Ernst August Koenig, sentenced in January to life imprisonment for killing Gypsies at Auschwitz-Birkenau, was found hanged in his jail cell Thursday morning, the German Press Agency reported.
His death was ruled a suicide.
Koenig, who was 72, had been sentenced to a life term in January for murdering Gypsies at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Poland during World War II.
His 44-month trial took place in Siegen, a town east of Bonn. He was imprisoned in Bochum, western Germany, between Essen and Dortmund.
Koenig was the first Nazi sentenced explicitly for killing Gypsies. Trials had been conducted in the 1950s against Nazis accused of killing Gypsies, but the cases had all been abandoned for various reasons.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
