Majdanek trials | |
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![]() Former SS-Obersturmbannfuehrer Anton Thernes (standing, left) in front of a penal court on trial for crimes committed at Majdanek, 1944, Lublin, Poland | |
Submitted | November 27, 1944 |
Decided | June 30, 1981, Düsseldorf |
The Majdanek trials were a series of consecutive war-crime trials held in Poland and in Germany during and after World War II, constituting the overall longest Nazi war crimes trial in history spanning over 30 years. [2] The first judicial trial of Majdanek extermination camp officials took place from November 27, 1944, to December 2, 1944, in Lublin, Poland. [3] [4] The last one, held at the District Court of Düsseldorf began on November 26, 1975, and concluded on June 30, 1981. It was West Germany's longest and most expensive trial, lasting 474 sessions. [5] [6]
A number of former high ranking SS men, camp officials, camp guards, and SS staff were arraigned before the courts on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed at Majdanek in the period between October 1, 1941, and July 22, 1944. Notably, only 170 Nazis who served at Majdanek had been prosecuted at all, of the 1,037 camp personnel known by name. Half of the defendants charged by the West German justice system were acquitted of killing. By contrast, those tried earlier by Poland were usually found guilty. During the 34 months of camp operation, more than 79,000 people were murdered at Majdanek main camp alone (59,000 of them Polish Jews) and between 95,000 and 130,000 people in the entire Majdanek, system including several subcamps. [7] Some 18,000 Jews were killed at Majdanek on November 3, 1943, during the largest single-day, single-camp massacre of the Holocaust, [6] named Harvest Festival (totalling 43,000 with 2 subcamps). [8]
Notably, two KL Majdanek concentration camp commandants were put on trial by the SS themselves in the course of the camp operation partly because of what Majdanek was initially, merely a storage depot for gold, money and furs stolen from trainloads of Holocaust victims at murder factories in Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka. [9] Both SS men were charged with wholesale stealing from the Third Reich to become rich. Karl-Otto Koch (serving at Majdanek from July 1941 till August 24, 1942) was executed by firing squad on April 5, 1945; Hermann Florstedt, the third chief of Majdanek (from October 1942 on) was executed by the SS on April 15, 1945. [10]
Retreating Germans did not have time to destroy the facility. It remained the best preserved example of a Holocaust death camp in history, with intact gas chambers and crematoria. [11] The advancing Soviets were the first Allied soldiers to see the gas chambers, and initially overestimated the total number of victims. [12]
A group of six members of Majdanek personnel – who had not managed to escape – were arraigned before the Soviet-Polish Special Criminal Court immediately following the camp's liberation of July 23, 1944. They were SS-Obersturmführer Anton Thernes, SS-Hauptsturmführer Wilhelm Gerstenmeier, SS-Oberscharführer Hermann Vögel, Kapo Edmund Pohlmann, SS-Rottenführer Theodor Schöllen and Kapo Heinrich Stalp, After the trial, and deliberations which lasted from November 27, 1944 to December 2, 1944 all of accused, except for Pohlmann, who had committed suicide on November 28, were found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to death by hanging. [6] [11] [13] They were all hanged on December 3, 1944. [14]
The series of trials which took place between 1946 and 1948 in Poland – usually referred to as the Second trial of Majdanek – consisted of trials of many kinds. Some 95 SS-men, mostly guards (including those apprehended hiding in postwar Germany), were charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity. Seven of the defendants were given the death penalty. The most prominent of them was Elsa Ehrich, Oberaufseherin of the women and children camp division (liquidated in spring of 1944). She was responsible for the selections to gas chambers. Ehrich was found guilty of all charges, and hanged in July 1948. Apparently, Ehrich made an attempt to launch a Nazi brothel in 1943, but the project was abandoned before fruition after one of her slave sex-workers was diagnosed with typhus. [15]
Most other SS men were sentenced from 2 to 12 years' imprisonment. [16] Some of the more prominent defendants in the 1946–1948 series of trials included over 60 SS-Schütze camp guards. The multiple proceedings were held in Lublin, as well as in Radom and Świdnica (1947), Kraków, Wadowice, and Toruń (1948) and in Warsaw (1948), where the last appellate court case of Jacob Gemmel took place in November 1950. [10]
Defendant [10] | Born | Rank | Function | Sentence |
---|---|---|---|---|
Elsa Ehrich | Mar. 8, 1914 | Oberaufseherin | Senior Overseer | Death by hanging (carried out, Oct. 26, 1948) |
Friedrich Gebhardt | Feb. 26, 1899 | SS-Unterscharf. | Camp guard | Death by hanging (carried out, Nov. 15, 1948) |
Kurt Möller (Moeller) | Jan. 11, 1918 | SS-Oberscharf. | Squad leader | Death by hanging (carried out, Oct. 6, 1948) |
Jacob Niessner | Jan. 19, 1908 | SS-Schütze | Camp guard | Death by hanging (carried out, Jul. 14, 1948) |
Michael Pelger | Mar. 27, 1908 | SS-Rottenf. | Squad leader | Death by hanging (carried out, Jun. 18, 1948) |
Peter Reiss | Feb. 22, 1901 | SS-Sturmmann | Stormtrooper | Death by hanging (carried out, Jun. 23, 1948) |
Franz Söss (Süss) | Nov. 30, 1912 | SS-Rottenf. | Squad leader | Death by hanging (carried out, Sept. 20, 1949) |
Friedrich Buschbaum | Sept. 14, 1904 | SS-Schütze | Camp guard | Death by hanging (commuted to 15 years imprisonment, rel. May 31, 1956) |
Johann Weiss | Feb. 24, 1915 | SS-Schütze | Camp guard | Death by hanging (commuted to 10 years imprisonment) |
Johann Vormittag | Aug. 5, 1904 | SS-Schütze | Camp guard | life imprisonment (released Mar. 11, 1959) |
Jacob Gemmel | May 27, 1913 | SS-Schütze | Camp guard | life (commuted to 12 years imprisonment) |
Robert Frick | Oct. 15, 1918 | SS-Unterscharf. | Camp guard | 15 years imprisonment (released May 2, 1956) |
Georg Fleischer | Nov. 24, 1911 | SS-Schütze | Camp guard | 12 years imprisonment (released May 2, 1956) |
Johann Kessler | Feb. 28, 1910 | SS-Sturmmann | Stormtrooper | 12 years imprisonment (died in prison, Feb. 25, 1951) |
Hans Kottre (Kotre) | Aug. 22, 1912 | SS-Sturmmann | Stormtrooper | 12 years imprisonment (released May 9, 1956) |
Andreas Lahner | Dec. 10, 1921 | SS-Sturmmann | Stormtrooper | 12 years imprisonment (released May 2, 1956) |
Georg Neu | Aug. 1, 1921 | SS-Schütze | Camp guard | 12 years imprisonment (released May 9, 1956) |
Franz Wirth | Nov. 8, 1909 | SS-Rottenf. | Camp guard | 12 years imprisonment |
Andreas Buttinger | May 29, 1910 | SS-Schütze | Camp guard | 10 years imprisonment (died in prison, Apr. 26, 1949) |
Jacob Jost | Oct. 6, 1895 | SS-Oberscharf. | Camp guard | 10 years imprisonment (released Apr. 30, 1956) |
Martin Löx | Feb. 7, 1908 | SS-Rottenf. | Camp guard | 10 years imprisonment (died in prison, Jun. 26, 1949) |
Kasper Marksteiner | Nov. 1, 1913 | SS-Sturmmann | Camp guard | 10 years imprisonment (died in prison, Jun. 20, 1949) |
Hans Aufmuth | Jan. 18, 1905 | SS-Schütze | Camp guard | 8 years imprisonment (released Mar. 17, 1954) |
Johann Betz | Dec. 18, 1906 | SS-Sturmmann | Camp guard | 8 years imprisonment (released Jul. 3, 1955) |
Anton Hoffmann | Sept. 17, 1910 | SS-Sturmmann | Camp guard | 8 years imprisonment (released Dec. 17, 1954) |
Johann Radler | Sept. 9, 1909 | SS-Schütze | Camp guard | 8 years imprisonment (released Mar. 1, 1955) |
Thomas Radrich | Oct. 19, 1912 | SS-Rottenf. | Camp guard | 8 years imprisonment |
Johann Setz | Jun. 26, 1907 | SS-Sturmman | Camp guard | 8 years imprisonment (extradited to Germany, Feb. 28, 1955) |
Michael Bertl | Jun. 23, 1909 | SS-Sturmmann | Camp guard | 7 years imprisonment (released Jul. 15, 1954) |
Paul Keller | Oct. 16, 1910 | SS-Sturmmann | Camp guard | 7 years imprisonment (released Jul. 15, 1954) |
Karl Müller | Mar. 10, 1907 | SS-Sturmmann | Block leader | 7 years imprisonment |
Walter Biernat | Mar. 28, 1920 | SS-Rottenf. | Camp guard | 6 years imprisonment (died in prison, Feb. 6, 1952) |
Josef Hartmann | Mar. 22, 1918 | SS-Sturmmann | Camp guard | 6 years imprisonment (released Jan. 5, 1954) |
Hans Georg Hess | Jun. 17, 1910 | SS-Rottenf. | Camp guard | 6 years imprisonment |
Heinrich Kühn | Dec. 16, 1909 | SS-Sturmmann | Guard (Auschwitz) | 6 years imprisonment (died in prison, Apr. 16, 1951) |
Franz Vormittag | Jan. 23, 1920 | SS-Sturmmann | Camp guard | 6 years imprisonment |
Helmut Zach | Aug. 19, 1909 | SS-Unterscharf. | Camp guard | 6 years imprisonment |
Jacob Dialler | Dec. 8, 1913 | SS-Sturmmann | Camp guard | 5 years imprisonment (released Dec. 23, 1951) |
Hans Durst | Nov. 23, 1909 | SS-Rottenf. | Camp guard | 5 years imprisonment |
Franz Kaufmann | Jul. 23, 1908 | SS-Unterscharf. | Camp guard | 5 years imprisonment |
Paul Kiss | Jul. 13, 1902 | SS-Sturmmann | Camp guard | 5 years imprisonment (died Apr. 26, 1950) |
Johann Kubasak | Dec. 31, 1909 | SS-Rottenf. | Camp guard | 5 years imprisonment |
Johann Lassner | Jul. 26, 1909 | SS-Schütze | Camp guard | 5 years imprisonment |
Johann Lienert | Aug. 5, 1915 | SS-Sturmmann | Camp guard | 5 years imprisonment (died Jun. 16, 1949) |
Stefan Mantsch | Sept. 24, 1922 | SS-Schütze | Camp guard | 5 years imprisonment (released Apr. 12, 1951) |
Hans Merle | May 15, 1914 | SS-Schütze | Camp guard | 5 years imprisonment (released Jan. 2, 1953) |
Kurt Erwin Ohnweiler | Mar. 25, 1913 | SS-Schütze | Camp guard | 5 years imprisonment (released Mar. 1, 1952) |
Michael Thal | Jan. 16, 1910 | SS-Schütze | Camp guard | 5 years imprisonment |
Jacob Vormittag | Mar. 8, 1909 | SS-Sturmman | Camp guard | 5 years imprisonment |
Martin Berger | Jan. 18, 1910 | SS-Rottenf. | Camp guard | 4 years imprisonment (died in prison, Oct. 15, 1948) |
Michael Fleischer | Aug. 18, 1912 | SS-Rottenf. | Camp guard | 4 years imprisonment |
Franz Habel | May 31, 1912 | SS-Rottenf. | Camp guard | 4 years imprisonment |
Karl Brückner | May 5, 1904 | SS-Unterscharf. | Camp guard | 4 years imprisonment (released Feb. 28, 1951) |
Josef Janowitsch | Aug. 22, 1910 | SS-Sturmmann | Camp guard | 4 years imprisonment |
Johann Günesch | May 17, 1913 | SS-Schütze | Camp guard | 3.5 years imprisonment (extradited to Germany, Feb. 9, 1951) |
Fritz Frischolz | Oct. 5, 1911 | SS-Oberscharf. | Camp guard | 8 years imprisonment (released Mar. 10, 1955) |
Michael Gall | Jul. 22, 1902 | SS-Schütze | Camp guard | 3 years imprisonment (extradited to Germany, Jan. 15, 1951) |
Hans Grabert | May 31, 1907 | SS-Oberscharf | Administration | 3 years imprisonment (extradited to Germany, Jun. 16, 1950) |
Stefan Mantsch | Sept. 24, 1922 | SS-Schütze | Camp guard | 3 years imprisonment (released Apr. 12, 1951) |
Josef Moos | Jan. 24, 1904 | SS-Rottenf. | Infirmary (selections) | 3 years imprisonment (died in prison, Apr. 20, 1950) |
Konrad Anacker | Feb. 13, 1892 | SS-Schütze | Camp guard | 3 years imprisonment (released Jun. 26, 1950) |
Wilhelm Reinartz | Mar. 17, 1910 | SS-Unterscharf. | Infirmary | 2 years imprisonment |
Wilhelm Petrak | Feb. 14, 1909 | SS-Sturmmann | Camp guard | 8 years (died Jul. 28, 1948 of disease after 2 years) |
At the Third Majdanek Trial, held between November 26, 1975, and June 30, 1981, before a West German Court at Düsseldorf, sixteen defendants were arraigned. Five were cleared of all charges, two released due to ill health, one died of old age, and eight were found guilty. They were sentenced to 3 to 12 years imprisonment. [17] The 3rd Majdanek trial was preceded by the Treblinka Trials also at Düsseldorf in 1964 and 1970. [18] The Majdanek trial lasted for six years, and concluded on June 30, 1981. There were insufficient grounds to lay charges against other suspects according to the prosecution (many of the key witnesses having died). [5] [19]
Notably, the camp deputy commandant, Arnold Strippel, implicated in the torture and killing of many dozens of prisoners (including 42 Soviet POWs in July 1942), received a nominal 3+1⁄2-year sentence. He also received 121,500-Deutsche Mark reimbursement for the loss of earnings and his social security contributions, which he used to purchase a condominium in Frankfurt, which he occupied until his death. [20]
Defendant | Born | Rank | Function | Sentence |
---|---|---|---|---|
Alice Orlowski | Sept. 30, 1903 | SS Aufseherin | Camp overseer | died of old age during the trial |
Hermine Braunsteiner | Jul. 16, 1919 | Rapportführerin | Female camp deputy | life imprisonment |
Hildegard Lachert | Mar. 19, 1920 | Aufseherin | Camp overseer | 12 years imprisonment |
Hermann Hackmann | Nov. 11, 1913 | SS-Hauptst. | Camp commandant | 10 years imprisonment |
Emil Laurich | May 21, 1921 | SS-Rottenf. | Ideology | 8 years imprisonment |
Heinz Villain | Feb. 1, 1921 | SS-Unterscharf. | Field commandant | 6 years imprisonment |
Fritz-Heinrich Petrick | Jan. 22, 1913 | SS-Oberscharf. | Camp guard | 4 years imprisonment |
Arnold Strippel | Jun. 2, 1911 | SS-Obersturm. | Camp director | 3.5 years imprisonment |
Thomas Ellwanger | Mar. 3, 1917 | SS-Unterscharf. | Camp guard | 3 years imprisonment |
Wilhelm Reinartz | Mar. 17, 1910 | SS-Unterscharf. | Infirmary (selections) | released due to illness |
Joanna (Johanna) Zelle | SS-Gefolge | Camp guard | released due to illness | |
Heinrich Schmidt | Mar. 27, 1912 | SS-Hauptsturmf. | Medic (selections) | acquitted and released |
Charlotte Mayer | Feb. 7, 1918 | Maintenance | acquitted and released | |
Rosy Suess or (Rosa) Süss | Sept. 16, 1920 | Maintenance | acquitted and released | |
Heinrich Groffmann | SS-Rottenf. | Field commandant | acquitted and released | |
Hermine Boettcher-Brueckner | Apr. 26, 1918 | Maintenance | acquitted and released | |
In 1989 Karl-Friedrich Höcker was tried and sentenced for his actions in Majdanek.
Media related to KZ Majdanek at Wikimedia Commons
Media related to Majdanek concentration camp at Wikimedia Commons
Nazi Germany used six extermination camps, also called death camps, or killing centers, in Central Europe during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million people – mostly Jews – in the Holocaust. The victims of death camps were primarily murdered by gassing, either in permanent installations constructed for this specific purpose, or by means of gas vans. The six extermination camps were Chełmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Extermination through labour was also used at the Auschwitz and Majdanek death camps.
Treblinka was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, 4 km (2.5 mi) south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The camp operated between 23 July 1942 and 19 October 1943 as part of Operation Reinhard, the deadliest phase of the Final Solution. During this time, it is estimated that between 700,000 and 900,000 Jews were murdered in its gas chambers, along with 2,000 Romani people. More Jews were murdered at Treblinka than at any other Nazi extermination camp apart from Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Belzec was a Nazi German extermination camp built by the SS for the purpose of implementing the secretive Operation Reinhard, the plan to murder all Polish Jews, a major part of the "Final Solution" which in total entailed the murder of about 6 million Jews in the Holocaust. The camp operated from 17 March 1942 to the end of June 1943. It was situated about 500 m (1,600 ft) south of the local railroad station of Bełżec, in the new Lublin District of the General Government territory of German-occupied Poland. The burning of exhumed corpses on five open-air grids and bone crushing continued until March 1943.
Operation Reinhard or Operation Reinhardt was the codename of the secret German plan in World War II to exterminate Polish Jews in the General Government district of German-occupied Poland. This deadliest phase of the Holocaust was marked by the introduction of extermination camps.
Majdanek was a Nazi concentration and extermination camp built and operated by the SS on the outskirts of the city of Lublin during the German occupation of Poland in World War II. It had seven gas chambers, two wooden gallows, and some 227 structures in all, placing it among the largest of Nazi concentration camps. Although initially intended for forced labor rather than extermination, the camp was used to murder people on an industrial scale during Operation Reinhard, the German plan to murder all Polish Jews within their own occupied homeland. The camp, which operated from 1 October 1941 to 22 July 1944, was captured nearly intact. The rapid advance of the Soviet Red Army during Operation Bagration prevented the SS from destroying most of the camp's infrastructure, and Deputy Camp Commandant Anton Thernes failed to remove most incriminating evidence of war crimes.
Trawniki is a village in Świdnik County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. It is the seat of the present-day gmina called Gmina Trawniki. It lies approximately 24 kilometres (15 mi) south-east of Świdnik and 33 km (21 mi) south-east of the regional capital Lublin.
Sonderaktion1005, also called Aktion1005 or Enterdungsaktion, was a top-secret Nazi operation conducted from June 1942 to late 1944. The goal of the project was to hide or destroy any evidence of the mass murder that had taken place under Operation Reinhard, the attempted extermination of all Jews in the General Government occupied zone of Poland. Groups of Sonderkommando prisoners, officially called Leichenkommandos, were forced to exhume mass graves and burn the bodies; inmates were often put in chains to prevent them from escaping.
The Holocaust in Poland was part of the European-wide Holocaust organized by Nazi Germany and took place in German-occupied Poland. During the genocide, three million Polish Jews were murdered, half of all Jews murdered during the Holocaust.
The two Treblinka trials concerning the Treblinka extermination camp personnel began in 1964. Held at Düsseldorf in West Germany, they were the two judicial trials in a series of similar war crime trials held during the early 1960s, such as the Jerusalem Adolf Eichmann trial (1961) and the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials (1963–65), as a result of which the general public came to realize the extent of the crimes that some two decades earlier had been perpetrated in occupied Poland by German bureaucrats and their willing executioners. In the subsequent years, separate trials dealt with personnel of the Bełżec (1963–65), Sobibor (1966), and Majdanek (1975–81) extermination camps.
The Sobibor trial was a 1965–66 judicial trial in the West German prosecution of SS officers who had worked at Sobibor extermination camp; it was held in Hagen. It was one of a series of similar war crime trials held during the early and mid-1960s, such as the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann by Israel in Jerusalem, and the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials of 1963–65, also held in West Germany. These trials heightened general public and international understanding of the extent of the crimes that had been perpetrated in occupied Poland some twenty years earlier by Nazi bureaucrats and persons acting as their executioners.
The Belzec trial in the mid-1960s was a war crimes trial of eight former SS members of Bełżec extermination camp. The trial was held at the 1st Munich District Court and should be seen in the context of the Sobibor trial, which followed the Belzec trial, because five of the defendants were accused in both trials. In addition, the Belzec and Sobibor trials, along with the Treblinka trials, form a body of evidence of the crimes of mass extermination as part of the so-called Action Reinhardt programme - the killing of over two million Jews and 50,000 Roma and Sinti. These trials are directly related to the mass murder of 100,000 people in the official Nazi Euthanasia programme known after the war as Action T4, as many of the security guards worked in the euthanasia centres before transferring to the extermination camps. The first Euthanasia trials were carried out shortly after the war.
Else Lieschen Frida "Elsa" Ehrich was a convicted war criminal who served as an Schutzstaffel (SS) guard in Nazi concentration camps, including at Kraków-Płaszów and the Majdanek concentration camp during World War II. She was tried in Lublin, Poland at the Majdanek Trials and sentenced to death for war crimes. Ehrich was hanged on 26 October 1948.
Anton Thernes was a Nazi German war criminal, deputy commandant of administration at the notorious Majdanek concentration camp on the outskirts of Lublin, Poland in World War II. He was tried at the Majdanek Trials and executed on 3 December 1944, along with five other war criminals, near the gas chambers and the Majdanek crematorium.
SS-HauptsturmführerWilhelm Gerstenmeier was a German member of the SS during World War II. He was convicted of atrocities committed at the Majdanek concentration camp in occupied Poland and hanged for war crimes on the grounds of the camp in 1944.
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