English source-aligned edition
Bruno Tesch
Bruno Tesch served as co-owner and managing director of a principal distributor of Zyklon B. The profile reconstructs the person’s function in Hamburg and concentration camps supplied by Testa, including Auschwitz through documented office, decisions, supervision or operational conduct. It does not assign every crime committed by an institution or region to one individual.
Confirmed findings
- Tesch co-founded and managed Tesch & Stabenow, which held regional distribution rights for Zyklon B and trained customers in its use.
- The company supplied Zyklon B to concentration-camp authorities, including Auschwitz, where the pesticide was used for mass murder as well as delousing.
- A British military court found that Tesch knowingly supplied poison gas used to kill imprisoned Allied nationals.
Place in the chain of responsibility
Tesch's responsibility was that of a commercial supplier whose knowledge and decisions were examined at trial. The profile does not equate every shipment with homicidal use or assign the full number murdered with Zyklon B to one distributor.
Key events and mechanisms
- In 1924 he co-founded Tesch & Stabenow in Hamburg.
- During the war the firm supplied Zyklon B and technical instruction to the concentration-camp system.
- On 16 May 1946 he was hanged at Hameln following conviction in the British Zyklon B trial.
The circle records authority, function and agency. Several profiles may describe different parts of the same persecution chain, so profile-level totals must not be added together.
Postwar accountability
British authorities tried Tesch in Hamburg in March 1946. He and company officer Karl Weinbacher were sentenced to death; Tesch was executed in May 1946.
Limits of the evidence
Zyklon B also had legitimate disinfestation uses, so responsibility depends on the court's finding of knowledge, not the product alone. Camp-wide estimates for people murdered with the gas are not an individual victim count for Tesch. He must not be confused with the younger anti-Nazi worker of the same name.
Sources
The source set combines institutional, archival, trial or scholarly material from at least two independent publishers.