He was no noble officer like Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, the ringleader of the most famous attempt to kill Adolf Hitler. He was no industry titan like Oskar Schindler, who sheltered Jews as essential workers in his factory. Otto Küsel was a convicted felon, a thief, who landed in the middle of the Nazi murder machine and managed to save hundreds of people from certain death. He was "Auschwitz Inmate No. 2."

In Germany, few have heard of him. But Küsel's story has now been immortalized in a book written by writer and journalist Sebastian Christ, who himself only heard of Küsel by accident while talking to the director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum in 2003. Kazimierz Smolen, who managed the museum at the time, met Küsel while they were both inmates in Auschwitz. Smolen told Christ that the story of this good man had to be told.

This was easier said than done, as records on Küsel proved scarce. Christ did nearly 22 years of research, and it was only by chance that, while browsing a flea market, he stumbled upon a book containing the only interview that Küsel ever gave — to a student organization.

Who was Otto Küsel?

Küsel was born outside Berlin in 1909. At the age of 14, he abandoned his electrician training because he preferred being his own master to following instructions. He started going from house to house selling shoelaces. He also sold fruit, advertising it with the risqué chant, "Bananas, bananas for the ladies without a man."

But surviving in Weimar Germany, with its tottering economy, was not easy — and it got much harder after 1929 ushered in the Great Depression. "Actually, it was more like begging than selling, you couldn't let the police catch you," Küsel said in the interview.

And yet, they caught him. As a young man, he had several run-ins with the law — most likely for theft and burglary, according to Christ — and was in and out of jail.

'Screw those guys'

Someone like Küsel did not exactly fit in the Nazi image of the ideal German.

"He definitely had issues with authority and was also maybe a bit of an anarchist," Christ told DW. "And someone who had a great sense of justice and felt very keenly when one group of people was putting themselves above others."

So when the Nazis took power in 1933, Küsel was not impressed. The following scene, which took place in a Berlin state office, shows his perspective on the new rulers of Germany.

"I went in and said, 'Good day!' The guy inside said, 'Go back outside!' I thought he still had work to do, so I went out. A few minutes later I went back in and said, 'Good day!' and he said, 'Go back outside!'" Küsel said in the interview.

"When I came in for the third time and said, 'Good day!' he told me, 'Don't you know that it's 'Heil Hitler' now? Go back outside!' So I went out, and I left and thought, 'Screw those guys.'"

Küsel dismissed the new system, but the system did not dismiss him. From the Nazis' perspective, Küsel was what they would label a "career criminal." According to the laws of the time, people convicted of at least three prison sentences for theft, who spent at least six months behind bars, could be shipped out to a concentration camp without a court order.

Special role of 'kapos'

In 1937, Küsel was summoned by the Gestapo. He was detained and sent to the concentration camp of Sachsenhausen, outside Berlin. Gestapo chief Heinrich Himmler dreamed of a "national community without criminals" or "asocial" elements, and people like Küsel had to be permanently locked up for the "good of society."

But Küsel was given a special role in the concentration camp. He became a prisoner functionary — a privileged inmate tasked with assisting the guards — also known as a kapo. The Nazis believed "career criminals" to be ideal kapos, because they had no ideology and formed no underground networks, unlike communists, social democrats and other political prisoners. Their job was to assign work to other prisoners. The kapos were meant to be small cogs in the murder machinery of the concentration camps, and make sure that inmates would die of exhaustion.

Most kapos did exactly what the Nazis wanted. Some would entertain themselves by drowning Polish prisoners in feces or beating them to death. One of the most infamous kapos was Bruno Brodniewicz, known as Inmate Nr. 1.

"Brodniewicz was an animal, he was called 'The Black Death,'" one Holocaust survivor later recounted.

Resisting in secret

Otto Küsel was different. He was sent to Auschwitz in May 1940, when the camp was still new and managed by the infamous warden Rudolf Höss. During the first two years, the Nazi death camp mostly contained non-Jewish Polish inmates.

The SS troops — the most important tool of terror and oppression used by the Nazi regime — primarily targeted Polish elites, a fact Küsel had learned during his time in Sachsenhausen. He would warn new inmates against identifying themselves as academics or military officers, as this could quickly equate to a death sentence. He would also assign the most exhausted inmates to work in the kitchens, where they could access more food. The newcomers, who were still strong, would be assigned to an outside posting, and Küsel would promise to redeploy them somewhere else once their strength failed. His small office became a place of hope, where he would provide comfort and help those trying to escape.

"The camp museum holds hundreds of stories that were passed down and that showed Küsel giving a new perspective to people in the hell that was life in a concentration camp," said Christ, adding that Küsel even learned Polish to understand his fellow inmates.

Speaking Polish helped Küsel to communicate without alerting the SS guards or other kapos, both of whom didn't speak the language. Inmate Boleslaw Grzyb remembers Küsel looking at guard officer Gerhard Palitzsch and telling Grzyb in fluent Polish: "Look and remember the face of this criminal."

Palitzsch, a farmer in civilian life, was known for his cruelty. His duties included providing daily reports on the number of inmates and overseeing punishments. His usual greeting to new inmates would be, "Forget your wives, your children and your families. Here you'll die like dogs."

How did Küsel manage to keep his resistance secret from the Nazis? From the outside, he appeared very hardworking, and he tried to remain inconspicuous around the other kapos, said Christ.

"Despite all obstacles, he preserved his humanity during his time in the camp, when there were so many opportunities to give it up," Christ added.

Spectacular flight from Auschwitz

In December 1942, Küsel got wind of a plan to break out of Auschwitz and faced a choice — report it or join the conspirators. He decided to join the group of Polish inmates and procured a horse cart under the excuse of getting cabinets for an SS guard. Two of the conspirators were meant to go with him to help him carry the furniture. The fourth person in the group, Boleslaw Kuczbara, had stolen an SS uniform, which he used to pose as a supervisor.

The escape was a resounding success. The four fugitives made contact with resistance fighters outside the camp and went into hiding.

But the story did not end there — Küsel was apparently betrayed by a jealous woman. She had fallen in love with him, but then saw him with the daughter of the family that was sheltering him and suspected Küsel was involved with her.

So, nine months later, Küsel was back in Auschwitz. This time, in Block 11 — the death row. Every day, he waited to be shot. Fate, however, had other plans.

Camp director Höss was relieved of command and his successor ordered amnesty for certain prisoners, including Küsel.

"I came back to the camp but had no function anymore," Küsel said. "Many assumed at the time that I betrayed them, because I was still alive. But I would never do that, I'd sooner let them beat me to death."

However, Küsel's impressions do not match with the testimonies of other Auschwitz survivors, said Christ — none of them believed he was a traitor.

With Soviet soldiers drawing near in 1944, Küsel was transferred to a camp in Flossenbürg, Bavaria. He survived the death march ordered by the Nazis in a last-ditch effort to keep the prisoners from being freed by the incoming allied forces. In 1945, his time of suffering was finally over.

Criminals recognized as victims — in 2020

After the war,  Küsel stayed in Bavaria. He married, had two daughters and once again made his living selling fruits and vegetables. In 1964, he testified in the first Auschwitz trial in Frankfurt as one of 211 camp survivors. According to Christ, the judges hinted at Küsel being an informant.

"It was probably an immediate reaction along the lines of, 'This man survived so much and emerged unscathed from such unlikely conflicts, so he was probably dirty somehow — naturally this was completely unjustified," the writer said.

Küsel himself almost never spoke about his time in the concentration camp. Christ believes he was probably ashamed and preferred that his Bavarian neighbors didn't know he used to be a thief.

"This 'career criminal' label — of course, the stigma persisted in his biography after the war as well," said Christ. For many decades, criminals were not recognized as a special group of Holocaust victims, unlike Jewish people and political prisoners. German lawmakers only passed the appropriate motion in 2020.

Hero in Poland

Küsel stayed in touch with his fellow survivors in Poland until his death in 1984. There, he was regarded as a hero, and Polish authorities even granted him honorary citizenship. Christ said it was time for Küsel to be recognized in Germany, as well.

"I believe that Otto's story shows, firstly, that we have the chance to preserve our humanity even in the worst of circumstances," he said. Furthermore, he added, Küsel's experience is a warning about how radicalization spreads through society.

"We are also not living in the simplest of times," Christ told DW. "And history shows how quickly one can get caught up in such a whirlwind, but also how much good a man can do if he believes in himself and his humanity."

This article was originally written in German.