Language:
English
Year of publication:
2002
Titel der Quelle:
Central European History
Angaben zur Quelle:
35,3 (2002) 345-378
Keywords:
Auschwitz (Concentration camp)
;
War crime trials
;
Holocaust survivors History
;
Frankfurt am Main (Germany)
Abstract:
Investigations into the crimes of Auschwitz perpetrators by the Frankfurt public prosecutor's office began in 1958, but the trial opened only in December 1963. This was not, as Hannah Arendt stated, because of a reluctance of West German courts in the 1950s-60s to deal with the Nazi past. The prosecutors, and especially Attorney General Fritz Bauer, conceived the Auschwitz trial as based on the German criminal code rather than the international code. Such a trial was an opportunity for Germany to confront its past and teach a lesson. However, limitations embedded in the German criminal code and the snowballing number of witnesses and defendants led to the protraction of the trial. Describes, briefly, the history of the Auschwitz trial. Remarkably, it was survivors' testimonies, not Nazi documents, that made an essential contribution to the prosecution.
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