Indeed, Wittmann is at her best in chapter 4, for example when she notes the changes in the presiding judge's tone of voice as he questions defendants and witnesses This manuscript would have greatly benefitted from another round of revision, augmentation and certainly more careful editing. As is, it reads like a polished dissertation, with more typos and errors than appropriate for a scholarly publication.
My main criticism of this book is that it so closely follows the trial sources, with little attention to other archival materials such as the lawyers' papers or the results of prior and ancillary scholarship.
Since there is much overlap between the pretrial investigation documents, the indictment, and the judgment, there is a tendency towards repetitiousness. For example, the so-called Boger swing is described twice 90f and Other scholarship is often merely listed without discussion e. Most of these publications are not even cited in this monograph. This may in part be due to the lead time for publication—the most important works were published in —, but much crucial scholarship is only perfunctorily cited in the endnotes, with no discussion of its content, such as Werner Renz's essays n.
Such limitations would be less noticeable if another monograph without such shortcomings had not been published simultaneously: Devin Pendas' University of Chicago dissertation was published in early as The Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial, I found that I learned and understood more from a cursory examination of Pendas' monograph than I had in a close reading of Wittmann's. Not only do Pendas' footnotes fully cite the documents and include the latest literature, the cited secondary works are summarized and assessed.
Additionally, Pendas has a knack for engaging narrative that contrasts with Wittmann's close analyses of legal sources. It is the fourth attempt to try the aged and ailing defendant. A court has suspended the trial of a year-old charged with involvement in the murders of 3, people at the Auschwitz extermination camp. Hubert Z. The Bavarian Criminal Police Agency has developed a virtual model of the Auschwitz death camp to help reconstruct past events there.
The model could help determine whether accounts given by accused are true or not. Visit the new DW website Take a look at the beta version of dw.
Go to the new dw. More info OK. Wrong language? Change it here DW. COM has chosen English as your language setting. COM in 30 languages. Deutsche Welle. Audiotrainer Deutschtrainer Die Bienenretter. Germany German judge accused of sabotaging Auschwitz trial The judge in one of the last Auschwitz trials is being investigated for perverting the course of justice. Walther said the court obstructed routine requests. Zafke's lawyer center dismissed the charges against the judge as a 'farce'.
Trial starts - again - for accused Auschwitz medic The trial of a year-old man accused of serving as a medic at Nazi Germany's Auschwitz concentration camp is back underway.
The main goal of the occupying allies was to seek justice. Since they had the power to do what they wanted, people thought the victors were biased. The International Military Tribunal IMT listed three things as of utmost importance in the trial: crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity The IMT stipulations just mentioned were important inconsideration to the independently formed German judicial system that took its time to form in Germany had to decide how it wanted to deal with its Nazi past.
Should former Nazis be allowed to assimilate into society or be held accountable for their actions? Chancellor Adenauer wanted to "Integrate rather than alienate ex-Nazis, because as many saw it, "one could have either democracy or justice but in the early days, certainly not both" The West German judicial system decided to try Nazi criminals under the German penal code Up until , court guidelines were being created, one in particular, the Transition Agreement which stipulated that German courts could not investigate or try anyone who had already been investigated by the occupying powers Under the West German judicial system, it had to be decided what constitutes a punishable crime.
It had to be determined if a Nazi committed the crime of murder with the intention of killing or committed the crime due to command, as an example states "a person is not guilty of murder because he pulled the trigger and killed another person, but because he pulled the trigger with the intention of killing the other person and succeeded in doing so" Titling crimes as manslaughter or murder was difficult because determining the mental state of those on trial at the time the crime was committed was questionable.
Debates formed over the statutes of limitations. Eventually it was ruled that would not be included in calculating the twenty year and thus Nazi murders could be tried until Political focus had shifted to rebuilding the nation and establishing a democratic government.
It was thought that actively pursuing former Nazis would work against the formation of a democracy. Creating a body of law in which to conduct trials was only the first step leading up to the Auschwitz trial.
Next was the pretrial investigation. It took years to shuffle through thousands of documents listing crimes and witness testimonial accounts. Witnesses themselves had to be investigated to determine the legitimacy of their accusations. Not all testimonies were accepted; falsifications slowed down the pretrial investigations.
The trial was moved to Frankfurt where specific evidence was gathered for the Auschwitz trial. Many former Nazis blended back into German society. The pretrial investigation period was not used for tracking down former Nazis.
Rather survivors came forward to authorities telling them that they had seen these former Nazis around town. Letters were published in newspapers around the world asking witnesses to come forward and provide testimony. Survivors in France, Canada, Argentina, and other countries wrote in offering themselves as witnesses Concentration camp survivors came forth with details regarding Nazi record keeping and falsifications within those records.
The Nazi regime was rigorous in record keeping and prisoner numbers. Using the pretrial files and extensive trial audiotapes, Rebecca Wittmann offers a fascinating reinterpretation of Germany's first major attempt t In , West Germany was gripped by a dramatic trial of former guards who had worked at the Nazi death camp Auschwitz.
Using the pretrial files and extensive trial audiotapes, Rebecca Wittmann offers a fascinating reinterpretation of Germany's first major attempt to confront its past. Evoking the courtroom atmosphere, Wittmann vividly recounts the testimony of survivors, former SS officers, and defendants--a cross-section of the camp population. Attorney General Fritz Bauer made an extraordinary effort to put the entire Auschwitz complex on trial, but constrained by West German murder laws, the prosecution had to resort to standards for illegal behavior that echoed the laws of the Third Reich.
This provided a legitimacy to the Nazi state. Only those who exceeded direct orders were convicted of murder. This shocking ruling was reflected in the press coverage, which focused on only the most sadistic and brutal crimes, allowing the real atrocity at Auschwitz--mass murder in the gas chambers--to be relegated to the background. The Auschwitz trial had a paradoxical result. Although the prosecution succeeded in exposing SS crimes at the camp for the first time, the public absorbed a distorted representation of the criminality of the camp system.
The Auschwitz trial ensured that rather than coming to terms with their Nazi past, Germans managed to delay a true reckoning with the horror of the Holocaust. Get A Copy. Paperback , pages. More Details Fraenkel Prize of the Wiener Library Other Editions 4.
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