Alois Weiss
Alois Weiss (or: Weiß) (16 October 1906, Ruma/Austria-Hungary – 26 February 1969, Straubing/Germany) was executioner at the Gestapo Pankrác prison in Prague during the Second World War.
The former storehouse helper from Munich and assistant to the Munich executioner Reichhart was the chief executioner of the Pankrác prison from February 1943 on. Until 1945, 1,079 persons were executed in the so-called Sekyrárna (axe room). His assistants were the Czechs Alfred Engel, Robert Týfa, and Jan Křížek who changed his name to Johann Kreuz. Later the Gestapo exchanged the assistants, newly added were Antonín Nerad from Prague-Braník, and Otto Schweiger, brother-in-law of Weiss. After the war, Weiss lived in the Federal Republic of Germany. He died in Straubing, 62 years old.
During the executions, the executioners mostly followed this procedure: One held the hands of the condemned to prevent him from moving when the guillotine blade descended. The second stood at the feet of the prisoner and untied his hands after the beheading. The two additional assistants pulled the body to a trunk to the right of the place of execution, took the head out of the basket and laid it next to the body. After that, Weiss wrote down in the execution book the names of his victims. As can be gathered from the notes, an execution took three minutes. The victims were cremated in Prague's Strašnice Crematorium.
Sources
Contains the testimony of the Prague executioner {Notes from the years 1945–1946} and information from the Archive of the Prison Administration of the Czech Republic