Belsen Trials
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The Belsen trials were a series of several trials that the Allied occupation forces conducted against former officials and functionaries of
Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...
after the end of
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
. British Army and civilian personnel ran the trials and staffed the prosecution and judges. The Belsen trials took place in
Lüneburg Lüneburg, officially the Hanseatic City of Lüneburg and also known in English as Lunenburg, is a town in the German Bundesland (Germany), state of Lower Saxony. It is located about southeast of another Hanseatic League, Hanseatic city, Hambur ...
,
Lower Saxony Lower Saxony is a States of Germany, German state (') in Northern Germany, northwestern Germany. It is the second-largest state by land area, with , and fourth-largest in population (8 million in 2021) among the 16 ' of the Germany, Federal Re ...
,
Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
, in 1945 and the defendants were men and women of the ''
Schutzstaffel The ''Schutzstaffel'' (; ; SS; also stylised with SS runes as ''ᛋᛋ'') was a major paramilitary organisation under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II. It beg ...
'' as well as prisoner functionaries who had worked at various concentration camps, notably Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. The first 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.


First trial

Officially called the "Trial of
Josef Kramer Josef Kramer (10 November 1906 – 13 December 1945) was a in the SS and the Commandant of Auschwitz-Birkenau (from 8 May 1944 to 25 November 1944) and Bergen Belsen (from December 1944 to its liberation on 15 April 1945) concentration camps. ...
and 44 others", the trial began in a
Lüneburg Lüneburg, officially the Hanseatic City of Lüneburg and also known in English as Lunenburg, is a town in the German Bundesland (Germany), state of Lower Saxony. It is located about southeast of another Hanseatic League, Hanseatic city, Hambur ...
gymnasium on 17 September 1945, within the British occupation zone. The defendants were 45 former SS men, women and ''
kapo A kapo was a type of prisoner functionary () at a Nazi concentration or extermination camp. They were, whether voluntary or coerced, collaborators who worked under the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) to carry out administrative tasks or supervise th ...
s'' (
prisoner functionaries In Nazi concentration and labor camps the system of Funktionshäftlinge (singular: Funktionshäftling), or prisoner functionaries was developed. These were the prisoners with certain duties of supervision of over fellow prisoners assisting the ca ...
) from the
Bergen-Belsen Bergen-Belsen (), or Belsen, was a Nazi concentration camp in what is today Lower Saxony in Northern Germany, northern Germany, southwest of the town of Bergen, Lower Saxony, Bergen near Celle. Originally established as a prisoner of war camp, ...
and
Auschwitz concentration camp Auschwitz, or Oświęcim, was a complex of over 40 Nazi concentration camps, concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) d ...
s.
Josef Kramer Josef Kramer (10 November 1906 – 13 December 1945) was a in the SS and the Commandant of Auschwitz-Birkenau (from 8 May 1944 to 25 November 1944) and Bergen Belsen (from December 1944 to its liberation on 15 April 1945) concentration camps. ...
had been camp commandant at Bergen-Belsen and before that at Auschwitz. Of the other defendants, 12 were kapos, 16 female SS members and 16 male SS members. Although the SS was an all-male organisation, women were able to enlist as members of the '' SS-Gefolge'', a form of civilian employee. One prisoner functionary, Ladisław Gura, who was also an SS member under arrest, was found to be too ill to stand trial after the trial had started. Three others had been excluded from the list of indicted for the same reason before the trial began. Three SS members had been shot trying to escape after the British took over the camp and one had committed suicide. Out of a total of 77 SS men and women arrested by the British in April, another 17 had died of typhus by 1 June 1945. Next to Kramer, the most high-profile defendants were
Fritz Klein Fritz Klein (24 November 1888 – 13 December 1945) was a Romanian-German Nazi doctor and war criminal, hanged for his role in atrocities at Auschwitz concentration camp and Bergen-Belsen concentration camp during the Holocaust. Early life, ...
, who had been camp doctor at Belsen, and Franz Hössler, deputy camp commandant. Elisabeth Volkenrath had been ''Oberaufseherin'' (head warden or supervising wardress) at Auschwitz before she came to Belsen. Many of the defendants had arrived in Bergen-Belsen only after February 1945, some as late as two days before liberation. However, most had been active in similar functions in other concentration camps before that. The trial took place before a
British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. * British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...
military tribunal. The judges were Major-General H.M.P. Berney-Ficklin (presiding), Brigadier A. de L. Casonove, Colonel G.J. Richards, Lt.-Colonel R.B. Moriush and Lt.-Colonel R. McLay. C.L. Stirling was Judge Advocate. Colonel T.M. Backhouse, Major H.G. Murton-Neale, Capt. S.M. Stewart and Lt.-Col. L.J. Genn were Counsel for the Prosecution. Counsel for the Defence were also members of the British Army — in the case of the five Polish defendants a Polish officer, Lt. Jedrezejowicz. As this was a military court, it was legally based on the ''Regulations for the Trial of War Criminals made under Royal Warrant'' of 14 June 1945. All the charges related to international law, which applied at the time the crimes were committed, so this was not a case of retroactive justice. Due to the nature of the court, the only charges that could be brought were war crimes and crimes against citizens of the Allied countries. "Crimes against humanity" and "crimes against peace", which featured in the later trials at Nuremberg, were not among the charges at Lüneburg.


Charges

The official charges were grouped into crimes committed at Auschwitz and Belsen and were as follows:
At Bergen-Belsen, Germany, between 1st October, 1942, and 30th April, 1945, when members of the staff of Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp responsible for the well-being of the persons interned there, in violation of the law and usages of war, were together concerned as parties to the ill-treatment of certain of such persons, causing the deaths of Keith Meyer (a British national), Anna Kis, Sara Kohn (both Hungarian nationals), Heimech Glinovjechy and Maria Konatkevicz (both Polish nationals) and Marcel Freson de Montigny (a French national), Maurice Van Eijnsbergen (a Dutch national), Maurice Van Mevlenaar (a Belgian national), Jan Markowski and Georgej Ferenz (both Polish nationals), Salvatore Verdura (an Italian national), and Therese Klee (a British national of Honduras), Allied nationals, and other Allied nationals whose names are unknown, and physical suffering to other persons interned there, Allied nationals and particularly to Harold Osmund le Druillenec (a British national), Benec Zuchermann, a female internee surnamed Korperova, a female internee named Hoffmann, Luba Rormann, Isa Frydmann (all Polish nationals) and Alexandra Siwidowa, a Russian national and other Allied nationals whose names are unknown.
and
...at Auschwitz, Poland, between 1st October, 1942, and 30th April, 1945, when members of the staff of Auschwitz Concentration Camp responsible for the well-being of the persons interned there, in violation of the law and usages of war, were together concerned as parties to ill-treatment of certain of such persons, causing the deaths of Rachella Silberstein (a Polish national), Allied nationals, and other Allied nationals whose names are unknown, and physical suffering to other persons interned there, Allied nationals, and particularly to Ewa Gryka and Hanka Rosenwayg (both Polish nationals) and other Allied nationals whose names are unknown.
All of the defendants pleaded not guilty.


Overview of the trial

The trial lasted 54 days in court. It began on 17 September with the indictment and the opening speech for the prosecution. Brigadier Glyn Hughes was the first witness for the prosecution on 18–19 September. On 20 September, the British Army screened a film they had made of the conditions at Belsen immediately after liberation. On 21 September, the court visited Bergen-Belsen. Evidence for the defence began on 8 October with the opening speech for the defendant, Kramer, who also testified. Closing speeches were made from 7–12 November, followed by the closing arguments by the prosecution on 13 November. Sentencing took place four days later, on 17 November 1945. Since the trial was conducted in English, translations into German and Polish were necessary. This was one of the factors which prolonged the trial, which had initially been expected to last for two to four weeks. In retrospect, the prosecution has been criticised as hasty and ill-prepared. None of the SS guards who had fled the camp after the ceasefire on 13 April had been searched for. Instead of eyewitness testimony, in some cases only affidavits were available at the trial. Some witnesses contradicted themselves on cross-examination, while others failed to identify the defendants as the perpetrators of the crimes in question. One former inmate, Oskar Schmitz, was erroneously charged as an SS man, and had no chance to clarify this before the trial began. The defence claimed that the arrest of the defendants had been illegal, as it contravened the promise of free withdrawal contained in the ceasefire agreement. However, the wording on this point was only clear for members of the Wehrmacht at Belsen. Moreover, according to the prosecution, the burning of the camp files by the SS and the firing of shots on 15 April had voided the agreement. In fact, the relevant section of the ceasefire agreement read:
SS guard personnel ..will be treated as PW. SS Adj personnel will ..remain at their posts and carry on with their duties (cooking, supplies, etc) and will hand over records. When their services can be dispensed with, their disposal is left by the Wehrmacht to the British authorities.
On 17 November, the court sentenced 11 of the defendants to death by hanging. Another 18 were found guilty and sentenced to prison sentences of one to 15 years. One defendant,
Erich Zoddel Erich Zoddel (9 August 1913 – 30 November 1945) was a prisoner functionary at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. In 1941, Zoddel was sentenced to a year in prison for theft before being transferred to Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1942 ...
, was sentenced to life in prison, but was then executed 13 days later. Zoddel had been sentenced to death in a separate military trial in August 1945 for murdering a female prisoner after the liberation. None of the sentenced were only found guilty of the "conspiracy" of working within the concentration camp system, but rather all of them were sentenced for individually committed crimes. 14 defendants were acquitted (the final defendant was too sick to stand trial). Due to clemency pleas and appeals, many prison sentences were eventually shortened considerably. By mid-1955, all those sentenced to prison had been released.


Individual defendants and sentences

List of SS-defendants (A=guilty of crimes at Auschwitz, B = guilty of crimes at Bergen-Belsen) Not able to stand trial due to illness: Nikolaus Jänner, Paul Steinmetz, Walter Melcher, Ladisław Gura (who was both an SS member and a prison functionary). List of Kapos (A=guilty of crimes at Auschwitz, B = guilty of crimes at Bergen-Belsen)


Public reaction

The Belsen Trial attracted substantial national and international media interest. Significantly, more than 100 representatives of the news media reported at length on the trial's progress. Through them, the world learned not just about the thousands of deaths by hunger and disease at Belsen, communicated especially forcefully by the film and photo evidence produced by the British Army. Possibly even more importantly, the Belsen trial also was the first time that the organised mass murder at Auschwitz Birkenau received a public airing, with some of those responsible describing the selection process, the use of the gas chambers and the crematoria. In Great Britain, the trial was mostly viewed positively, as a triumph of the rule of law, given the fairness and meticulousness with which it had been conducted. However, in some other countries, notably the Soviet Union and France, the verdicts were criticised as too mild. Many survivors also felt this way.


Executions

All the executions were carried out on 13 December 1945 by hanging at
Hamelin Prison Hamelin Prison, also known as the ''Stockhof'', was a prison and penitentiary in Hamelin. The penal institution, which had a predecessor since 1698, existed from 1827 to 1980. It was located between the old town and the river Weser. After the Seco ...
. The executioner was
Albert Pierrepoint Albert Pierrepoint ( ; 30 March 1905 – 10 July 1992) was an English Executioner, hangman who executed between 435 and 600 people in a 25-year career that ended in 1956. His father Henry Pierrepoint, Henry and uncle Thomas Pierrepoint, Th ...
, aided by an assistant.


Second trial

A second Belsen trial was conducted at Lüneburg from 13 to 18 June 1946 by a British military tribunal.


Third trial

The British held a third Belsen trial in April 1948. There was only one defendant, Ernst Julius Curt Meyer. Meyer had been arrested in May 1945, but was erroneously released in September 1947. He was re-arrested in February 1948. Meyer was found guilty of war crimes for non-fatal abuse and sentenced to life in prison. His sentence was reduced to 21 years in 1950, and he was released from prison on 24 December 1954.


See also

*
Allied Control Council The Allied Control Council (ACC) or Allied Control Authority (), also referred to as the Four Powers (), was the governing body of the Allies of World War II, Allied Allied-occupied Germany, occupation zones in Germany (1945–1949/1991) and Al ...
* Subsequent Nuremberg Trials


References

{{Authority control 1945 in Germany 1940s trials Holocaust trials