The Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, known in German as , was a series of three trials running from 20 December 1963 to 14 June 1968, charging 25 defendants under German criminal law for their roles in the Holocaust as mid- to lower-level officials in the Auschwitz-Birkenau death and concentration camp complex. Hans Hofmeyer led the "criminal case against Mulka and others" (reference number 4 Ks 3/63) as chief judge.
Overall, only 789 individuals of the approximately 8,200 surviving SS personnel who served at Auschwitz and its sub-camps were ever tried, of whom 750 received sentences. Unlike the first trial in Poland held almost two decades earlier, the trials in Frankfurt were not based on the legal definition of crimes against humanity as recognized by international law, but according to the state laws of the Federal Republic.
Prior trial in Poland
Most of the senior leaders of the camp, including Rudolf Höss, the longest-standing commandant of the camp, were turned over to the Polish authorities in 1947 following their participation as witnesses in the Nuremberg trial. Subsequently, the accused were tried in Kraków and many sentenced to death for violent crimes and torturing of prisoners. Only Hans Münch was set free, having been acquitted of war crimes. That original trial in Poland is usually known as the first Auschwitz trial.
Course of proceedings
Richard Baer, the last camp commandant, died in detention while still under investigation as part of the trials. Defendants ranged from members of the SS to kapos, privileged prisoners responsible for low-level control of camp internees, and included some of those responsible for the process of "selection," or determination of who should be sent to the gas chambers directly from the "ramp" upon disembarking the trains that brought them from across Europe ("selection" generally entailed inclusion of all children held to be ineligible for work, generally under the age of 14, and any mothers unwilling to part with their "selected" children). In the course of the trial, approximately 360 witnesses were called, including around 210 survivors. Proceedings began in the , in Frankfurt am Main, which was converted into a courthouse for that purpose, and remained there until their conclusion.
200px|right|thumb|Richard Baer, camp commandant at [[Dora-Mittelbau]]
Hessian State Attorney General () Fritz Bauer, himself briefly interned in 1933 at the Heuberg concentration camp, led the prosecution. Bauer was concerned with pursuing individual defendants serving at Auschwitz-Birkenau; only 22 SS members were charged of an estimated 6,000 to 8,000 thought to have been involved in the administration and operation of the camp. The men on trial in Frankfurt were tried only for murders and other crimes that they committed on their own initiative at Auschwitz and were not tried for genocidal actions perpetrated "when following orders", considered by the courts to be the lesser crime of accomplice to murder.
At a 1963 trial, KGB assassin Bohdan Stashynsky, who had committed several murders in the Federal Republic in the 1950s, was found by a German court not legally guilty of murder. Instead, Stashynsky was found to be only an accomplice to murder as the courts ruled that the responsibility for his murders rested only with his superiors in the KGB who had given him his orders.
In 2017, the original magnetic tapes recording the main proceedings of the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial, which focused the world's attention on the systemic industrialized mass-murder of the Holocaust, were submitted by Germany and included by UNESCO in its Memory of the World International Register.
{| class="wikitable sortable" width="85%"
!align="left"|Name
!align="left"|Rank, Title, or Role
!align="left"|Sentence
|-
|valign="top"|Stefan Baretzki
|valign="top"|Blockführer (block chief)
|valign="top"|Life plus 8 years imprisonment
|-
|valign="top"|Emil Bednarek
|valign="top"|Kapo
|valign="top"|Life imprisonment
|-
|valign="top"|Wilhelm Boger
|valign="top"|Camp Gestapo
|valign="top"|Life & 5 years imprisonment
|-
|valign="top"|Arthur Breitwieser
|valign="top"|Camp uniforms, Häftlingsbekleidungskammer
|valign="top"|Released
|-
|valign="top"|Perry Broad
|valign="top"|Camp Gestapo
|valign="top"|4 years imprisonment
|-
|valign="top"|Victor Capesius
|valign="top"|Pharmacist
|valign="top"|9 years imprisonment
|-
|valign="top"|Klaus Dylewski
|valign="top"|Camp Gestapo
|valign="top"|5 years imprisonment
|-
|valign="top"|Willi Frank
|valign="top"|Head of SS dental station
|valign="top"|7 years imprisonment
|-
|valign="top"|Emil Hantl
|valign="top"|Sanitätsdienstgrad (medical orderly)
|valign="top"|3½ years imprisonment
|-
|valign="top"|Karl-Friedrich Höcker
|valign="top"|Adjutant
|valign="top"|7 years imprisonment
|-
|valign="top"|Franz-Johann Hofmann
|valign="top"|Head of protective custody camp
|valign="top"|Life imprisonment
|-
|valign="top"|Oswald Kaduk
|valign="top"|Rapportführer (SS NCO)
|valign="top"|Life imprisonment
|-
|valign="top"|Josef Klehr
|valign="top"|Medical orderly
|valign="top"|Life & 15 years imprisonment
|-
|valign="top"|Dr. Franz Lucas
|valign="top"|SS Obersturmführer
|valign="top"|3 years, 3 months imprisonment
|-
|valign="top"|Robert Mulka
|valign="top"|Adjutant
|valign="top"|14 years imprisonment
|-
|valign="top"|Gerhard Neubert
|valign="top"|HKB Monovitz
|valign="top"|Released
|-
|valign="top"|Hans Nierzwicki
|valign="top"|HKB Auschwitz 1
|valign="top"|Released
|-
|valign="top"|Willi Schatz
|valign="top"|SS dentist
|valign="top"|Acquitted & released
|-
|valign="top"|Herbert Scherpe
|valign="top"|SS Oberscharführer
|valign="top"|4½ years imprisonment
|-
|valign="top"|Bruno Schlage
|valign="top"|SS Oberscharführer
|valign="top"|6 years imprisonment
|-
|valign="top"|Johann Schobert
|valign="top"|Political Division
|valign="top"|Acquitted & released
|-
|valign="top"|Hans Stark
|valign="top"|Camp Gestapo
|valign="top"|10 years imprisonment
|}
Additional trials
From 1965 to 1966, three more SS men who had served at Auschwitz were tried: Josef Erber, and All three men were found guilty. Erber was sentenced to life in prison, while Burger and Neubert received 8-year and 3.5-year sentences, respectively. From 1967 to 1968, two Kapos, and were tried. Both men received life sentences.
In September 1977, an additional trial was held in Frankfurt against two former members of the SS, and Josef Schmidt, for killings in the Auschwitz satellite camp of (), and on the so-called "evacuation" (i.e. death march) from Goleszów () to Wodzisław Śląski (). Proceedings against Czerwinski were stayed after he was found medically unfit for trial. Schmidt was convicted of murdering one inmate in autumn of 1943, when he was considered a minor under German law. In recognition of both this and the fact that he had previously served a prison sentence in Poland he was sentenced to eight years juvenile detention.
Czerwinski was later indicted for a second time in 1985. 204 witnesses testified against him, including Josef Schmidt and Auschwitz survivor Abraham Schaechter. Czerwinski was accused of having brutally murdered at least two inmates who had unsuccessfully attempted to escape. He was convicted in 1989 after a trial lasting four years and sentenced to life imprisonment.
This and the previous trial inspired the one in the film The Reader.. The Frankfurt trial is referenced in Jean-Luc Godard's film A Married Woman of 1964.
See also
- Belzec trial
- Chełmno trials
- Majdanek trials
- Sobibor trial
- Treblinka trials
- Ulm Einsatzkommando trial
- The Investigationa play by Peter Weiss written in 1965 which depicts the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials.
- Labyrinth of Liesa 2014 German drama film directed by Giulio Ricciarelli that focuses on the difficulties that prosecutors had to surmount because of systemic suppression of the truth in post-war Germany. The film ends just as the trials begin in 1963.
General references
- Part One of World Socialist Web Site coverage
- Part Two of World Socialist Web Site coverage
- Part Three of World Socialist Web Site coverage
- Summary of Sentences from Jewish Virtual Library
- Fritz-Bauer-Institut (Frankfurt) / Staatliches Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau (Hrsg): Der Auschwitz-Prozeß. Tonbandmitschnitte, Protokolle, Dokumente. DVD/ROM. Directmedia Publishing, Berlin 2004, (also via D. Czech: Kalendarium)
- Verdict on Auschwitz, The Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial 1963-65 at DEFA Film Library, 2006.
References
Further reading
- G. Álvarez, Mónica. "Guardianas Nazis. El lado femenino del mal". Madrid: Grupo Edaf, 2012.
- Devin O. Pendas, The Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial, 1963–65: Genocide, History and the Limits of the Law (Cambridge University Press, 2006)
- Rebecca Wittmann, Beyond Justice: the Auschwitz Trial (Harvard University Press, 2005)
- Hermann Langbein, Der Auschwitz-Prozess.Eine Dokumentation. 2 vols, Europa Verlag, Vienna, Frankfurt, Zurich, 1965.
- Review of "The Investigation," a play written by Peter Weiss (1965)
External links
- Fritz Bauer Institute
- Book review comparing Wittmann's and Pendas's monographs about the trial
- Subset: "Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials Witnesses", Archive "Forced Labor 1939-1945"
- Shortfilm "Testifying in Nazi Trials", Archive "Forced Labor 1939-1945"
- Sonderkommando page