The Auschwitz Trials

1. The Auschwitz Trials Jordy, Hollie, Liz

2. Background • During the Moscow declaration which had been a series of meetings held between the foreign ministers of the United Kingdom, United States, China and the Soviet Union. The allied powers found Germany guilty of war crimes. • The Germans connected to Auschwitz had been arrested and brought over Poland who came up with the accommodations for punishment. • Only sixty-three of the approximately 7,000 SS personnel who served at Auschwitz

3. The First Auschwitz Trial was through November 24, 1947 - December 22, 1947- The Polish authorities tried forty-one senior SS personnel (thirty-six men, five women) who had served at Auschwitz. The top ranked of the camp hierarchy were put on trial. • During the trial they had included survivor testimonies, and the judges perused a wide variety of German documents. • The aftermath of the trial had been: Twenty-four of the defendants were sentenced to death, three received life imprisonment, seven received fifteen years in prison, and one was acquitted.

4. The Second Auschwitz Trial was through December 20, 1963 - August 10, 1965
In this series of trials they tried: twenty-two Auschwitz personnel – second and third tier officers and capos. • This trial had differed from the first unlike the first one which had been based off of the international law and the legal definition of crimes against humanity, these trials were conducted according to German criminal law. This had made it harder to convict some of the accused. • There had been 360 witnesses summoned for the trial, 210 of those 360 witnesses had been camp survivors. • Eighteen of the accused were found guilty. Six of the eighteen were sentenced to life in prison and the others received sentences ranging from 5-14 years. Many of the accused never served their full sentence.

5. Wilhelm Boger • In 1959 he was arrested the last time and this time was charged for the war crimes he committed at Auschwitz. On August 20, 1965 he became part of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trails by the Landgericht Frankfurt am Main Community for aiding and abetting the murder of Jews. After a series of eyewitness' testimonies he was finally sentenced to life imprisonment for murder in at least 5 cases, collective murder in at least 109 cases and collective help for collective murder.

6. Karl Hoecker • He married before the war and had a son and daughter during the war, with whom he was reunited after his release from 18 months in a British POW camp in 1946. Early in the 1960s he was apprehended by West German authorities in his hometown, where he was a bank official. It is not known why the bank rehired and promoted him after a long absence during which he had nothing to do with banking. • At his trial in Frankfurt, part of the noted Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial, Höcker denied having participated in the selection of victims at Birkenauor having ever personally executed a prisoner. He further denied any knowledge of the fate of the approximately 400,000 Hungarian Jews who were murdered at Auschwitz during his term of service at the camp. Höcker was shown to have knowledge of the genocidal activities at the camp, but could not be proved to have played a direct part in them. In postwar trials, Höcker denied his involvement in the selection process. While accounts from survivors and other SS officers all but placed him there, prosecutors could locate no conclusive evidence to prove the claim. • In August 1965 Höcker was sentenced to seven years imprisonment for aiding and abetting in over 1,000 murders at Auschwitz. He was released in 1970 and was able to return to his bank post as a chief cashier, where he worked until his retirement. • On 3 May 1989 a district court in the Germany city of Bielefeld sentenced Höcker to four years imprisonment for his involvement in gassing to death prisoners, primarily Polish Jews, in the concentration camp Majdanek in Poland. Camp records showed that between May 1943 and May 1944 Höcker had acquired at least 3,610 kilograms of Zyklon B poisonous gas for use in Majdanek from the Hamburg firm of Teschand Stabenow.[1]

7. Dr Victor Capesius • Capesius was arrested in Göppingen in early December 1959 and remained in custody until 1965. On August 20, 1965 he was indicted in the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials by the Landgericht Frankfurt am Main Community for aiding and abetting the murder of at least four cases of 2,000 people and convicted to nine years in prison.[5][6]Capesius served three years and was released from prison in January 1968.[7]

8. Stefan Baretzki

9. Franz-Johann Hoffmann • Second Trial in December 10, 1963 to August 10, 1965, former SS officials & guards • Sent to life imprisonment

10. Oswald Kaduk • Life Imprisonment was a German SS-Unterscharfuhrer G and Rapportfuhrer at Auschwitz concentration camp • July 1959 Kadukwas arrested, and appeared in the Auschwitz Trials in Frankfurt where he was one of the main accused. • Sent to life imprisonment • After the 1984 transfer to open prison, Kaduk was released from the Schwalmstadt prison in 1989 due to health reasons.

11. Josef Klehr • SS disinfection commando at Auschwitz concentration camp. • Life & 15 Years Imprisonment • During an interview he had told the truth about the gassing. • On January 25, 1988, Klehr's sentence was suspended due to unfitness for custody. On June 10 he was ordered to serve the remainder on probation.After seven months of freedom, Klehrdied at the age of 83.

12. Perry Broad • assigned to guard duty in the Auschwitz concentration camp, he was eventually arrested and put on trial in Frankfurt, Germany were he was found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to 4 years hard labor • he remained in Auschwitz until the dissolution of the camp in early 1945 and was captured by British armed forces. Being a P.O.W., he voluntarily wrote a report about his experiences in Auschwitz • -Released in 1947, he again was arrested 12 years later, freed in December 1960 after the payment of 50,000 DM as surety and again arrested in November 1964 as defendant in the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trialsit was proven that he had participated in interrogations, tortures and executions • -he was sentenced to four years

13. Emil Bednarek • -at the outbreak of the war he was made a polish non-commissioned officer but he said after 13 days he went over to the Germans and was sent to Auschwitz because he was ethnic German he was soon made a block elder • -he would beat the prisoners , he said beatings were an everyday occurrence • -he tried to excuse his behavior to the court by saying he was under pressure as a block elder • -however, it was found that he murdered with these actions being done on his own • -he was brought to trail and sentenced to life imprisonment on 14 counts of murder

14. Willi Stark • was a block leader at the Auschwitz Birkenau camp • he was moved to head of admission detail • he admitted to executing prisoners by shooting them and participating in the gassing of prisoners • he was arrested in 1959 and found guilty of more than 40 murders • he was sentenced to 10 years in prison

15. No Justice • I do not feel that justice was achieved even though they were punished because it could never take back or change all of the horrific things they have done to the Jews. The crimes they committed were against a complete society for no reason and even at trial most of these people did not seem to regret their actions nor had they been punished the proper way. Most of the ones accused hadn’t followed through with their whole sentence.

16. Bibliography • http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/WarCrime5.html • http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/auschtrial.html • http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/education/newsletter/10/auschwitz_trials.asp