Josef Mueller was born in 1910, the 18th of 19 children of David and Rosa Mueller in Mosbach, Baden Wuerttemberg. After school he trained as a bookbinder and picture frame-maker, in which trade he worked, interspersed with periods of unemployment, until he joined the SS in 1936, where he commenced working full-time for the organisation in Heidelberg. He married Rosa Krauss on 22 March 1937 and they had 2 children. He joined the Waffen SS in September 1939. After sustaining an injury fighting in Russia, he was sent to work for the Chief of Police in Cracow, SS Obergruppenfuehrer Krueger. He was involved with 'resettling' Jews and became commandant of the work camps at Plaszow. It was during this period that he committed war crimes.
On 5 March 1944 he was captured by the Russians near Lublinca. He stayed in various POW camps in Nowosibirsk, Moscow and Stalinowgorsk. According to the embassy of the USSR in West Germany, he was sentenced to 25 years hard labour in 1949 for 'Crimes against the Soviet people during the war by Fascist Germany'. On 14 October 1955 he was released and he returned to Germany, where he lived with his family in Limbach, until re-arrest by the German authorities in 1960. He was tried and convicted of murder, incitement and accessory to murder on numerous counts, in August 1961. He was sentenced to life imprisonment but released on parole in November 1970.
From the guide to the Mueller, Franz Josef: War crimes trial case papers, 1960s, (Wiener Library)
