The Ravensbrück trials were a series of seven war crimes trials in the aftermath of the Second World War against 38 Holocaust perpetrators who had worked at the Ravensbrück concentration camp. The trials were held before a British military court in Hamburg from 1946 - 1948.
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 Ravensbrück in Germany, an all-female camp where tens of thousands of women were killed and mistreated. Most of the prisoners were German and Polish Jews, but they included women from all European nationalities, including some British prisoners of war from the Special Operations Executive.
Ravensbrück was liberated by the Soviet Red Army in 1945. Later that year, with the end of the war and the end of Nazi Germany, numerous concentration camp staff were arrested by the Allied Powers to be tried for war crimes. These included many of the staff of Ravensbrück, who were charged by a British military court in the Rotherbaum borough of Hamburg within the British occupation zone. The tribunal charged 40 former staff of Ravensbrück with murder and mistreatment of women and girls of Allied nationalities (the fate of German women and girls was outside the tribunal's jurisdiction).
Trials[]
The first trial lasted from December 1946 - February 1947 and charged 19 defendants. Three of the defendants - camp commandant Fritz Suhren and work leaders Hans Pflaum and Friedrich Opitz - escaped from custody before the trial. Opitz was quickly recaptured and would become the sole defendant in the second trial, whilst Suhren and Pflaum were arrested in France in 1949, where they were court-martialled and shot. The remaining 16 defendants included deputy commandant Johann Schwarzhuber, assistant chief warden Dorothea Binz and labour department head Greta Bösel. All 16 defendants were found guilty, with the exception of Dr. Adolf Winkelmann, who died during the trial. 11 defendants were sentenced to death and executed in May and June 1947, except for two who killed themselves before the sentence could be carried out. The other five were given varying terms of imprisonment.
The second trial, in November 1947, had only one defendant: work leader Friedrich Opitz, who had previously escaped before he could appear at the first trial. Opitz, who had overseen inmates forced to work in the camp's clothing factory, was convicted of sending inmates to the gas chamber for "being useless", beating them with his belt, truncheon and fists, starving them for failing to meet their quota and forcing them to stand up for roll calls lasting hours, and kicking at least one Czech inmate to death. He was executed by hanging on 26 January 1948.
The third trial, in April 1948, dealt with five female overseers from the Uckermark subcamp, which had been used only for German teenagers until 1945 when the juvenile prison was closed and the camp was used for the gassing of sick, elderly (over 52 years) and inefficient women from Ravensbrück. Two of the defendants, warders Lotte Toberentz and Johanna Braach, were found not guilty because they had only worked at Uckermark when it was a juvenile camp and there was no evidence linking them to the murder or mistreatment of Allied inmates. The other three, extermination camp chief warden Ruth Neudeck, assistant chief warden Elfriede Mohneke and junior warden Margarete Rabe, were found guilty. Neudeck was executed in July, Rabe received a life sentence and Mohneke received 10 years imprisonment.
The fourth trial lasted from May - June 1948 and concerned five medical staff at Ravensbrück. Two of the defendants, doctors Walter Sonntag and Benno Orendi who were accused of performing medical experiments on prisoners, received a death sentence and were executed on 17 September 1948. Nurse Gerda Ganzer was also sentenced to death, but the sentence was reduced to life imprisonment. The other two defendants, nurses Martha Haake and Liesbeth Krzok, received prison sentences of ten and four years respectively.
A fifth trial in June 1948 convicted three SS wardens from Ravensbrück - Arthur Conrad, Heinrich Schäfer and Walter Schenk - of mistreatment of Allied prisoners. Conrad was sentenced to death whereas Schenk and Schäfer were given prison sentences. The sixth trial the following month convicted wardens Kurt Lauer and Kurt Rauxloh of mistreating inmates and sentenced them to 10 - 15 years in prison.
Finally, the seventh trial tried six female wardens for participating in the selections for the gas chambers and mistreating Allied inmates. Assistant chief warden Emma Zimmer and labour department warden Ida Schreiter were sentenced to death and executed on 20 September 1948. Chief wardens Anna Klein and Christine Holthöwer were found not guilty due to lack of evidence, whereas chief warden Luise Brunner was jailed for only three years as witnesses could only testify to her having beaten prisoners. The final defendant, warden Ilse Vettermann, was jailed for 12 years.