The Frankfurt trial (1963—1965) and overcoming the past in Germany

Abstract

In the first post-war decades in Germany the problem of crimes of the Nazi regime was hushed up. Information about the flagrant crimes of the Nazis in the concentration camps was perceived by the Germans as “propaganda of the winners”. The Frankfurt process of 1963-1965 was an event that contributed to the understanding of the criminal past of its country by the German society. Before the court in Frankfurt there appeared 22 Nazi war criminals who were accused of murder and complicity in the killing of prisoners of concentration camps and death camps of Auschwitz. During the trial, horrific facts of mass destruction of people and unprecedented cases of humiliation of human dignity were revealed. The position of the prosecution was that the defendants voluntarily served in Auschwitz, realizing that the main purpose of the operation of the camp is the mass destruction of Jews, purposefully participating in the implementation of a common criminal plan. The defense adhered to the strategy that the defendants were only weak-willed executors of the orders of the highest Nazi leadership and were forced to commit crimes at the risk of their own lives. None of the accused pleaded guilty, and in their closing speeches they expressed neither regret nor remorse to the victims and their relatives. The verdict of the jury was soft: only 6 accused were sentenced to life imprisonment, the rest received various (from 3 to 14 years) terms of imprisonment, three were acquitted. However, the significance of the Frankfurt trial exceeds the purpose of the criminal punishment of the Nazi criminals. The process became a milestone in the course of overcoming by the Germans of their recent past, the awareness of the responsibility of German society for the crimes of national socialism.