Mauthausen trial

You are gonna sit down and write out exactly what happened—when you entered the camp, who was there, how many died, why they died, everything else about it. I want you to go in, be nice to him, and have him re-write it. That was it. While one cannot assume that other war crimes investigators used similar interrogation methods as Ferencz, it does point to the existence of a culture in which such methods were deemed acceptable. Paul Guth used more clever means to obtain signed statements from the Mauthausen defendants.

Guth employed to stunning effect techniques he had learned while training both at Camp Ritchie in Maryland and the 21 st Army Group Intelligence Center in Divizes, England.

Rather than intimidate, Guth often used flattery or the promise of better treatment to obtain written confessions from the defendants. Though the methods used to extract confessions from all of those brought before military commission courts at Dachau would later cause considerable scandal in Washington, the statements of the Mauthausen defendants would be thrust to the fore by Denson and his team…. Defense witnesses repeatedly testified to improper interrogation techniques used by the prosecution.

If Goessl did not write down what Guth dictated, Guth visually demonstrated to Goessl that he would be hanged. Goessl testified that he then signed the false statement and planned to clear up the matter in court. Frey testified that he had been severely beaten in Mossburg by an American officer. Frey signed his confession only because he was afraid he would be beaten again. Defendant Johannes Grimm testified that he signed a false statement that Lt. Guth had dictated to Dr.

Ernst Leiss. When asked why he signed this false statement, Grimm replied:. I already described my mental condition on that day. I had memories of the previous interrogations. My left cheekbone was broken and four of my teeth were knocked out…. Guth telling me to write this sentence. Defense attorney Lt.

Patrick W. Further, the striking similarity of the language made it obvious the statements contained only language desired by the interrogators. McMahon cited numerous examples in which defendants used similar language to say crimes committed at Mauthausen could not be ascribed to any one leader. Let the court also note the unbelievable accusations that the affiants make against themselves.

It is contrary to normal human conduct. Beyond any doubt, threats and duress were used to induce the signing of the untruthful statements in evidence. It took 90 minutes for the seven judges to decide the fate of the 61 defendants in the Mauthausen trial. Major Gen. Fay B. The court finds that the circumstances, conditions, and the very nature of Mauthausen and its by-camps were of such a criminal nature as to cause every official, governmental, military, and civil, and every employee thereof to be culpably and criminally responsible.

The court further finds that it was impossible for a guard or a civilian employee to have been employed in aforesaid concentration camp without having acquired a definite knowledge of the criminal practices and activities therein.

The court therefore declares that any official, governmental, military, or civil, whether he be a member of the Waffen SS, Allgemeine SS, or any guard or civil employee of Mauthausen or any of its by-camps, is guilty of a crime against the recognized laws, customs, and practices of civilized nations and the letter and spirit of the laws and usages of war, and by reason thereof is to be punished.

Pictures snapped in May show him explaining the operation of a gas chamber. He also authored a report on his time in the camp and in the spring of testified in a trial of Mauthausen personnel at Dachau that brought death or prison sentences for all 61 of the accused. There were thousands who needed the most urgent care. The Americans transported some to local hospitals, others to nearby schools.

They had to procure cots, blood for transfusions, supplies of glucose for injections, and absolutely vital anti-typhus medication.

At the beginning these efforts were improvisational, but the best that could be done under the terrible circumstances. Over 1, former inmates still required medical attention into June Yet they could not save everybody.

Having tasted freedom, several thousand died in the days after May 5. It was an unimaginable end for men so close to new, better lives. Over 3, of them were interred in the grounds next to the Mauthausen and Gusen facilities. Stunningly, Ziereis did not immediately flee the vicinity of the camp.

On the contrary, he later claimed to have watched through his field glasses as the Americans accepted the surrender of SS units. Perhaps the long years of brutality he oversaw as commandant had degraded his mental capacities. A few weeks after Mauthausen's liberation, someone laid eyes on Ziereis near his hunting lodge. When American soldiers attempted to arrest him, he opened fire on them.

Before this arch-criminal expired from his wounds on May 24, , he shifted blame for what transpired in Mauthausen to his superiors in the SS and the Nazi Party. After he died, his corpse was decorated with swastikas by former inmates and unceremoniously hung on the fence of the Gusen subcamp.

From August until May , Mauthausen was a site of torment, slave labor, and mass death. For 90,, people, liberation came far too late. Among the many memories I occasionally tap from my trip was the sight of the Spanish, Soviet, Bulgarian, Romanian, Hungarian, Polish, and Italian monuments to their dead. Baranek, Martin, with Lisa B. Determined: A Memoir. Denver: Outskirts Press, New York: Harper Perennial, Stone, Dan. New Haven: Yale University, Wachsmann, Nikolaus.

New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, View Martin Barbanek's memoir on the Museum Store. Every Museum Store purchase helps fund the education mission. This article is part of an ongoing series commemorating the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II made possible by Bank of America.

In a proceeding on the site of the Dachau concentration camp, a US Military Tribunal prosecuted deputy preventative detention camp commandant Hans Altfuldisch and 60 other defendants associated with Mauthausen in the spring of The tribunal convicted all 61 defendants, sentenced 58 to death and three to life imprisonment on May 13, On appeal, nine of the death sentences were commuted to prison sentences.

US authorities executed 49 of the defendants and released the remaining twelve convicts in and US military tribunals tried approximately other persons associated with Mauthausen officials, guards, prisoner functionaries, prisoners, and implicated civilians in about 60 further proceedings at Dachau in Austrian authorities prosecuted and convicted several defendants associated with Mauthausen in several trials after the war.

The Federal Republic of Germany also conducted numerous proceedings against persons accused of Nazi crimes at Mauthausen and its subcamps. Perhaps the most extensive German investigation involved the proceedings against Karl Schulz and Anton Streitwieser, respectively, the chief of the political department in the main camp and the commandant of several Mauthausen subcamps. US Federal civil courts stripped four former Mauthausen guards of their US citizenship during the s, after the Department of Justice's Office of Special Investigations brought suit against them for participation in Nazi-sponsored persecution.

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For Teachers Recommended resources and topics if you have limited time to teach about the Holocaust. About This Site. Glossary : Full Glossary. Mauthausen Between and , Nazi Germany and its allies established more than 44, camps and other incarceration sites including ghettos. More information about this image. Cite Share Print Tags camps. Prisoners in the Camp Three months into World War II in December , the number had increased to over 2, prisoners, primarily convicted criminals, "asocials," political opponents, and religious conscientious objectors, such as Jehovah's Witnesses.

Prisoners in Mauthausen: Overview During the war, the SS incarcerated more than 10, Soviet prisoners of war at Mauthausen, including 3, held at the Mauthausen subcamp Gusen. These included, among those prisoners who were registered: more than 37, non-Jewish Poles nearly 23, Soviet civilians between 6, and 8, Yugoslav civilians approximately 6, Italians after September at least 4, Czechs in , 47 Allied military personnel 39 Dutchmen, 7 British soldiers and 1 US soldier , all of them agents of the British Secret Operations Executive Further, the SS transported other thousands of prisoners to Mauthausen to be murdered without ever being registered as prisoners in the camp.

By the end of September , women were in the main camp: political prisoners non-Jewish 38 Jehovah's Witnesses 29 so-called asocials Six months later, on March 31, , the SS reported 2, female prisoners in the Mauthausen system. Also reported among the female prisoners were: 43 Jehovah's Witnesses 79 Roma Gypsies 62 so-called asocials 5 women classified as Spanish Republicans 2 classified as convicted criminals By February , the SS had set aside three barracks in the main camp for female prisoners.

Sections of the Mauthausen Camp The main Mauthausen camp Stammlager had three principal sections: Camp I, the original protective detention camp Camp II, the camp workshop area, where prisoners were forced to work, and which the SS later converted to prisoner barracks in spring Camp III, built in the spring and summer of to accommodate the influx of Hungarian Jews Located at the opposite side of the roll call square from Camp I was a chain of long stone buildings that housed various camp services such as the prisoners' kitchen, showers, laundry, the bunker and, eventually, the gas chamber.

Killing Operations at Mauthausen The Mauthausen camp authorities killed specially targeted groups of persons sent to Mauthausen for that purpose. Gassing and Euthanasia Several methods of killing were used. Gaggenhau Trial. Gross Rosen Trial. Gusen Camps Trial. Hadamar Trial. High Command Trial. Hostage Trial. G Farben Trial. Justice Trial. Kesselring Trial. Kharkov Trial. Krasnodar Trial.

Krupp Trial. La Grande Fosse Trial. Majdanek Trial. Third Majdanek Trial.