History of Europe

1968:Hamburg court convicts SS perpetrators

by Irene Altenmüller, NDR.deThe bodies of around two million people were buried by the Nazis in mass graves like this one in Mirny (Ukraine).

It was a heinous crime:Between 1942 and 1944, the National Socialists had countless mass graves opened along the Eastern Front and the bodies of hundreds of thousands of Jews and prisoners of war buried in them dug up. Polish and Russian forced laborers are forced to remove the corpses, search for valuables, burn them, and grind up and scatter the remains of bones. After the gruesome work is finished, the forced laborers are also murdered. Because the actual goal of the action is to erase all traces of the mass murders committed in the East. The Nazis don't need witnesses who know about the existence of the mass graves and the destruction of the corpses.

Anonymous tip leads to the trail of the SS murderers

Max Krahner, Otto Goldapp and Otto Drews are three of an unknown number of SS men who participated in these crimes and who murdered forced laborers. True, they had proceeded thoroughly and had left no survivors in their deeds. However, based on an anonymous letter, the Hamburg public prosecutor's office began investigating in 1966. They lead to an SS man who has already been convicted and who willingly provides information about his three former comrades. And so the trial against the SS officers began on October 17, 1967. On February 9, 1968, the Hamburg district court sentenced her to life imprisonment for the murder of 500 forced laborers.

Death instead of freedom

On December 16, 1943 alone, the convicts killed 100 forced laborers near the Polish city of Białystok by having exhaust gases fed into two converted trucks. The prisoners had previously removed the mountains of corpses as ordered. The SS men explain to them that they are now free. At a table, Krahner has everyone sign a pledge to keep quiet about what he has seen. Goldapp distributes soap and towels. Out of pity, the forced laborers were allowed to believe that they would be released, Krahner defends himself:"Just like a doctor deceives a cancer patient who only has two months to live".

Suffocated with truck exhaust fumes

The forced laborers climb into the trucks, which, according to the investigative files, are so full that the gullwing doors have to be forcefully closed. When the prisoners realize what is happening, they bang on the walls in desperation. After about a quarter of an hour the screams died down. "When the doors opened, the front corpses fell out like potatoes," recalls Krahner.

The three SS men murdered 400 more forced laborers in Poland and Belarus, including by shooting them in the neck and throwing a hand grenade at a workers' accommodation. When asked why they were involved in the murder of the forced laborers, Max Krahner has a simple answer:"I believed that I was doing the best for my people," he claims, according to a trial report by the "Hamburger Abendblatt" on October 19 1967.

"Sonderaktion 1005" - systematic removal of traces

In 1942, Heinrich Himmler ordered the mass graves on the Eastern Front to be dug and the corpses removed.

The crimes of the three former SS men were part of a larger coordinated action, the so-called Action 1005, named after a reference number of the Reich Security Main Office. On the orders of SS Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler, all mass graves along the eastern front are to be opened and the corpses destroyed in order to completely erase the traces of the Nazi extermination policy in Eastern Europe. The entire operation, also known as "Enterdungsaktion" in the internal parlance of the SS, is subject to the highest level of secrecy.

Reasons for the cover-up action are, in addition to concern about the consequences in the event of a military defeat and the fear that future generations in Germany might disapprove of the mass murders, above all the decomposing corpses in the mass graves. The horrid odor spreads to the surrounding villages, attracting huge swarms of flies and threatening to contaminate the groundwater.

First Holocaust trial in Hamburg

The Holocaust trial against the three SS men is the first to be heard by the Hamburg district court. In 1946 there had already been a trial in Hamburg's Curiohaus for the crimes committed in the Neuengamme concentration camp. But this had been conducted by a British military court.

Many suspects got away with it

Only in a few cases, as in 1968, did the Hamburg district court result in a conviction for Nazi crimes.

For chief prosecutor Kurt Tegge, who compiled extensive incriminating evidence for the trial of Krahner, Goldapp and Drews, the life sentence is a major achievement. Because in many other proceedings, the perpetrators can at best be convicted as accomplices and not as murderers, because no direct involvement in the crime can be proven. Even worse:In many cases, the investigations drag on for years, so that the accused are unable to stand trial in the meantime.

"Many judges were not interested in enlightenment"

In the early 1970s, there was speculation in the German and international media as to whether the delays were intentional. "Many judges and public prosecutors after the war were not very interested in investigating," agrees Udo Löhr, who worked as a public prosecutor in Hamburg from 1972 to 1983 and dealt with Nazi crimes, in an interview with the "Hamburger Abendblatt" in January 2018 Among other things, Löhr was involved in the trial of Ludwig Hahn, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1975 for clearing the Warsaw ghetto and deporting around 300,000 Jews.

Public prosecutor Tegge was transferred to the traffic department against his will in 1971 - although twelve other public prosecutors had protested internally against the transfer of the committed criminal lawyer. The then Judiciary Senator Ernst Heinsen justified the unusual step with "careful considerations".

NS criminals get out of prison earlier

Like many other Nazi perpetrators, Max Krahner, Otto Goldapp and Otto Drews did not serve their sentences in full. Krahner was pardoned in 1977. He died in 1997 at the age of 96. Goldapp was released in 1975 and died in 1984. Drews was released in 1973 and committed suicide when he was threatened with being imprisoned again.