The Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, sometimes known as the Second Auschwitz trial to distinguish them from the earlier Auschwitz trial before the Polish Supreme National Tribunal, were a series of trials in the 1960s against 22 Holocaust perpetrators who had worked at the Auschwitz concentration camp. The trials were held before a federal court in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
History[]
Background[]
Between 1939 and 1945, the Axis Powers, led by Nazi Germany, waged war across Europe in what was known as the Second World War. During the war, the Axis systematically murdered millions of Jews and other minorities in the genocide known as the Holocaust. The victims were deported to concentration camps in Nazi-controlled territory where they were systematically mistreated and either worked to death or killed in gas chambers. These camps included Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland, a camp complex at which over 1 million people were gassed or died from mistreatment by guards.
Auschwitz was liberated by Soviet troops in 1945. Numerous camp staff were arrested by the victorious Allied Powers to be prosecuted for war crimes, resulting in the first Auschwitz trials in Poland before the Supreme National Tribunal at which 40 former staff, including the camp's first and second commandants Rudolf Höss and Arthur Liebehenschel, were convicted. 22 of these were executed, including Höss and Liebehenschel. Other Auschwitz staff were convicted by a British military court during the Belsen trials for crimes committed at both Auschwitz and the Bergen-Belsen camp. However, a number of other former Auschwitz staff remained free and were able to return to their lives before the war.
Trials[]
In the 1960s, the Federal Republic of West Germany opened an investigation into former Auschwitz staff still living in Germany. Those arrested during the investigation included Richard Baer, the third and final commandant, who died in custody while still under investigation.
The trials opened in December 1963 against 22 defendants. Chief Justice Hans Hofmeyer presided over the trials, and the prosecution was led by Fritz Bauer. A significant roadblock for the prosecution was that according to the law at the time those who committed crimes in the Nazi camps while following orders were only guilty of acting as an accessory to murder and could only be charged with murder for crimes they committed without orders.
The trials lasted from 1963 - 1965 and comprised 183 days of hearings. 319 witnesses were called, including both former inmates and former staff. By the time the final verdict was rendered on 19 August 1965, 17 of the 22 defendants had been convicted, whilst five were found to have acted under duress and released from custody. Six defendants - block chief Stefan Baretzki, prisoner functionary Emil Bednarek, overseer Wilhelm Boger, custody chief Franz-Johann Hofmann, NCO Oswald Kaduk and medical orderly Josef Klehr - were sentenced to life in prison. The others received prison sentences ranging from 3 - 14 years, with many receiving the maximum sentence possible for the specific offences of which they were convicted. One of the convicts, Dr. Franz Lucas, later had his conviction overturned due to evidence that his only known crime, participating in selections for the gas chambers, was only committed after being threatened with arrest by a superior officer for treating prisoners too humanely.
Two other Auschwitz staff, Unterscharführer Horst Czerwinski and Sturmmann Josef Schmidt, were later charged at Frankfurt in the late 1970s for murdering inmates at Auschwitz. Schmidt was convicted of torturing one prisoner to death and was sentenced to eight years in prison in recognition of the fact that he had been a juvenile at the time of the crimes and had previously served a prison sentence in Poland. Proceedings against Czerwinski were suspended after he suffered a heart attack, but another court in Lueneberg later sentenced him to life imprisonment for crimes committed at Auschwitz.