Belsen Trial

The Belsen Trial was one of several trials that the Allied occupation forces conducted against former officials and functionaries of Nazi Germany after the end of World War II. The charges included war crimes and other atrocities, and they resulted in many notable convictions.

First trial

Main article: Belsen concentration camp

Officially called the "Trial of Josef Kramer and 44 others", the trial began in a Lüneburg courtroom on September 17, 1945 against 45 former SS men, women and kapos (prisoner functionaries) from the Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz concentration camps. The trial took place before a British military court and lasted until November 17, 1945.

The defendants faced charges for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in these two concentration camps through their participation in the torture and mass murder of camp inmates. All except Starotska were accused of having committed such crimes at Bergen-Belsen; Starotska, Kramer, Klein, Weingartner, Kraft, Hössler, Borman, Volkenrath, Ehlert, Gura, Grese, Lothe, Lobauer and Schreirer were also charged with atrocities committed at Auschwitz.

• Georg Kraft, Josef Klippel, kapo Ilse Lothe, Oscar Schmitz, Fritz Mathes, Karl Egersdorf, Walter Otto, Eric Barsch, Ignatz Schlomovicz, Ida Forster, Klara Opitz, Charlotte Klein, Hildegard Hahnel, and Antoni Polanski were acquitted.
• One defendant, Ladislaw Gura, was removed from the trial due to illness.

For those found guilty, the sentences were as follows:

• Josef Kramer, Fritz Klein, Peter Weingartner, Franz Hössler, Juana Bormann, Irma Grese, Elisabeth Volkenrath, Karl Francioh, Anchor Pichen, Franz Stofel, and Wilhelm Dorr were sentenced to death by hanging.
• Erich Zoddel was sentenced to lifetime imprisonment.
• Deputy wardress Herta Ehlert, Otto Calesson, Heinrich Schreirer, kapo Helena Kopper, and Vladislaw Ostrovski were sentenced to 15 years imprisonment.
• Kapo Hildegard Lobauer, and guards Ilse Forster, Herta Bothe, Irene Haschke, Gertrud Sauer, Johanne Roth, Anna Hempel, Stanislawa Starotska, and Antoni Aurdzieg were sentenced to ten years imprisonment.
• Gertrude Fiest, and Medislaw Burgraf were sentenced to five years, Frieda Walter to three years, and Hilde Lisiewitz to one year.

All the executions were carried out on December 13, 1945 by hanging at the prison in Hameln.

Second trial

A second Belsen trial was conducted at Luneberg from June 13–18, 1946 by a British Military Court. On trial was Kazimierz Cegielski, a Polish national and former prisoner at Bergen-Belsen who, according to his testimony, had arrived in March 1944. Known as "der Große (Big) Kazimierz" (to differentiate him from another kapo with that name), he was charged with cruelty and murder.

Kapos were prisoner functionaries selected by the SS to supervise their fellow prisoners. Selected for their willingness to be brutal, they were initially selected from the ranks of criminal prisoners. Later on, political prisoners chosen and later on, prisoners from other groups.

Cegielski was accused of beating – sometimes killing – sick and weak prisoners with large wooden sticks or poles. While at Bergen-Belsen, he had an affair with another prisoner, Henny DeHaas, a Jewish woman from Amsterdam. After the war, in 1946, he was arrested in Amsterdam, ostensibly looking for DeHaas so he could marry her. He was convicted on June 18, 1946 and sentenced to death by hanging. The day before his execution, he stated that his real name was Kasimir-Alexander Rydzewski. He was executed at Hameln Prison at 9:20 a.m. on October 11, 1946.

See also

• Hugh Llewellyn Glyn Hughes
• Allied Control Council
• Subsequent Nuremberg Trials