August 19, 1965 - Auschwitz Officials Guilty - a podcast by Stephen Hammond

Trials find 17 former Auschwitz SS officials and guards guilty. During World War II, Nazi Germany had dozens of prisons, often referred to as “camps” in various countries. They were used to hold prisoners of war, and any undesirable people. They were also used for exterminations, supplying forced labour and to transfer prisoners. The most infamous of these facilities were the extermination camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belżec, Kulmhof, Jasenovac, Lwów, Majdenek, Maly Trostenets, Sobibór, Treblinka and Warsaw. Two decades after the Allies had liberated Germany’s camps, the world watched court proceedings that would determine the fate of former Secret Service (SS) officials and guards. This was the first time persons responsible for the atrocities were brought before a German court, and it was seen by many as a shift in which Germans were finally dealing with the horrors instead of hoping the memories would fade. On August 19, 1965, following a year and a half of proceedings, an official read out the sentences in a courtroom in Frankfurt, Germany. This second of the Auschwitz trials found 17 men guilty of having participated in murder and torture at the former extermination camp in Poland while acquitting three others for lack of evidence. Six of the guilty men received sentences of life imprisonment of hard labour, the toughest penalty under German law (the death penalty having been outlawed in 1949). The other 11 received sentences of between 39 months and 14 years of hard labour. The court rejected the defence that these men were just small cogs in the process. Judge Hans Hofmeyer said, “Human life is too short to expiate the crimes committed at Auschwitz.”

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