Belzec Trial Was About Much More than Belzec

The Belzec trial (Belzec-Prozess), which lasted from August 1963 to January 1965, was a war crimes trial of eight former SS members of Belzec extermination camp. However, it was about much more than Belzec, because five of the eight were defendants also in the Sobibor trial, which followed the Belzec trial.

Belzec and Sobibor trials, along with the Treblinka trials, obviously form a body of evidence of the crimes of mass extermination as part of Aktion Reinhardt – serial mass murder of over two million Jews and 50,000 Roma and Sinti (the latter is rightfully considered as one of the “forgotten genocides”).

In addition, Belzec trial and other abovementioned trials are directly related to serial mass murder of about 100,000 mentally ill in the Aktion T4 program of forced euthanasia in 1939-41. Directly related because many of the security guards worked in the killing centers of Aktion T4 before transferring to death factories of the “final solution to the Jewish question”.

The outcome of the trial was shocking, to put it mildly. Six out of seven defendants were acquitted and one – Josef Oberhauser – was sentenced to just 4.5 years hard labor (!!) and loss of the citizen’s rights for three years.

As is common in German criminal justice system, he was released after serving half of his sentence. Oberhauser was sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia for his crimes committed in Italy, but the Italian extradition request failed. Oberhauser died on 22 November 1979 in Munich. He was 64.

Belzec trial – as well as many others – are perfect examples of how difficult (to put it mildly), it was to convict anyone of Nazi war crimes in West Germany. The primary reason was the (correct) decision by the federal government that no special law would be introduced to deal with Nazi crimes, but that they would be dealt with under “normal” criminal law.

The latter is so serious about presumption of innocence and the rights of the defendant (rightfully so, given the Nazi past) that it places a very high standards on both witnesses’ statements and the evidence.

Both in the war crimes cases were so… well, imperfect that proving the culpability of murder (issuing or executing the order to kill) of anyone was practically impossible. Hence, the prosecution could only hope for a conviction of accessory to murder and even that was impossible if the defense could prove that the defendant acted under duress – which usually was the case.