First Majdanek Trials Were Conducted by the SS
Both were found guilty (as evidence against them was overwhelming); both were sentenced to death (wholesale stealing from the Reich at wartime was a capital offence – and for a good reason) and both were ruthlessly (SS-style) executed.
Karl-Otto Koch (camp commander from July 1941 till August 24, 1942) was executed by firing squad on April 5, 1945; Hermann Florstedt, the third commandant of Majdanek (from October 1942 on) was shot ten days later.
Overall, the Goddess of Justice was far too blind in Majdanek case. Only 170 Nazis of the 1,037 known by name who served at Majdanek had been prosecuted at all.
Half of the defendants charged by the West German justice system were acquitted of murder. Acquitted for usual reasons: insufficient evidence and unreliable witnesses (knowing for sure that one committed the crime is one thing – proving it beyond the reasonable doubt in a court of law is a totally different matter).
Majdanek was occupied by the victorious Red Army on July 24, 1944. Due to a lightning-fast advance of the Soviets and his ineptitude and lethargy of Anton Thernes (then deputy commander of the camp), Majdanek was the best-preserved Nazi killing center, with intact gas chambers and crematoria.
His sloth turned out to be a literally deadly sin for him: he was among the six Majdanek officials who were caught by the Red Army and was brought before what was called a “trial” by the Soviets those days.
Officially, the Soviet-Polish Special Criminal Court, it was little more than infamous “troikas” of Stalin’s Great Purge. However, it did not matter at all – the evidence was so overwhelming that convictions and death sentences were inevitable.
The “trial” began the very next day after the liberation of the camp and lasted surprisingly long – four months. Apparently, the NKVD wanted to squeeze as much information from the defendants as was possible under the circumstances.
On December 2, all defendants, except for Kapo Edmund Pohlmann, who had committed suicide, were found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to death by hanging. They were all hanged the next day right next to the gas chambers and the Majdanek crematorium.
The second Majdanek trial (actually, a whole series of trials held in 1946-48 in Poland) was not very different from the first one. Overall, 95 SS-men, mostly guards (including those apprehended hiding in postwar Germany), were charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity. Notably, genocide of the Jews was not mentioned (again).
Seven of the defendants were given the death penalty. The most prominent of them was Elsa Ehrich, Oberaufseherin of the women and children camp division (liquidated in spring of 1944). She was responsible for the selections to gas chambers… and killed a lot of women and children herself.
Given a blatant disregard of Soviet “criminal justice system” to even the most elementary rules and principles of civilized due process, it is hard to know for sure how guilty she was – and whether she (or any other defendant) was guilty at all. My guess is that they most likely were – and that they got what they deserved. Most other defendants were sentenced from 2 years to life imprisonment.
Third Majdanek Trial was held between November 26, 1975, and June 30, 1981 (almost 40 years after the crimes have been committed), before a West German Court at D;sseldorf.
Out of sixteen defendants, five were cleared of all charges (due to insufficient evidence and unreliable witnesses); two released due to ill health, one died of old age, and eight (i.e., half) were found guilty. They were sentenced to 3 to 12 years imprisonment.
In 1988, Karl-Friedrich H;cker (the adjutant to the commandant at Majdanek) was brought to trial for ordering the Zyklon B poison gas used in Majdanek gas chambers. He was sentenced to four years in prison in May 1989.
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