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THE

INCREDIBLE

STORY OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE

THE

INCREDIBLE

THE NUREMBERG AND SUBSEQUENT TRIALS

THE NUREMBERG TRIALS
Wikipedia   *Go to link for more information

The Nuremberg trials (German: Die Nürnberger Prozesse) were a series of military tribunals held by the Allied forces under international law and the laws of war after World War II. The trials were most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, judicial and economic leadership of Nazi Germany, who planned, carried out, or otherwise participated in the Holocaust and other war crimes. The trials were held in the city of Nuremberg, Germany, and their decisions marked a turning point between classical and contemporary international law.

The first, and best known, was held between 20 November 1945 and 1 October 1946 of major war criminals before the International Military Tribunal (IMT).  It was described as "the greatest trial in history" by Sir Norman Birkett, one of the British judges who presided over them of 24 of the most important political and military leaders of the Third Reich.  

Martin Bormann was tried in absentia. Robert Ley, committed suicide within a week of the trial's commencement.

Adolf Hitler, Wilhelm Burgdorf, Hans Krebs and Joseph Goebbels committed suicide in the spring of 1945 to avoid capture.

Heinrich Himmler attempted to commit suicide, but was captured before he could succeed; he committed suicide one day after being arrested by British forces.  

Krebs and Burgdorf committed suicide two days after Hitler in the same place.

Reinhard Heydrich had been assassinated by Czech partisans in 1942.

Josef Terboven killed himself with dynamite in Norway in 1945.

Adolf Eichmann fled to Argentina to avoid Allied capture, but was apprehended by Israel's intelligence service (Mossad) and hanged in 1962.

Hermann Göring was sentenced to death, but committed suicide by consuming cyanide the night before his execution in defiance of his captors.

Miklós Horthy appeared as a witness at the Ministries trial held in Nuremberg in 1948.

This article primarily deals with the first trial, which was conducted by the IMT. Further trials of lesser war criminals were conducted under Control Council Law No. 10 at the U.S. Nuremberg Military Tribunal (NMT), which included the Doctors' trial and the Judges' Trial.

The categorization of the crimes and the constitution of the court represented a juridical advance that would be used afterwards by the United Nations for the development of a specific international jurisprudence in matters of war crime, crimes against humanity, war of aggression, as well as for the creation of the International Criminal Court. The Nuremberg indictment also mentions genocide for the first time in international law (Count three, war crimes : "the extermination of racial and national groups, against the civilian populations of certain occupied territories in order to destroy particular races and classes of people and national, racial, or religious groups, particularly Jews, Poles, and Gypsies and others.

Go to Wikipedia for a table showing the sentences and brief history of each defendant.

"SUBSEQUENT NUREMBERG TRIALS"
OR, MORE FORMALLY, AS
THE "TRIALS OF WAR CRIMINALS
BEFORE THE
NUREMBERG MILITARY TRIBUNALS" (NMT).

A series of twelve military tribunals for war crimes against members of the leadership of Nazi Germany, held in the Palace of Justice, Nuremberg, after World War II
from 1946 to 1949 following the Trial of the Major War Criminals
before the International Military Tribunal.  

The Subsequent Nuremberg Trials: An Overview  
(Use this link to go to links shown in tables below.  
Go to Wikipedia for information and a Table showing trials.  
Go to United States Holocaust Museum for a list and links to each of these trials
Doug Linder

CONCENTRATION CAMP TRIALS

AUSCHWITZ TRIAL
Wikipedia
(go to site to see a chart by defendent)

The Auschwitz trial began on November 24, 1947, in Kraków, when Polish authorities (the Supreme National Tribunal) tried 40 former staff of the Auschwitz concentration camps. The trials ended on December 22, 1947.

The best-known defendants were Arthur Liebehenschel, former commandant; Maria Mandel, head of the Auschwitz women's camps; and SS-doctor Johann Kremer. 38 other SS officers — 34 men and four women — who had served as guards or doctors in the camps were also tried.

The Supreme National Tribunal presiding in Kraków issued 23 death sentences, and 17 imprisonments ranging from life sentences to 3 years. All executions were carried out on January 28, 1948 at the Kraków Montelupich Prison, "one of the most terrible Nazi prisons in occupied Poland" used by Gestapo throughout World War II. Maria Mandel and Therese Brandl were the first to be executed. One person was acquitted; Sergeant Major Hans Münch, who refused to participate in the selection process and made futile, though confirmed requests for more food to the inmates. Liebehenschel, Mandel and Kremer were condemned to death, as were Hans Aumeier, August Bogusch, Therese Brandl, Arthur Breitwiser, Fritz Buntrock, Wilhelm Gehring, Paul Götze, Maximilian Grabner, Heinrich Josten, Hermann Kirschner, Josef Kollmer, Franz Kraus, Herbert Ludwig, Karl Möckel, Kurt Mueller, Eric Muhsfeldt, Ludwig Plagge, Hans Schumacher and Paul Szczurek (Arthur Breitwieser and Johann Kremer had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment). Luise Danz, Hans Koch, Anton Lechner, Adolf Medefind, Detlef Nebbe, and Karl Seufert received life sentences. Alexander Bülow, Hans Hoffmann, Hildegard Lächert, Eduard Lorenz, Alice Orlowski, Franz Romeikat, and Johannes Weber were sentenced to 15 years. Richard Schroeder received 10 years, Erich Dinges five years, and Karl Jeschke three years. Hans Münch was acquitted.

FRANKFURT AUSCHWITZ TRIALS
Wikipedia
(go to site to see a chart by defendent)

The Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, known in German as der Auschwitz-Prozess, or der zweite Auschwitz-Prozess, (the "second Auschwitz trial") was a series of trials running from 20 December 1963 to 19 August 1965, charging 22 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 as Chief Judge the "criminal case against Mulka and others" (reference number 4 Ks 2/63).

Overall, only 789 individuals of the approximately 8,200 surviving SS personnel who served at Auschwitz and its sub-camps were ever tried, of which 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.

In September 1977 an additional trial was held in Frankfurt against two former members of the SS for killings in the Auschwitz satellite camp of Lagischa (Polish: Lagisza), and on the so-called "evacuation" (i.e. death march) from Golleschau (Goleszow) to Wodzisław Śląski (German: Loslau). This and the previous trial inspired the one in the film ‘The Reader’.

BELSEN TRIAL
Wikipedia
(go to site to see a chart by defendent)

The Belsen trial was one of several trials that the Allied occupation forces conducted against former officials and functionaries of Nazi Germany after the end of World War II.

The Belsen Trial took place in Lüneburg, Lower Saxony, Germany in 1945 and the defendants were men and women of the SS as well as prisoner functionaries who had worked at various concentration camps, notably Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen.

The trial generated considerable interest around the world, as the public heard for the first time from some of those responsible for the mass murder in the eastern extermination camps. Some later trials are also referred to as Belsen Trials.

A second Belsen trial was conducted at Lüneburg from 13–18 June 1946 by a British military tribunal. On trial was Kazimierz Cegielski, a Polish national and former prisoner at Bergen-Belsen who, according to his testimony, had arrived in March 1944. Known as "der Große (Big) Kazimierz" (to differentiate him from another kapo with that name), he was charged with cruelty and murder.[24][better source needed]

Kapos were prisoner functionaries selected by the SS to supervise their fellow prisoners. Selected for their willingness to be brutal, they were initially selected from the ranks of criminal prisoners. Later, political prisoners were chosen and later still, prisoners from other groups.[25]

Cegielski was accused of beating – sometimes killing – sick and weak prisoners with large wooden sticks or poles. While at Bergen-Belsen, he had an affair with another prisoner, Henny DeHaas, a Jewish woman from Amsterdam. After the war, in 1946, he was arrested in Amsterdam, ostensibly looking for DeHaas so he could marry her. He was convicted on 18 June 1946 and sentenced to death by hanging. The day before his execution, he claimed his true surname was Rydzewski. He was executed at Hameln Prison at 9:20 a.m. on 11 October 1946.  Other trials were:

Belzec trials in the mid-1960s was a war crimes trial of eight former SS members

Chełmno trials of the Chełmno extermination camp personnel, held in Poland and in Germany. The cases were decided almost twenty years apart

Dachau trials held within the walls of the former Dachau concentration camp, 1945–1948

Majdanek trials, the longest Nazi war crimes trial in history, spanning over 30 years

Mauthausen-Gusen camp trials

Nuremberg trials of the 23 most important leaders of the Third Reich, 1945–1946

Ravensbrück Trial

Sobibor trial held in Hagen, Germany in 1965 against the SS-men of the Sobibor extermination camp

Treblinka trials in Düsseldorf, Germany