The first Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial began on December 20, 1963, in full view of the world and lasted a year and a half. Its approximately five-year history impressively demonstrates that without the initiative of surviving victims and without the courage and persistence of individual, combative lawyers, the crime against humanity at Auschwitz would not have ended up in a federal German court.
December 1958: The central office of the state judicial administration to prosecute National Socialist crimes is founded in Ludwigsburg, Württemberg.
15 January 1959: The Hessian Attorney General Fritz Bauer (1903-1968) received a few yellowed documents from the correspondent of the Frankfurter Rundschau, Thomas Gnielka, on which the names of Auschwitz prisoners who had been shot and the names of the SS riflemen were listed. Gnielka received the eight sheets from the Holocaust survivor Emil Wulkan (1900-1961), who lived in Frankfurt am Main. According to him, they came from the Breslau SS and Police Court, which burned down in 1942.
20 January 1959: The Hesse General Prosecutor’s Office sends copies of the document discovery to the Ludwigsburg central office and to the Federal Prosecutor General in Karlsruhe. The aim is to bring the perpetrators to court in a so-called collective proceeding and have the place of jurisdiction clarified.
17. April 1959: The 2nd Criminal Senate of the Federal Court of Justice decides to transfer “the investigation and decision” of the criminal case against former members of the Auschwitz concentration camp to the Frankfurt Regional Court.
15. June 1959: Fritz Bauer commissions the public prosecutor Georg Friedrich Vogel and the court assessor Joachim Kügler with the preliminary investigations into the so-called Auschwitz complex. That same year, the Nazi perpetrators Heinrich Bischoff, Oswald Kaduk and Victor Capesius were arrested.
July 12, 1961: The law enforcement authority at the Frankfurt Regional Court submits the application for a preliminary judicial investigation. It contains a general historical part written by Vogel and lists 24 defendants, seven of whom were eliminated at the beginning of the main hearing due to death, illness or the discontinuation of the proceedings. In the course of the preliminary judicial investigation (until October 1962) five more suspects were added.
December 20, 1963: Beginning of the main hearing in Frankfurt’s Römer town hall against 22 defendants for murder. The main defendant, Richard Baer, the last commandant of Auschwitz, died in custody in mid-June 1963.
19./20. August 1965: After 181 days of trial, in which 357 witnesses (including 211 Auschwitz survivors) were heard, the presiding judge Hans Hofmeyer announced the verdict. Six defendants are sentenced to life in prison. Ten defendants received prison sentences of between three and a half and fourteen years. A defendant who was under 21 at the time of the crime is punished with ten years in youth prison. Three defendants are acquitted. It is estimated that around 20,000 visitors followed the proceedings. 933 articles appear in the national daily press alone.
April 1966: The written reasons for the judgment will be published. 15 of the 17 convicted defendants, the representatives of the co-plaintiffs and the public prosecutor’s office are appealing the verdict.
February 20, 1969: The 2nd Criminal Senate of the Federal Court of Justice overturns the verdict against the former SS doctor Franz Lucas and refers the matter back to the Frankfurt regional court for a new hearing and decision. However, with regard to the other appeals lodged, the judgment stands.
8. October 1970: The jury chaired by regional court director Werner Baumann acquits the defendant Lucas. epd
2023-12-12 07:27:51
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