Organizational Structure
Einsatzgruppe D
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Copyright. Carmelo Lisciotto 2009 H.E.A.R.T
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| 1944 labor report from the Monowitz camp 300 X 429 26 KB |
A chemistry laboratory in the Buna synthetic-rubber works in the Buna-Monowitz camp. Poland, between 1941 and January 1945 480 X 351 38 KB |
Aerial view of bomb-damaged blds. at the I.G. Farben industrial plant after Allied air attack on the devastated city. 594 X 408 77 KB |
An aerial reconnaissance photograph showing Auschwitz III (Monowitz) and a part of the IG Farben Buna complex 367 X 370 44 KB |
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| August von Knieriem (standing) pleads not guilty on August 14, 1947 340 X 264 24 KB |
Blueprint of the Birkenau camp October 1941 766 X 561 103 KB |
British Prisoners of War as Witnesses in the I.G. Farben Trial 340 X 274 24 KB |
Construction of the BUNA plant 800 X 527 123 KB |
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| Ding – Schuler was head of the typhoid fever research department in Buchenwald. He carried out experiments for the IG Farben concern. 768 X 610 101 KB |
Distant view of the Monowitz Camp 794 X 524 109 KB |
Dock in the I.G. Farben Trial in Nuremberg 418 X 336 32 KB |
Dr. Boettcher, Carl Krauch’s defense counsel in the I.G. Farben Trial at Nuremberg 414 X 336 29 KB |
See the full Gallery here: www.holocaustresearchproject.org/economics/igfarbengal/index.html
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Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2011
An Account Before the American House Committee on Foreign Affairs in 1945
[Photos added to enhance the text]
Cover to the hearing report entitled “Punishment of war criminals” |
In June 1942 placards bearing the following notice were posted on the walls of Warsaw, “Persons not employed in a German firm or the Jewish Community Administration are subject to immediate deportation from the ghetto, the able-bodied will be given employment.”
About the place of deportation nothing was known except that it was in the East. Next to the new posters there immediately appeared “Help Wanted” advertisements of German firms
The factories, stores, and workshops owned by the Jews had been turned over to German administrators, thus a great number of new German firms had been created. People paid fantastic sums (from five to twenty thousand zlotys, $1,000 to $4,000 per person) to find employment in a German firm and thus escape deportation. Those who still had anything to sell converted it into cash, but those that had no funds were doomed.
The day after this announcement it became known that Engineer Czerniakow, President of the Jewish Community had committed suicide. This report spread panic among the inhabitants of the ghetto. They knew that the German order concerning deportation had caused his suicide, but it was not clear why, all kinds of conjecture were advanced in explanation, but although the event boded no good, not even the worst pessimists had any idea what was really in store for the Polish Jews.
Next day the ghetto was surrounded by patrols posted at short intervals, these prevented anyone from leaving or entering the ghetto, even Gentiles who possessed special passes entitling them to circulate freely in the Jewish Quarter.
The ghetto now became a real inferno, processions of carts loaded with little children from orphanages and charity homes passed along the streets. These frightening and trembling mites were being deported, they did not know that never again would they see the city where they had been born and brought up.
Behind the children’s carts walked inmates from old people’s homes, aged men and women tottering on their feet, who were forbidden to end their lives in their own city. The Elite Guards escorted the processions. Then the Germans began to check the documents of the remaining inhabitants.
Soldiers swarmed everywhere in the streets and houses, they searched cellars and attics and asked everyone to show his identification papers. Those who could not prove that they were employed in a German firm were taken to the square where the deportees were rounded up.
These manhunts resulted in many victims, the slightest gesture of disobedience, the slightest hesitation before showing one’s paper’s, a smile the Germans did not find sufficiently pleasant, meant death on the spot. People were killed in their homes, in their courtyards, in the streets. In the end many preferred being deported to having their papers checked.
The deportees were crowded into trains, at first at the rate of six to eight thousand a day – subsequently the average daily contingent was 20,000. Several weeks later it became known that the Germans had murdered all the old people and children and that the able-bodied had allegedly been taken deep into Russia.
The news of the murder of the old folks and children aroused those who remained to desperate thoughts about counter-measures. When the Germans realised this, they forced the deportees to send letters to their families informing them that they were alive and that all was well with them.
1947 committee examines the Treblinka camp, Rajzman in the hat (third from left) |
The purpose of these letters which the Nazis frightened the deportees into writing before killing them, was to prevent further rumours, under the threat of death people wrote to relatives whom they were never to see again. This even took place on the square where the victims were gathered.
In the terrible ordeal of the ghetto, children were taken from their mothers, people were beaten and murdered for no reason at all, those who ventured into the streets did not return.
By September, only 150,000 Jews of the original 600,000 remained in the Jewish community. However, it was impossible to obtain exact information on their condition because the ghetto was deserted; the employees of the German firms were now its only inhabitants
After a short respite, on September 7 1942, if I remember correctly new placards announced that all the remaining inhabitants of the ghetto must report to the assembly place of Mila, Nizka and Dzika Streets at 8am to have their identification papers checked
The horrible scene presented by this migration of 150,000 people with bundles on their backs can be imagined. Crowds of Jews filled the narrow streets within a few hours.
At exactly 8am cordons of troops barred all the exits to the above-named streets, those who were found in the ghetto beyond these streets were shot on the spot.
Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/trials/rajzmantestimony.html
The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team
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Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2011
Learn the fate of the Jews of the Lubartow Ghetto!
Lubartow Ghetto
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Lubartow is located 30 kilometres north of Lublin, Southern Poland, a Jewish community had existed in the town since the 16th Century. Most of the Jews lived in the centre of the town, where they came to dominate local trade and craft. Before the outbreak of the Second World War the Jews owned the majority of the 130 shops in Lubartow, the Jewish community supported three synagogues and two cemeteries.
The old cemetery was located in the centre of the town but was not used after the 19th Century. The new cemetery was in a suburb of the town. The Jewish population in Lubartow was typical compared with other provincial towns within the Lublin region. Most of the Jews were both Orthodox and conservative, and it was only the younger generation who were active in modern Jewish political and cultural life.
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Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ghettos/lubartow.html
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Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2011
Trial Decision
[photos added to enhance the text]
Landgericht – Schwurgericht -Mosbach (Baden)
The following took part in the session of the court on 24th April 1961.
The accused Franz Josef Müller born in 1910 in Mossbach is sentenced to prison on the following charges:
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Murder in 22 cases
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Incitement to murder in 58 cases
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Accessory to murder in 5 cases
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Manslaughter in 4 cases
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He is found not guilty of murder in the cases 5, 8 13 and 18 of the opening judgement. The accused loses his civil rights for life. The accused is to bear the cost of the case insofar as he has been condemned: the rest is for the account of the state.
Grounds
The accused Franz Josef Müller was born in 1910 in Mosbach at the 18th of 19 children of the deceased David Müller and Rosa nee Hempfling. He grew up in his parents’ house and attended school in his native town 1917- 1925. He was an average pupil. He left from the 8th year without having had to repeat any year.
He was apprenticed as a bookbinder and picture framer at the firm of Bosch in Mosbach. Late in 1928 he made his journeyman –piece and with intervals determined by periods of unemployment, worked for his apprentice master until 1939. Because he was without work, he was a volunteer from late 1933 until spring 1934 with the Reichsarbeitsdienst. After that he was again unemployed. From 1.6.1935 until March 1936 he was a guard in the bookbinder workshop of the prison in Schwabisch Hall.
He was sacked without notice because according to his information he was supposed to have had a wooden cupboard made by a prisoner and had given the prisoner a small pack of snuff for it. As he was now once more unemployed, and because he hoped to get work through it, he joined the general SS in 1936. A short time later he got a job at the head office of the SS-Standarte in Heidelberg.
His activity was exclusively concerned with internal organisation – filing, messages and the like, he received at that time RM95 per month according to his information. The accused married Rosa Krauss on 22 March 1937. There were two children of this marriage born on 11.10.1937 and 5.2.1940.
At the beginning of September 1939 the accused was moved to Waffen-SS (SS Division North) at Danzig. After he had attended a course at the school for non-commissioned officers in Breslau from December 1939 to February 1940, he came back to his Truppenteil as SS-Unterscharfuhrer.
At the beginning of April 1940 he was sent with his unit to Norway. In the spring of 1941 he came to the Arctic Ocean from south Norway with his division and into action after the beginning of the war with Russia. According to his – rather varying – information he was wounded in September 1941 (shot in the leg, bayonet wound in the leg, hit on the head with the stock of a gun) and came back to Germany via a Finnish field hospital.
The accused who at the time is supposed to have been described as g/h, was ordered in December 1941 from his unit in Wehlau, near Konigsberg to be sent to the Hoheren SS und Polizeifuhrer in Krakau, SS- Obergruppenfuhrer Kruger. Kruger commanded the police and SS in the districts of Krakau, Lemberg and Warschau. The accused was sent by Kruger to the SS and police officer of the Krakau district, SS and police officer Scherner.
There he was first of all employed for internal services, he had however, to be present as personal guard for Sturmbannfuhrer Fellenz of Scherner’s staff on at least 5 so-called deportations of Jews which there were many shootings and many cruelties. He had in the meantime come to know Scherner who was filled with an implacable hatred against Jews and a determination to exterminate them.
In June 1942 he was charged by Scherner with the responsibility for the Jewish work camps which had hitherto come under NSDAP – Plaszow (Julag I), Prokoczim (Julag II) and Bieszanow (Julag III).
The accused was replaced as head of the camps in October or November 1943, he went to action at the front with the SS division “Galizien” after he according to his own information, had been ill until mid-January with a nervous breakdown, and he is supposed to have been condemned to “6 weeks action at the front on approval” because of favouring Jews.
He became a Russian prisoner of war at Lublinca on 5.3. 1944, he was in various prisoner of war camps in Nowosbirsk, Moskau and Stalinowgorsk. According to information from a note of 10.8 from UDSSR in the Federal Republic of Germany he was condemned in 1949 – according to information from the accused on 25.12.1949 to 25 years forced labour, “because of crimes against the Soviet peoples during the war with fascist Germany.”
He was then released from imprisonment on 14.10.1955 and returned to Germany. Since then and until his arrest on 8.1.1960 he has lived with his family in Limbach, Kreis Mosbach where he worked at his trade in the lamp factory Badenia. He has been on remand since 9.1.1960. According to the record the accused has no previous convictions. These details are based, unless otherwise indicated, on admissions by the accused.
II
The inmates of the three abovementioned camps were Polish Jews. They were employed in German companies engaged on railway works near Krakau. They had to begin with, a certain liberty, according to the accused however, they had to be in the camp exclusively, outside working hours.
There was at first only basic fencing, which was made stronger and higher and later on watchtowers were built. The inmates of the camp were accommodated in the most primitive fashion in barracks. They were short of clothes, shoes, beds and sanitary arrangements.
The provisions were very bad and insufficient. According to the accused he had nevertheless allowed the inmates of the camp to buy or barter foodstuffs from outside the camp. The Jews in the camp had a type of self-administration which was carried out through so-called Jewish counsellors (Judenrate) they were helped by the Jewish Ordnungsdienst also called camp police.
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The members of this Ordnungsdienst wore special clothing and were armed with a rubber truncheon. Guarding the inmates of the camp was chiefly done by Ukrainians, Estonians and Letts who were armed with guns and machine guns and reported to the accused. There were no administrative rules for the camp or camp by-laws. The will and conditions of the accused were all that counted in the camp – with the exception of the orders of his superiors – they were highest law. The inmates of the camp were in every respect without protection defence or rights.
Apart from the three aforementioned Jewish work camps there was also from about March 1943 the concentration camp Plaszow, where SS –Untersturmfuhrer Amon Göth was commandant. The accused was in fact involved in part with the construction of this camp by building the barracks, but otherwise had nothing to do with it or its inmates, nor was Göth his direct superior.
These details come principally from the admission of the accused and furthermore from the believable and sworn statements of the witnesses mentioned at IIB in the individual cases.
During the time the accused was commandant of the three Jewish work camps –Plaszow, Prokoczim and Bieszanow he killed Jews or caused their deaths in the following cases:
In camp Plaszow (Julag 1) there was a young Jewish boy of about 15 years by the name of Spievak or Spervak. When he came to the camp he had brought the horse from his father’s farm. The accused had stables built and made Spievak the stable boy, he regarded the horse as his property.
Spievak had permission by the accused according to the latter, to ride the horse. On a no longer ascertainable day in September 1942 the accused wanted after work to drive from the camp Plaszow (Julag 1) to Krakau in his horsecart.
He went to the stables. There he saw Spievak riding the horse and that so hard that it was sweating a lot. He was furious and shouted, “What have you done with my horse, tore Spievak down from the horse, shot him with his pistol in the neck, dragged him behind and aimed a further shot at him. Spievak was killed by these two shots.
Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/trials/josefmueller.html
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Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2010
Testimony about Treblinka at the Eichmann Trial 1961
(Selected Extracts)
Jankiel Wiernik arrived in Treblinka death camp on the 23 August 1942 and he escaped during the revolt on the 2 August 1943.
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Jankiel Wiernik was a master builder and he along with others built many of the structures in Treblinka, which he described at the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem in 1961:
“When I came there, there were only three gas chambers. The large kitchen was not there yet. I constructed various barracks, I built the guardroom. I built the door, the entrance gate.”
He described the arrival process:
“This is where they remained standing. In the courtyard, there were the two large barracks. They brought the women in to the left, and the men were kept outside. They made the women remove all their clothes.
The men remained standing outside. On either side, there were two large written notices to the effect that money and valuables had to be handed over, and whoever failed to do so would be put to death.
The women’s hair was cut off. At the end, a small area was fenced off their hair was cut off and then they were taken to the gas chambers.
Here (points to it) was a building with three gas chambers, in the large building there were ten gas chambers. The doors were closed and it lasted some forty to forty-five minutes.
Yankiel Wiernik was asked more questions about the layout of Treblinka:
“There were the ten gas chambers which they built when I was there, and these were the three gas chambers. The machines stood at the edge.
That was the front, the side where people entered. The Shield of David was made the metal workers of the first camp.
Wiernik was asked how the two camps were divided.
“Here was the entrance- here is the first camp (points to it). All this belongs to the first camp. This was the Schlauch (the tube) the path along which people walked.
And here people went through the side, they went into the gas chambers. When the gas chambers were not yet in existence they went in this way (he indicates the spot).
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This is what they called the Lazarett – they used to bring elderly people there, and underneath they put timber. They would seat the people on a bench, the back of their necks facing this way, and shoot them, so they would fall inside.
Here we made an entrance for the members of the SS and all those who were there on behalf of the SS. They made use of the entrance only. Above the gate, there was still a sign, “The Jewish State.”
Yankiel Wiernik recalled the larger gas chambers built in the late summer, early autumn of 1942:
“The gas chambers of the large building were seven by seven. The entire building was thirty –six metres in length and eighteen metres wide.
Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/trials/wierniktestimony.html
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Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2010
SS & Other Nazi Leaders [Quick Facts]
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Heinrich Himmler
Father: Joseph Gebhard Himmler * Fathered two illegitimate children with his then secretary Hedwig Potthast
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Reinhard Heydrich
AKA Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich Born: 7-Mar-1904 Nationality: Germany Military service: German Navy (1922-31) Father: Bruno Heydrich SS-Obergruppenführer, chief of the Reich Security Main Office (which included the Gestapo, SD and Kripo Nazi police agencies) and Reich governor of Bohemia and Moravia. Hitler considered him a possible successor. He was nicknamed “The Butcher of Prague”, “The Blond Beast” and “Der Henker” (German for the hangman). Heydrich was one of the architects of the Holocaust, chairing the 1942 Wannsee conference, which laid out the plans for the extermination of all European Jews. Heydrich was wounded by British-trained Czechoslovak partisans in Prague during an assassination attempt named Operation Anthropoid. He would later die from these wounds.
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Ernst Kaltenbrunner AKA Dr. Ernst Kaltenbrunner Born: 4-Oct-1903 Nationality: German-Austrian Military service: SS
Responsibility for the following crimes was ascribed to him: Mass murders of civilians of occupied countries by Einsatzgruppen. Screening of prisoner of war camps and executing racial and political undesirables. The taking of recaptured prisoners of war to concentration camps, where in some cases they were executed. Establishing concentration camps and committing racial and political undesirables to concentration and annihilation camps for slave labor and mass murder. Deportation of citizens of occupied countries for forced labor and disciplining of forced labor. The execution of captured commandos and paratroopers and protection of civilians who lynched Allied fliers. The taking of civilians of occupied countries to Germany for secret trial and punishment. Punishment of citizens of occupied territories under special criminal procedure and by summary methods. The execution and confinement of people in concentration camps for crimes allegedly committed by their relatives. Seizure and spoliation of public and private property. Murder of prisoners in SIPO and SD prisons. Persecution of Jews. Persecution of the churches. He was found guilty of war-crimes and crimes against humanity and sentenced to death. He was executed at around 1.40 a.m. on October 16, 1946.
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Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/holoprelude/ssleaders.html
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Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2010
Sinti & Roma
The Gypsies
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The Sinti and Roma are nomadic peoples found throughout Europe and the United States. Often both groups are referred to as Roma, collectively, they are popularly referred to as Gypsies. It is derived from “Egypt”, for it is believed that when the Roma first arrived in Europe their relatively dark skins caused many Europeans to believe that they were natives of Egypt.
Linguistic experts compare Gypsy languages to historical languages; they look at words borrowed from other languages and when and where those words originally existed. It is possible to trace Gypsies back to their origin: the Sind area of India (today south central Pakistan — the mouth of the Indus).
Three separate emigrations occurred over the course of about four hundred years, traceable today in three identifiable linguistic populations: the Eastern Gypsy (Domari) in Egypt and the Middle East, the Central Gypsy (Lomavren) in Armenia and eastern Turkey, and the Western Gypsy (Romani) (Romany refers to the people, Romani refers to the language, Rom refers to a man or the people as a whole.
The Sinti and Roma are believed to have left India about 1000 A.D. and to have passed through what is now Afghanistan, Persia, Armenia, and Turkey. People recognizable by other Roma as Roma still live as far east as Iran, including some who made the migration to Europe and returned. It is virtually impossible to identify Roma still living in India. By the 14th century, Roma had reached the Balkans and by the 16th century, Scotland and Sweden. Some Roma migrated south through Syria to North Africa.
For centuries, Sinti and Roma were scorned and persecuted in Europe. Zigeuner, the German word for Gypsy, derives from a Greek root meaning “untouchable.” In the Balkan principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, Gypsies were slaves bought and sold by monasteries and large estate holders (boyars) until 1864, when the newly formed nation of Romania emancipated them.
Many Sinti and Roma traditionally worked as craftsmen, such as blacksmiths, cobblers, tinkers, horse dealers, and toolmakers. Others were performers such as musicians, circus animal trainers, and dancers. By the 1920s, there was also a small, lower-middle class of shopkeepers and some civil servants, such as Sinti employed in the German postal service. The numbers of truly nomadic Gypsies were on the decline in many places by the early 1900s, although so-called sedentary Gypsies often moved seasonally, depending on their occupations.
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In post WWI Germany, persecution of the Sinti and Roma preceded the Nazi regime. Even though Gypsies enjoyed full and equal rights of citizenship under Article 109 of the Weimar Constitution, they were subject to special, discriminatory laws. A Bavarian law of July 16,1926, outlined measures for “Combatting Gypsies,Vagabonds, and the Work Shy” and required the systematic registration of all Sinti and Roma.
The law prohibited Gypsies from “roaming about or camping in bands,” and those “Gypsies unable to prove regular employment” risked being sent to forced labor for up to two years. This law became the national norm in 1929.
When Hitler took power in 1933, anti-Gypsy laws remained in effect. Soon the regime introduced other laws affecting Germany’s Sinti and Roma, as the Nazis immediately began to implement their vision of a new Germany — one that placed “Aryans” at the top of the hierarchy of races and ranked Jews, Gypsies, and blacks as racial inferiors.
“Like the Jews, Gypsies were singled out by the Nazis for racial persecution and annihilation. They were ‘nonpersons,’ of ‘foreign blood,’ ‘labor-shy,’ and as such were termed asocial. To a degree, they shared the fate of the Jews in their ghettos, in the extermination camps, before firing squads, as medical guinea pigs, and being injected with lethal substances.
The Nuremberg racial laws of September 15, 1935, (“Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor” and “Reich Citizenship Law”) did not explicitly mention Gypsies, but in commentaries interpreting these laws, Gypsies were included, along with Jews and “Negroes,” as “racially distinctive” minorities with “alien blood.” As such, their marriage to “Aryans” was prohibited. Like Jews, Gypsies were also deprived of their civil rights.
German police guard Roma who have been rounded up for deportation to Poland |
In June 1936, a Central Office to “Combat the Gypsy Nuisance” opened in Munich. This office became the headquarters of a national data bank on Gypsies. Also in June, part of the Ministry of Interior directives for “Combating the Gypsy Nuisance” authorized the Berlin police to conduct raids against Gypsies so that they would not mar the image of the city, host of the summer Olympic games.
That July, the police arrested 600 Gypsies and brought them, in 130 caravans, to a new, special Gypsy internment camp (Zigeunerlager) established near a sewage dump and cemetery in the Berlin suburb of Marzahan. The camp had only three water pumps and two toilets; in such overcrowded and unsanitary conditions, contagious diseases flourished.
Police and their dogs guarded the camp. Similar Zingeunerlageralso appeared in the 1939s, at the initiative of municipal governments and coordinated by the Council of Cities (reporting to the Ministry of Interior), in Cologne, Düsseldorf, Essen, Frankfurt, Hamburg, and other German cities.
The children of Sinti and Roma were also victims, interned with their families in the municipal camps and studied and classified by racial scientists. Between 1933 and 1939, authorities took many Sinti and Roma children from their families and brought them to special homes for children as wards of the state.
Gypsy schoolchildren who were truant were deemed delinquent and sent to special juvenile schools; those unable to speak German were deemed feeble-minded and sent to “special schools” for the mentally handicapped.
Like Jewish children, Gypsy boys and girls also commonly endured the taunts and insults of their classmates, until March 1941 when the regime excluded Gypsies from the public schools.
Heinrich Himmler Memorandum, December 8, 1938:
Experience gained in combating the Gypsy nuisance, and knowledge derived from race-biological research, have shown that the proper method of attacking the Gypsy problem seems to be to treat it as a matter of race. Experience shows that part-Gypsies play the greatest role in Gypsy criminality. On the other hand, it has been shown that efforts to make the Gypsies settle have been unsuccessful, especially in the case of pure Gypsies, on account of their strong compulsion to wander. It has therefore become necessary to distinguish between pure and part-Gypsies in the final solution of the Gypsy question.
Read more here: www.holocaustresearchproject.org/holoprelude/romasinti.html
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Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2010
Statement from the Warsaw Ghetto
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Karl Kaleske was born on the 19 February 1895 in Dobrin, Poland. He served with the 61st Infantry Regiment in World War One, and won an Iron Cross 2nd Class. He was also wounded in the conflict.
He entered the police in 1922 and was married in 1925. His SS number of 290196 indicates he entered this organisation in 1937. Karl Kaleske joined the Nazi Party on 1 January 1940 with membership number 7906104.
He was promoted to Untersturmfuhrer on 20 April 1939 while serving in the SD Main Office in Berlin, and he also served with the Gestapo in Koszalin, Poland.
Karl Kaleske was adjutant to Jurgen Stroop, who crushed the Jews of Warsaw in the most brutal fashion during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in April / May 1943, he survived the war and in 1946 the prosecution for the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg obtained an affidavit from Kaleske that was used as evidence against Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the successor to Reinhard Heydrich as head of the RSHA in Berlin.
Read the full story here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ghettos/kaleske.html
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Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2010
Nurnberg International Military Tribunal
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Prelude to Nürnberg
In 1944, when eventual victory over the Axis powers seemed likely, President Franklin Roosevelt asked the War Department to devise a plan for bringing war criminals to justice. Roosevelt would never live to see the end of the war.
Papers released on January 2, 2006 from the British War Cabinet in London have shown that as early as December 1942, the Cabinet had discussed their policy for the punishment of the leading Nazis if captured. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had then advocated a policy of summary execution with the use of an Act of Attainder to circumvent legal obstacles, and was only dissuaded from this by pressure from the U.S. later in the war.
In April, 1945, two weeks after the sudden death of President Roosevelt, Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson received Samuel Rosenman at his Washington home. Rosenman asked Jackson, on behalf of President Truman, to become the chief prosecutor for the United States at a war-crimes trial to be held in Europe soon after the war ended.
Truman wanted a respected figure, a man of unquestioned integrity, and a first-rate public speaker, to represent the United States. Justice Jackson, Rosenman said, was that person. Three days later, Jackson accepted. On May 2, Harry Truman formally appointed him chief prosecutor. But prosecutor of whom, and under what authority? Many questions remained unanswered.
Several Nazi leaders would escape trial and punishment. Two days before Jackson’s appointment, in a bunker twenty feet below the Berlin sewer system, Adolf Hitler shot himself. Soon thereafter, Heinrich Himmler–perhaps the most terrifying figure in the Nazi regime–took a cyanide crystal while being examined by a British doctor and died within minutes. Also unavailable for trial were Joseph Goebbels (dead) and Martin Bormann (missing).
Still, many important Axis leaders had fell into Allied hands, either through surrender or capture. Deputy Fuhrer Rudolph Hess had been held in England since 1941, when he had parachuted into the English sky in a solo effort to convince British leaders to make peace with the Nazi government. Reischsmarschall Hermann Goering surrendered to Americans on May 6, 1945.
He spent his first evening in captivity happily drinking and singing with American officers–officers who later were reprimanded by General Eisenhower for the special treatment they conferred. Hans Frank, “the Jew Butcher of Cracow,” received less hospitable treatment from American soldiers in Bavaria, who forced him to run through a seventy-foot line of soldiers, getting kicked and punched the whole way.
Other suspected war criminals were rounded up on May 23 by British forces in Flensburg, site of the last Nazi government. The Flensburg group included Karl Doenitz (Hitler’s successor as Fuhrer), Field Marshall Wilhelm Keitel, Nazi Party philosopher Alfred Rosenberg, General Alfred Jodl, and Armaments Minister Albert Speer. Eventually, twenty-two of these captured major Nazi figures would be indicted.
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On June 26, Robert Jackson flew to London to meet with delegates from the other three Allied powers for a discussion of what to do with the captured Nazi leaders. Every nation had its own criminal statutes and its own views as to how the trials should proceed. Jackson devoting considerable time to explaining why the criminal statutes relating to wars of aggression and crimes against humanity that he proposed drafting would not be ex post facto laws.
Jackson told negotiators from the other nations, “What we propose is to punish acts which have been regarded as criminal since the time of Cain and have been so written in every civilized code.”
The delegates also debated whether to proceed using the Anglo-American adversarial system with defense lawyers for the defendants, or whether instead to use the judge-centered inquisitive system favored by the French and Soviets.
After ten days of discussion, the shape of the proceedings to come became clearer. The trying court would be called the International Military Tribunal, and it would consist of one primary and one alternate judge from each country. The adversarial system preferred by the Americans and British would be used.
The indictments against the defendants would prohibit defenses based on superior orders, as well as tu quoque (the “so-did-you” defense). Delegates were determined not to let the defendants and their German lawyers turn the trial into one that would expose questionable war conduct by Allied forces.
Location
The Soviet Union had wanted the trials to take place in Berlin, but Nürnberg was chosen as the site for the trials for specific reasons:
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It was located in the American zone (at this time, Germany was divided into four zones).
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The Palace of Justice was spacious and largely undamaged (one of the few that had remained largely intact through extensive Allied bombing of Germany). A large prison was also part of the complex.
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Because Nürnberg had been appointed “City of the party rallies”, there was symbolic value in making it the place of the Nazi party’s demise.
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It was also agreed that France would become the permanent seat of the IMT and that the first trial (several were planned) would take place in Nürnberg.
Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/trials/nurnbergtrial.html
The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team
www.HolocaustResearchProject.org
Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2010
