“It was then that I saw the tortured stand before their tormentors”
Auschwitz/Majdanek on Trial: About the Two Largest German Proceedings against the Staff of Concentration and Extermination Camps
The Frankfurt Auschwitz trial that took place from December 1963 until August 1965 is regarded as a turning point in the way the National Socialist past was dealt with in the new Federal Republic. The Majdanek Trial, that took place at the regional court in Dusseldorf from 26 November 1975 until 30 June 1981 is the longest court proceeding in German legal history and left behind a lasting disturbance for the discrepancy between the sentences given and the crimes described at the trial.
The Auschwitz Trial
On 20 December 1963, Federal Germany’s largest and longest-lasting trial to date of crimes committed in National Socialist concentration and extermination camps opened in the council chamber of Frankfurt’s Römer, the city hall. On trial were twenty-two former staff members who had worked between 1941 and 1945 at the Auschwitz concentration camp. The highest-ranking defendant and last commandant of the camp, Richard Baer, had died just before the trial began. Many others did not face charges at all, not least because almost all crimes dating from the Nazi era were already time-barred—even homicide.
The presiding judge Hans Hofmeyer; Schindler‐Foto‐Report
Since the Federal German legislature had not anchored the Allies’ postwar trials in Federal German law, trial proceedings in Frankfurt am Main—and likewise all subsequent trials of Nazi crimes—were based on the Penal Code of 1871. Consequently the only charges made were those of murder, and of aiding and abetting murder; and the court, under the guidance of the presiding judge Hans Hofmeyer, was accordingly obliged to find whether defendants had been personally involved in acts of murder, that is to say, had broken the law.
The penal proceedings filed under the number 4 KS 2 /63, which went down in history as the Auschwitz Trial, had been planned and prepared well in advance by Fritz Bauer, Solicitor General of the State of Hesse. The trial lasted twenty months, twice as long as originally planned, and received broad media coverage. German and international media ran more reports than ever before on the systematically planned mass murder of concentration camp prisoners, as well as on those who had willingly perpetrated the crime or been involved in it in some way. They thereby turned the spotlight on the testimony given by the 211 Auschwitz survivors who took the witness stand.
The Hessian solicitor general and initiator of the Auschwitz trial Fritz Bauer; Fritz Bauer Institut
On 20 December 1963 Hessischer Rundfunk devoted its Hessenschau newsreel to the first day in court: a thirteen-minute feature during which the former Auschwitz prisoner Franz Unikower formulated in an astoundingly sober way, what the survivors expected from the trial:
“[…] it was not a thirst for vengeance that motivated us when this long-prepared trial began. It is, for us, a feeling of tragic satisfaction that now, after so many years, evidence is being gathered in great detail, about who was involved in the terrible crimes committed at the Auschwitz camp, and to what extent.”
It is estimated that 20,000 people attended the trial. Among them were many writers and intellectuals such as Hannah Arendt, Inge Deutschkron, Marie Luise Kaschnitz, Henry Miller, Robert Neumann, Horst Krüger, and Peter Weiss. Their texts show how harrowing the statements of the survivors and the reactions of the accused must have been.
The former Auschwitz prisoner Franz Unikower; Bundesarchiv
Peter Weiss, in his “Vorübung zum dreiteiligen Drama divine commedia” [Preliminary Exercise for a Divina Commedia Drama in Three Parts], which was first published in German in Rapporte, Frankfurt/Main 1981 [1968], p. 133 f., wrote that:
“It was then that I saw the tortured stand before their tormentors,
The last survivors facing those who had condemned them to death […]
Nameless on both sides, mere leftovers of a thorough purge,
Only stammering, uncomprehending folk,
Up in front of a court investigating grim and deliquescent acts of cruelty […].”
The Auschwitz Trial marks a caesura. It sparked a process that was much more important than the trial itself: the Federal Republic of Germany’s process of dealing with its Nazi past.
Memorandum. A Documentary of the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial
A film sequence of the documentary Memorandum by Donald Brittain and John Spotton shows the defendants of the Auschwitz Trial stepping one by one out of a police car to enter the courthouse. Some hold their leather briefcases in front of their faces; others cover their eyes with their hands. Victor Capesius, the pharmacist of Auschwitz, glares unashamed into the camera. We look directly into his eyes. A man who assured his Jewish former colleague upon his arrival at Auschwitz that the latter’s wife and young daughters had only gone to bathe. And then Wilhelm Boger gets out of the car. He was responsible for the political interrogations at Auschwitz, meaning: he tortured people – often to death. He uses his bag to try to knock down the camera. The police stand beside him, uncertain what to do.
The trial received media attention worldwide. The filmmakers of Memorandum came from Canada specifically in order to capture this event. They travelled throughout Germany with the question, why was the Holocaust initiated from this of all countries. If you are curious to know what further answers the two Canadian’s discovered on their journey, we warmly recommend that you watch this impressive film from start to finish.
Memorandum by Donald Brittain and John Spotton; National Film Board of Canada
An excerpt of this film was part of our permanent exhibition for a number of years. We observed that the film clip elicited a much more intense response from visitors to the legal proceedings of Nazi criminals in Frankfurt than did other forms of media, such as photographs or audio clips.
Changed Public Attitudes Towards the Past in Germany
In the contemporary international coverage of the trial, groundbreaking questions were raised about the way the National Socialist era was officially and publicly dealt with. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reporter Bernd Naumann, who followed the ongoing trial, described the proceedings on Dutch television:
“Anyone not made of stone has been changed by the way the past has stood up before us once again. (…) This lethal machinery, the accomplishment with which this [the murder] was carried out. (…) This was never as clear as during this Auschwitz trial.”
“My husband was very accurate, indeed, but […] I can’t imagine all this,” said the wife of Auschwitz perpetrator Wilhelm Boger to NDR journalists; Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Alexander Zuckrow
In a program from the Hessian broadcasting network with the very 60s-sounding name Heute Abend Kellerklub (This Evening Cellar Club), the Hessian attorney general and initiator of the Auschwitz trial, Fritz Bauer, explains to an audience of young adults what he is essentially blaming the accused for: their inability to say “no.” Bauer saw the opportunity, with the Auschwitz trial, to teach the public – particularly the younger generation – about the time of National Socialism.
From 2013 to 2017, we presented 18 sequences from Canadian, Dutch, and West-German productions in an extensive 30-minute installation on three monitors in our permanent exhibition. This installation opened with a two-minute segment from Günter Gaus’s legendary television interview with Hannah Arendt, in which she says: “Something happened there that none of us can come to terms with.”
The interview can be watched in full length on YouTube:
The monitor cubes in the former permanent exhibition were designed by Holzer Kobler Architekturen, the video installation was realized by TheGreenEyl; Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Alexander Zuckrow
Günter Gaus’s legendary television interview with Hannah Arendt
The television reports are themselves contemporary documents and demonstrate how the trial and its reception in the media launched a re-examination of Germany’s National-Socialist past, a process that is still underway today.
The Majdanek Trial
In our collection, there are forty-four portraits from a series of paintings by Minka Hauschild, called Majdanek Trial Portraits, (listed in our digitized holdings, in German). The series, which was on display in our old permanent exhibition, shows the participants of the Majdanek Trial, that took place at the regional court in Dusseldorf from 26 November 1975 until 30 June 1981.
Standing in front of the wall of portraits, viewers are left to wonder: “Who is who, here?” The paintings themselves don’t reveal whether the subject was a former prisoner or an SS officer. Some portraits are realistic, but others seem distorted or blurred to the point of being unrecognizable. All of the people portrayed appear to have been damaged in some way. The portraits are deeply disturbing.
Area on the Majdanek Trial in the old permanent exhibition; Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Alexander Zuckrow
Our visitors were able to find out on iPads lying on the benches nearby whether a given painting depicted a judge, a lawyer for the defense, a witness, or a defendant. Each individual’s role in the Majdanek trial was described here and insight was provided into their biography as well as – where the sources permit – their own perception of the proceedings.
The Majdanek Trial was noted by contemporary witnesses for being “horrifying.” Sixteen members of the guard personnel, among them six women, sat in the dock. Four were acquitted in 1979 for lack of proof that they had personally participated in murder. The trial’s final verdicts in 1981 came across as mild. The court only recognized the defendant Hermine Braunsteiner-Ryan as a willful perpetrator in her own right, and sentenced her on the count of murder to life in prison. Several witnesses made statements that she dragged or threw toddlers and infants onto the trucks that brought them to their deaths in the gas chambers.
Reverberation in the Media and the Arts
Minka Hauschild’s painting cycle reflects the long reverberation that the trial had in the media, society at large, and in the arts. She created it in 1995 and 1996, twenty years after the trial began. The artist was inspired primarily by the documentary film The Trial, a four and a half hour report first aired on public television in 1984, which was viewed by millions. It’s based on conversations with a number of participants in the trial, and assembles their opposing perspectives into a mesmerizing collage of interviews. The painter was so fascinated by the pictures of the faces of the defendants, witnesses, lawyers, and observers at the trial, that she photographed them on the television screen and used the photographs as a basis for her oil portraits.
Serious Crimes, Lenient Sentences
The Majdanek trial is the longest court proceeding in German legal history. The discrepancy between the sentences given and the crimes described at the trial illustrates the inability of the West German system of justice to find an appropriate way to deal with Nazi atrocities. The Majdanek Trial Portraits show that this proceeding (like the Auschwitz Trial) continues to have an effect many years after the judgments were handed down.
Monika Flores Martínez, Permanent Exhibition, and Mirjam Wenzel, Media
Citation recommendation:
Monika Flores Martínez/Mirjam Wenzel (2012/2013), “It was then that I saw the tortured stand before their tormentors”. Auschwitz/Majdanek on Trial: About the Two Largest German Proceedings against the Staff of Concentration and Extermination Camps.
URL: www.jmberlin.de/en/node/10835
