death
These former SS officers who served in the Belzec death camp were brought to trial in Munich, during August 1963, indicted with murdering Jews:
The Belzec trial in Munich lasted only three days from 18 January – 21 January 1963 Only Josef Oberhauser was found guilty and sentenced to four and a half years imprisonment, the following SS men were acquitted:
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Werner Dubois
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Erich Fuchs
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Hans Girtzig
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Heinrich Gley
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Robert Juhrs
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Karl Schluch
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Heinrich Unverhau
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Ernst Zierke
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Josef Oberhauser |
The crimes of genocide committed in the three Aktion Reinhard Camps, Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka only began to come to light during the euthanasia trials in 1948.
Heinrich Unverhau who had been in charge of the locomotive depot at Belzec, where the clothes was sorted and stored and cutting out the yellow stars, from the clothes of the murdered Jews, was the first to be arrested and charged.
This was in connection with the killing of patients at Grafeneck euthanasia centre, it was during the course of the trial that information began to emerge about the Aktion Reinhard death camps.
Unverhau, after a lengthy hearing into the euthanasia allegations, was acquitted of all charges and released. His references to the death camps were held to be inadmissible and were disregarded by the court.
Even then, the wheels of justice were slow to turn, it was only in 1959 that the West German government instigated a wide-ranging investigation into the Aktion Reinhard death camps.
Belzec was the first Aktion Reinhard death camp was first to be identified as a major killing centre in Poland. At the conclusion of these enquiries speedily the Belzec personnel were arrested and interrogated. They were arraigned at the Munich Assizes charged with several counts of murdering several hundred thousand Jews in Belzec.
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Christian Wirth |
Although the defendants had made admissions, the defence put forward a mixture of defensive lies, self exoneration to the actual killing, and not without some foundation, that they were in fear of their very lives and their families lives, should they not carry out the express orders of the Belzec camp commandants Wirth and Hering.
The defendants attempted to lessen their own involvement in the genocide, by suggesting that the “actions of destruction” could not have been carried out without the assistance of the Jews.
They had suggested to the court that the Jews carried out the whole operation – removed the victims from the transports, cut the hair of the females, removed their bodies from the gas chambers, extracted gold teeth and buried the bodies in the pits, which they had previously prepared.
Fortunately, on this point the court was not persuaded. To convict these men of the Belzec crimes there had to be direct evidence identifying them as the perpetrators of destruction. Whilst there was circumstantial evidence or loose admissions by the accused, the main requirements the witnesses to events implicating individual defendants was absent.
Rudolf Reder also known as Roman Robak who had travelled from Toronto, Canada was unable to positively identify any of the defendants.
To rebut the general defence proffered collectively by the defendants, the prosecution relied on one principle – that the defendants were guilty of collective participation, even though they had not acted as instigators.
In principle, the one in charge who gives the orders, in this case Wirth or Hering, is solely responsible, the one who carries out these orders must also share the responsibility if he knows the task in hand is unlawful. The jury disagreed. At the end of January the trial collapsed and all the defendants with the exception of Oberhauser, were acquitted. The defence of “acting out of fear for life” was accepted by the court
Immediately on leaving the court as free men, Dubois, Fuchs, Juhrs, Unverhau and Zierke, were re-arrested and held in custody on similar charges relating to the Sobibor death camp. The case against Josef Oberhauser was adjourned, and a new trial was ordered. In January 1965 Oberhauser again appeared before the Munich Assizes, but this time the prosecution were better prepared.
Immediately Oberhauser claimed to the court that he had already been sentenced to a term of imprisonment for the Belzec crimes at the Magdeburg court in 1948, where a Soviet Military Tribunal sentenced him to a term of fifteen years imprisonment.
When the Munich court investigated Oberhauser’s claims, it was established that he had been tried and sentenced for crimes relating to euthanasia and not the Belzec crimes, as these were not known at the time. The trial continued.
Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/trials/belzectrials.html
The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team
www.HolocaustResearchProject.org
Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto 2009 H.E.A.R.T
