- Person
- Fritz Bauer
- Lived
- 1903–1968
- Field
- Prosecutor & Jurist
- From
- German
The story
Fritz Bauer, a German Jewish jurist who had been held in a concentration camp in 1933 and spent the war in exile, became attorney general of the state of Hesse in 1956. In 1959 he persuaded West Germany's Federal Court of Justice to assign the investigation of crimes at Auschwitz to the regional court in Frankfurt, and his prosecutors began building a case against former members of the camp's SS staff.
Bauer wanted the trial to do more than convict individuals. He saw such proceedings as a way for West German society to confront its own past, describing them as a means of self-enlightenment. That meant the court, the press and the public needed to understand how the whole machinery of persecution had worked, not only what each defendant had done.
To explain the system, Bauer sought support from the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich. Four of its historians, Helmut Krausnick, Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, Hans Buchheim and Martin Broszat, served as expert witnesses for the prosecution. Their task was to explain to the judges, who were trying crimes under ordinary German criminal law, how the SS and the camp system had been organised and who gave and carried out orders.
The trial opened in December 1963 against 22 defendants and ran until August 1965. Over 183 days of hearings the court heard 319 witnesses, among them 181 survivors of Auschwitz, in 430 hours of recorded testimony. Bauer had made a point of prosecuting lower-ranked staff as well as leaders, and the historians' testimony helped show how each part of the SS apparatus contributed to the killing. Six defendants received life sentences.
The research the four historians gathered for the trial became the basis of their book Anatomy of the SS State, published in 1968, the first thorough survey of the SS based on SS records. The evidence that a court had needed in order to judge individual guilt thus became a lasting public resource for understanding the whole system.
Bauer himself was disappointed that the court treated most defendants as mere accomplices who had followed orders. Yet the trial brought the Holocaust into German public debate, and in 2017 UNESCO added its tape recordings to the Memory of the World Register.
Why it matters
By bringing historians into the courtroom, Bauer helped produce a lasting, evidence-based account of how the SS organised persecution and mass murder.
About Fritz Bauer
Jewish judge, exile and Hesse attorney general who secretly tipped off Israel to Eichmann’s hiding place and forced West Germany to face Auschwitz in the Frankfurt trials of 1963–65.
More about Fritz Bauer
- Fritz Bauer brought the Auschwitz trial to FrankfurtFritz Bauer initiated the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial of 1963–65, in which 319 witnesses, including 181 camp survivors, testified about the crimes of the death camp.
- Fritz Bauer called for war crimes trials from exileIn Swedish exile Fritz Bauer co-founded a periodical with Willy Brandt and in 1945 published Die Kriegsverbrecher vor Gericht, War Criminals in Court.
- Fritz Bauer worked for a more humane justice systemFritz Bauer co-founded the Humanist Union, a civil rights group, and argued for a criminal law focused on rehabilitation; a prize in his name honors legal reformers.
- Fritz Bauer won justice for the plotters against HitlerIn the 1952 Remer trial, prosecutor Fritz Bauer argued that the Nazi state was not a state under the rule of law, and the July 1944 resisters were legally and morally rehabilitated.
- Fritz Bauer taught young Germans about the roots of NazismFritz Bauer lectured youth groups on the roots of fascism and backed a Frankfurt student group working against antisemitism and for ties with Israel.
- Fritz Bauer's tip led Israel to Adolf EichmannIn 1957 German prosecutor Fritz Bauer secretly told Israel where Adolf Eichmann was hiding in Argentina, a crucial lead that resulted in his capture in 1960.
- Fritz Bauer defended German democracy before 1933Appointed in 1930, Fritz Bauer was the youngest local judge in the Weimar Republic, and he campaigned publicly to defend the democratic constitution against the Nazis.
Sources
- Frankfurt Auschwitz trials Wikipedia
- Fritz Bauer Fritz Bauer Institut
- Fritz Bauer Wikipedia (German)
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.