria by the government of Engelbert Dollfuss . Busta moved to Germany shortly afterward where he became a member of the , a paramilitary group composed of pro - Nazi Austrian expatriates . He underwent police - training and , in 1934 , was recruited into the newly established " SS - Totenkopfverbände " . Busta initially served as a guard at the Esterwegen concentration camp . He would go on to work in various capacities at Dachau ( 1936 ) and Sachsenhausen ( 1942 ) . In the summer of 1943 Busta was transferred to the Peenemunde Army Research Center , the main research and testing site for Germany ’ s V - weapons program . This location was also home to a small concentration camp whose inmates ( mostly Soviet and Polish POWs ) were employed as slave - laborers . During his time at Peenemunde , Busta worked as a " Lagerführer " ( camp leader ) of the camp ’ s central warehouse ; supervising the prisoner - laborers as they performed various tasks ranging from construction work to the actual production of V - 2 ballistic missiles . Mittelbau - Dora . Following the bombing of Peenemunde by the RAF in August , 1943 the entire V - weapons program was relocated by the German government to the Nordhausen - area of central Germany . This transition included much of the former staff of Peenemunde , Busta among them . Production of the V - 2 ’ s was reestablished at Mittelwerk , a massive armaments facility housed in an elaborate subterranean tunnel system in the Kohnstein . Here again , slave - labor was utilized to assemble the rockets . The tunnels at Mittelwerk were staffed by thousands of prisoner - laborers drawn from the inmate population of the nearby Mittelbau - Dora concentration camp . Their work was overseen by both German civilian contractors and the SS . Beginning in the autumn of 1943 Busta was employed in both areas of the camp ; working as a " Blockführer " ( block leader ) in Dora while also serving as the chief SS warden at Mittelwerk . Busta was a much - feared figure among the prisoner - laborers in the tunnels and developed a reputation for harshness and brutality . Busta was known to have inmates suspected of sabotage shot or hanged by the SS on a regular basis . In March , 1945 Busta oversaw the mass - hanging of several dozen Russian prisoners who had attempted to escape . When Dora and Mittelwerk were evacuated in April , 1945 Busta commanded a transport of hundreds of prisoners to the Ebensee concentration camp in his native Austria . Post - war . After the end of World War II in May , 1945 Busta lived under an alias and moved regularly between Germany and Austria . He was thus able to avoid appearing as a defendant at the 1947 Dora war crimes trial . He settled permanently in West Germany in 1952 and resumed using his real name . In November , 1967 he was one of three former SS staff members of Mittelbau - Dora indicted for war crimes by the district court of Essen . Busta entered a plea of not guilty to the charges that he had mistreated and murdered prisoners during his time at Mittelwerk . Busta was found guilty and sentenced to 8 years and a half years in prison on May 8 , 1970 . However , he never served his sentence owing to reasons of ill - health . Busta died in West Germany in 1982 .