Essen Dora Trial
The Dora trial in Essen was a West German Nazi trial against three suspects relating to violent and final phase crimes in the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp . This trial took place from November 1967 to May 1970 before the jury court in Essen district court . Officially, the proceedings as Essen Regional Court 29 Ks 9/66, criminal case against Bischoff u. a. designated. Before the end of the trial, the trial against a defendant was suspended. The trial ended with two convictions, but the convicts did not have to serve their sentences. The Dora trial in Essen, along with the Dora trial in Dachau, is one of the two most important cases of violent crimes in the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp.
prehistory
The first investigations against a defendant in the later Dora trial in Essen began in 1959 in Essen after an anonymous tip. The central office at the Cologne public prosecutor's office, which is active in the prosecution of concentration camp crimes in North Rhine-Westphalia, subsequently started investigations against over 30 suspects, of which only three were charged.
Main hearing
The main hearing began on November 17, 1967 before the jury court at the Essen district court. The accused were Helmut Bischoff , the former KdS of the restricted area Mittelbau , his former employee Ernst Sander and the chief overseer of the tunnel system of the Kohnstein at the Mittelbau concentration camp Erwin Busta .
The subject of the proceedings included the hanging and shooting of prisoners after failed escapes and for sabotage. Furthermore, negotiations were held in front of the camp staff regarding the mass execution in groups of 58 prisoners who were suspected of belonging to a resistance group. The shooting of seven communists when the Mittelbau concentration camp was dissolved in April 1945, as well as the fatal abuse of prisoners in the event of intensified interrogation or because of violations of the camp regulations, was also the subject of the proceedings.
A total of 300 witnesses from the Federal Republic of Germany , the GDR as well as Western and Eastern Europe testified in court or were interrogated on a provisional basis. Delegations of the court visited u. a. the USA and GDR as well as Warsaw and Moscow .
The East German lawyer Friedrich Karl Kaul represented former middle class prisoners from the GDR and other Eastern Bloc states as a joint plaintiff . Kaul applied several times for prominent West German witnesses to be summoned to prove their involvement in the crimes committed in the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp and to show post-war careers in West Germany. With this strategy he tried to portray the GDR as an anti-fascist state, in which, in contrast to West Germany, concentration camp crimes were consistently prosecuted. In this respect, the process was also shaped by the East-West conflict . Kaul was supported by a working group to which u. a. East German historians, employees of the public prosecutor's office of the GDR as well as employees of the MfS belonged. Kaul succeeded in getting the former Nazi armaments minister Albert Speer to testify in court at the end of October 1968 and for the former V-weapons engineer Wernher von Braun to be interrogated in the German consulate general in New Orleans on the subject of the trial.
On May 26, 1970 the proceedings against Helmut Bischoff were discontinued on the following grounds:
“The main hearing has meanwhile progressed so far that the pronouncement of the judgment can be expected. If this judgment, which is at least not improbable according to the investigations of the main hearing so far, is that the defendant Bischoff is convicted as a murderer, then according to the result of the assessment by the expert de Boor it is to be expected that it will be with the defendant Bischoff as a result of the pronouncement of the judgment, there was an excessive increase in blood pressure, which resulted in his death - possibly still in the courtroom ".
Bischoff died unmolested in 1993.
On May 8, 1970, after 182 days of sitting, the judgments were pronounced.
| Defendant | Offense | judgment |
|---|---|---|
| Ernst Sander | Accessory to murder | 7.5 years |
| Erwin Busta | Accessory to murder | 8.5 years |
However, the convicts did not have to begin their sentences due to exemption and suspension. By the late 1970s, Sander and Busta were considered incapable of detention.
literature
- Georg Wamhof: History politics and Nazi criminal proceedings. The Essen Dora Trial (1967–1970) in the German-German system conflict . In: Helmut Kramer , Karsten Uhl , Jens-Christian Wagner (eds.): Forced labor under National Socialism and the role of the judiciary - perpetration, post-war trials and the dispute over compensation payments. Nordhausen 2007, pp. 186-208. ( online PDF file; 1.62 MB)
- Georg Wamhof: "Statements are good, but it is not possible to appear as a witness." Legal assistance of the GDR in the Mittelbau-Dora proceedings (1962-1970) , in: Schuldig. Nazi crimes before German courts , ed. from the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial (Contributions to the History of National Socialist Persecution in Northern Germany; Vol. 9). Ed. Temmen, Bremen 2005, pp. 29-43, ISBN 3-86108-081-8 .
- Georg Wamhof: Process-bound campaign policy. The "GDR secondary suit" in the Dora concentration camp in Essen (1967–1970) . In: Sabine Moller; Miriam Rürup ; Christel Trouvé (Ed.): Closed chapters? On the history of the concentration camps and the Nazi trials (Studies on National Socialism in edition diskord; Vol. 5). Ed. diskord, Tübingen 2002, pp. 173-186, ISBN 978-3892957263 .
- Andrè Sellier: Forced labor in the rocket tunnel - history of the Dora camp , zu Klampen, Lüneburg 2000, ISBN 3-924245-95-9 .
- Jens-Christian Wagner (ed.): Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp 1943–1945 Accompanying volume for the permanent exhibition in the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial. Wallstein, Göttingen, 2007, ISBN 978-3-8353-0118-4 .
- Hitler's armaments minister Albert Speer as a witness before the jury court at Essen regional court in the trial against former SS members Bischoff, Sander and Busta for mass murders committed in the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp , documentation and stenographic protocol of the interrogation on October 30, 1968, compiled by Professor Dr . Friedrich Karl Kaul , Publication of Dept. VII / Contemporary Legal History of the Humboldt University in Berlin
Individual evidence
- ^ Quotation from Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich. Fischer Taschenbuch 2005, p. 51, source: 24 Js 549/61 (Z) OStA Cologne.