German Biographies

Nuremberg Remembered: Guilt and Responsibility

Directions: Read a description of the individual who may or may not have been tried at Nuremberg. These people represent the range of individuals involved in carrying out the military and genocidal policies of the Third Reich. As you read, annotate the text to highlight main ideas and questions you might have.

I.Where would you place your individual on a scale from guilty to not guilty?

Guilty __________________________________Not Guilty 

II.On a separate sheet of paper answer the following questions in complete, thoughtful and well-supported responses.

1. Should this individual have been charged for one or more of the crimes (conspiracy, crimes against peace, crimes against humanity) or should they have been acquitted? Why?

2. What criteria would you establish to evaluate an individual’s responsibility in such circumstances?

III. Final Task: Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury...

On a separate sheet of paper - Take on the role of either a defense attorney or a prosecutor and write the opening statement for your individual. Do you believe they should be tried? For what crimes? Remember to introduce your person and then make your case either for or against him.

Biographies of Germans in the Third Reich

Oskar Gröning

An accountant at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. 

Oskar Gröning was involved in the bureaucracy of Auschwitz. He administered the prisoners' money and valuables. He worked at the camp for more than two years. Gröning was 21 years old when he was posted at Auschwitz. He arrived just after thousands of French children had been transported to Auschwitz and witnessed what happened to these children and other early transports. Part of his job was to supervise the luggage of incoming transports. Gröning was outraged at what he witnessed and requested a transfer. The transfer was rejected and he stayed at his post. When he was asked how he felt about the murder of children, he said that they were not the enemy as children but that they had enemy blood in them and would be dangerous as adults.

Gröning's upbringing prepared him for his position at Auschwitz. He grew up in a proud German family from Lower Saxony, and his father belonged to far right nationalist organizations in the 1920s. Oskar was 11 years old in 1933 when Adolf Hitler became chancellor, and his parents thoroughly embraced Nazi ideology. After graduating high school, Oskar interned in banking. He and other interns at the bank joined the German army; he joined the elite Waffen SS. Before being assigned to Auschwitz, he did bookkeeping in Berlin. 

When he first arrived at Auschwitz, he was not aware of its function as a death camp and felt justified in removing Jewish property. When he finally learned of the function of Auschwitz, he explained:

You cannot imagine it really. I could only accept it fully when I was guarding the valuables and the suitcases at the selection. If you ask me about it-it was a shock, that you cannot take in at the first moment. But you mustn't forget that not only from 1933 [Hitler's acquisition of power], but even from before that, the propaganda I got as a boy in the press, the media, the general society I lived in made us aware that the Jews were the cause of the first world war, and had also "stabbed Germany in the back" at the end. And that the Jews were actually the cause of the misery in which Germany found herself. We were convinced by our worldview that there was a great conspiracy of Jewishness against us, and that thought was expressed in Auschwitz-that it must be avoided, namely, that the Jews put us in misery. The enemies who are within Germany are being killed-exterminated if necessary. And between these two fights, openly at the front line and then on the home front, there's absolutely no difference-so we exterminated nothing but enemies.

-Oskar Gröning, quoted in Laurence Rees, Auschwitz: A New History (2005), 132-33. After the war, Gröning pursued a career in accounting. He openly admitted observing mass murder, but he felt no responsibility for what took place.

Albert Battel

A lieutenant in the Wehrmacht (German army) stationed in Poland and in charge of a Jewish crew of workers.

Albert Battel was trained as a lawyer. In the 1930s, when he was already over 40 years old, he joined the Nazi Party. Even after he became a party member, the Nazi hierarchy was suspicious of him because he seemed to sympathize with Jewish victims of the regime. During the war, he joined the Wehrmacht (German army). In 1942 as a lieutenant, already in his fifties, he was stationed in the Polish town of Przemysl, where he supervised several hundred Jewish armament workers. On Saturday, July 25, 1942, one of his workers informed him that all Jews in the ghetto of Przemysl were to be transported to Treblinka the following Monday. Battel's workers were to be among the deportees. Immediately Battel informed his superior and took an army unit close to the bridge across the San River that divided the town. This action prevented access to the ghetto. Battel's actions caught the attention of Nazi officials in Krakow, who decided to delay deportations from Przemysl for some 2,500 Jews. Battel ensured that the Jews who worked for him directly would be taken in trucks with their families and live in the German army headquarters in town.

A few weeks later, Battel was transferred from Przemysl and the SS launched an investigation of Battel. Himmler vowed that appropriate actions against Battel would be taken after the war. Meanwhile, Battel became too ill to serve in the army and was dismissed from duty to return to his hometown of Breslau. In Breslau he served in a local defense unit. At the end of the war when the Soviet Red Army liberated Breslau, Battel was arrested and placed in a Soviet POW (prisoner of war) camp. After the war he was never again allowed to practice law because of his affiliation with the Nazi Party.

Sam Igiel, one of the Jews rescued by Battel's intervention, describes Battel's courage. After the war he reported about Monday, July 27, 1942:

Dr. Battel did not limit himself to the intervention, by which he rescued 2,500 Jews from being evacuated. As the action was in progress, staying in the quarter at the time, in the face of the Gestapo's lawlessness and violence, could result in evacuation at any moment anyway. Therefore, to avoid complications Oberleutenant Battel stopped about ninety of his workers with their families in the command's backyard as early as Sunday. Also he sent two police-protected lorries to fetch the workers from more distant quarters. The lorries set off five times and every time they came back with a new group of Jews until the number reached 240. When one of these transports got stopped by the SS, Dr. Battel intervened personally. Under the threat of manning the town he made the lorry go free. Then he had all Jews installed in the Kommandantur basement where they were kept the whole week under his protection during the action. On his order they were protected with bags of biscuits, meat and even milk for the children. He ordered that we get lunches.

-From I Remember Everyday, Ed. John Hartman and Jack Krochmal (2002).

Kurt Prüfer

The chief engineer of the Topf Engineering firm, which designed crematoria for Auschwitz. 

Kurt Prüfer was born in Erfurt in 1891. After secondary school, he attended courses in structural engineering and worked at two other firms before he was hired by Topf and Sons in 1911 as a foreman. Prüfer was doing well with the firm when he was called into military service for World War I. Returning to Topf in 1919 after the war, Prüfer continued his education in civil engineering and by 1928 was promoted to head the crematorium construction division. Topf and Sons was the only civilian firm directly involved in the extermination of Jews in Auschwitz; it not only supplied cremation furnaces but also fitted out the gas chambers in Birkenau crematoria. The firm, founded in the nineteenth century, was employing over one thousand people in the early twentieth century. The depression starting in 1929 affected the business of Topf and Sons. While many employees were being laid off, Prüfer was able to retain his job and by 1934, as business improved, Prüfer further strengthened his position when he joined the Nazi party.

As of 1935, the German economy was improving and the Topf firm benefited from the situation. Prüfer became chief engineer. Four years later, the firm had 1,200 employees. Topf became a key supplier of the Wehrmacht.

Because of his membership in the Nazi Party, Prüfer was able to introduce himself to concentration camp circles, where high mortality and fear of disease was increasing the demand for cremation furnaces. Prüfer landed the contract for Topf with Dachau concentration camp and installed a two-muffle cremation furnace in November 1939.

Thanks to Prüfer, Topf gradually introduced their cremation products into four concentration camps: Dachau, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Topf built 66 cremation muffles at camps; 46 were at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Prüfer took pride in the fact that he obtained profitable contracts for Topf and Sons and worked steadily during the war years to build the cremation furnaces and repair them when cracks occurred. Even after the war, when it was evident that the Topf firm had been involved with the crematorium, Prüfer did not think anything would happen to him since he had destroyed what he thought was incriminating evidence. The following transcript of a Russian interrogation of Prüfer in 1946 reveals his thinking:

• Q. How often and with what aim did you visit Auschwitz?

• R. Five times. The first time [was] the beginning of 1943, to receive the orders of the SS Command, where the "kremas" were to be built. The second time [was] in spring 1943 to inspect the building site. The third time was in autumn 1943 to inspect a fault in the construction of a "krema" chimney. The fourth time [was] at the beginning of 1944, to inspect the repaired chimney. The fifth time [was] September-October 1944 when I visited Auschwitz in connection with the intended relocation [from] Auschwitz' of the crematoriums, since the battle front was getting nearer. The crematoriums were not relocated because there were not enough workers..

• Q. Did you see a gas chamber next to the crematorium?

• R. Yes, I did see one next to the crematorium. Between the gas chamber and the crematorium there was a connecting structure.

• Q. Did you know that in the gas chambers and the crematoriums there took place the liquidations of innocent human beings?

• R. I have known since spring 1943 that innocent human beings were being liquidated in Auschwitz gas chambers and that their corpses were subsequently incinerated in the crematoriums. . . .

• Q. Why were the brick linings of the muffles so quickly damaged?

• R. The bricks were damaged after six months because the strain on the furnaces was colossal.

• Q.What motivated you to continue with the building of the other crematoriums as senior engineer with Topf and Sons?

• R. I had my contract with the Topf firm and I was aware of the fact that my work was of great importance for the national socialist state. I knew that if I refused to continue with this work, I would be liquidated by the Gestapo.

-Kurt Prüfer, "Testimony of Crematorium Engineers," Jewish Virtual Library www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/crematorium_test.html (accessed on May 22, 2007).

Rudolf Hoess

The commandant at Auschwitz.

Rudolf Hoess was born in the Black Forest in 1900 to Catholic parents. He was conditioned to obey authority by a domineering father. He joined the army during World War I at age 15 and was the youngest noncommissioned officer in the German army. After the war, Hoess joined the Free Corps, an organization dedicated to fighting Communists and overturning the Treaty of Versailles, which held Germany responsible for World War I. He joined the Nazi Party in 1922 and a year later was arrested and imprisoned for taking part in the killing of an anti-Nazi hero. He was released from prison in 1928 and became deeply involved with ultranationalist groups such as the Artaman Society and renewed his relationship with the Nazi Party. In 1933, just after Hitler was appointed chancellor, Hoess applied for membership in the SS and was accepted in 1934. During the mid-1930s Hoess served in several of the concentration camps. He earned recognition for his understanding of the system. After the war broke out, he joined the elite Waffen SS and in 1940 was appointed commandant of Auschwitz, where he remained in charge until late 1943. During these years he built the camp from a detention center for political prisoners into the principal death camp in Poland. Relieved of his post in late 1943, he was reinstated at Auschwitz in May 1944 to prepare the camp for the influx of thousands of Hungarian Jews.

For more information on Rudolf Hoess, see Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior, "Auschwitz" (Brookline: Facing History and Ourselves National Foundation, Inc., 1994), 343.

Franz Stangl

The commandant of the Polish death camps of Sobibor and Treblinka.

Franz Stangl was born in Upper Austria and took up the trade of weaving. In 1931 he trained to become part of the police force in Linz, Austria. After the Anschluss (the annexation of Austria into Germany by the Nazis in 1938), Stangl joined the Nazi Party. He served in the T4 (euthanasia) program in the early war years before becoming the commandant of two Polish death camps, Sobibor and Treblinka. After the war, he managed to escape to Damascus, Syria, and later Sao Paulo, Brazil. Through the efforts of Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal, Stangl was arrested by Brazilian authorities in 1967 and returned to the Federal Republic of Germany. The journalist Gitta Sereny interviewed Stangl while he was in Brazil about his career and his feelings about his work during the Nazi era. The following excerpt offers insights into the attitudes and thinking of Stangl:

 "When I was on a trip once, years later in Brazil," he said, his face deeply concentrated, and obviously reliving the experience, "my train stopped next to a slaughterhouse. The cattle in the pens, hearing the noise of the train, trotted up to the fence and stared at the train. They were very close to my window, one crowding the other, looking at me through that fence. I thought then, ‘Look at this; this reminds me of Poland; that's just how the people looked, trustingly, just before they went into the tins . . . .'"

"You said tins," I interrupted. "What do you mean?" But he went on without hearing or answering me.

"I couldn't eat tinned meat after that. Those big eyes . . . which looked at me . . . not knowing that in no time at all they'd all be dead." He paused. His face was drawn. At this moment he looked old and worn and real.

"So you didn't feel they were human beings?"

"Cargo," he said tonelessly. "They were cargo." He raised and dropped his hand in a gesture of despair. Both our voices had dropped. It was one of the few times in these weeks of talks that he made no effort to cloak his despair, and his hopeless grief allowed a moment of sympathy.

-Gita Sereny, Into That Darkness (Pan Books, 1977), 201.

Alfons Heck

A member of the Hitler Youth from age 10 who, during the war, joined the German army, participated in Kristallnacht, and venerated Adolf Hitler to the end of the war.

In 1938 as a 10-year-old, Alfons Heck joined the Jungvolk (Hitler Youth). He was excited to be part of the group, especially to be selected to go to the Nazi Party rally with thousands of other German youth from all over the Reich. He could not contain his pride when the Fuhrer (the official title of Adolf Hitler to define his role of absolute authority) looked directly into his eyes at the rally. Returning to his hometown after the rally was a letdown. However, the pogrom on the night of November 9-10, 1938, brought excitement into the lives of Heck and the other members of the Hitler Youth. They joined in the destruction of the local synagogue and Jewish shops. So enamored was Heck with the Nazi Party that when he entered his teens he joined the army and eventually took on leadership roles. He attained top ranking as the youngest glider pilot in the organization. He wanted to join the Luftwaffe as a fighter pilot but was made a major general in the Hitler Youth instead. As major general, he directed the activities of several thousand boys and girls in his district. At age 16 he expanded his duties to include running a small town on the Luxembourg border. During that year, Hitler awarded Heck with the Iron Cross for his excellence in service.

Heck could not believe the Nazis were wrong until he witnessed the Nuremberg trials after the war and heard the former head of the Hitler Youth, Baldur von Schirach, admit he had misled youth to follow Hitler and the Nazi movement.

Heck describes his reaction to the testimony at Nuremberg:

I was captured March the seventh, 1945, in my hometown. During my captivity, I was forced to look at documentary footage of concentration camps and death camps. And it was the first time that I was shown the atrocities committed by our nation. We looked at this, and I said to my friends, "What do they take us for? This stuff is staged!" And one of us began to snicker, and our captors became so incensed that they started yelling at us. "You Goddamned Nazi bastards! Do you think this is a comedy? This is what you have done!"

It was almost a year later before I was able to accept the veracity of the films that I had seen. And it occurred at the war crimes trials in Nuremberg in 1946. When I arrived at the city of Nuremberg, I was stunned by the total change in the Nuremberg I had seen at the Nazi Party rally of 1938. While I listened to the loudspeakers outside, I heard the full evidence of the accusations directed at the 22 top Nazis who were on trial. One of them was my leader, the former leader of the Hitler Youth, Baldur von Schirach. He was the principal reason why I came to Nuremberg. I wanted to know what he had to say, in particular, in regard to the activities of the Hitler Youth. Von Schirach told the Court, "It was my guilt that I have trained youth for a man who became a murderer a million times over." 

Baldur von Schirach received 20 years for crimes against humanity. That, in turn, implicated me too in the court of mass murder because I had served Hitler as fanatically as von Schirach. I had an overwhelming sense of betrayal at Nuremberg and I recognized that the man I had adored was, in fact, the biggest monster in human history. It's a devastating feeling if you follow it to its conclusion-that you are a part of the human race.

The experience of the Hitler Youth in Nazi Germany constitutes a massive case of child abuse. Out of millions of basically innocent children, Hitler and his regime succeeded in creating potential monsters.

-Alfons Heck as quoted in Heil Hitler: Confessions of a Hitler Youth, VHS (New York: Ambrose Video Publishing, 1991).

Major Julius Schmahling

A member of the Nazi Party stationed in Le Chambon, France, who did not report or punish members of the town involved in rescuing Jews. He was a loyal Nazi despite his silence on anti-Nazi activities.

Major Julius Schmahling was the Nazi occupation governor of the Haute Loire district in France. Although the Nazis replaced him in 1943, he remained second-in-command at his post until the end of the war.

Schmahling was a dutiful, obedient Nazi. Yet he protected the Jews of Le Chambon by failing to report that local villagers were hiding Jews throughout the district. The historian Philip Hallie sought to understand why such a loyal Nazi would take the risks on behalf of Jews.

Schmahling explained to Hallie the reasons for his benevolence. He recalls his days as a young teacher as depicted in the story below:

He had prepared a dramatic lesson on the king of beasts, and full of it, and of himself, he walked into the classroom. As he spoke the first words, "The lions," he noticed a little boy in the back of the room who had been sitting dumbly on his bench during the whole term. The boy had been waving his hand in the air to catch his teacher's eye. The young teacher kept talking about the great beasts. In a few moments the boy jumped off his bench and called out "Herr Professor, Herr-" Schmahling looked at him in anger-he could not believe that this little dunce was going to interrupt his discourse on lions. Then the boy did something that really amazed the teacher. He called out, without permission. "Yesterday, yes, yesterday I saw a rabbit. Yesterday I really saw a rabbit."

Before the words were all out, Schmahling yelled out, "Sit down, you little jackass." The boy sat down and never said a word for the rest of the year.

In his old age Schmahling looked back at that moment as the most decisive one in his whole life. Then, while he was crushing the boy with all the power of his German pedagogical authoritarianism, he was destroying something within himself in the very act of destroying the moment of sunlight in that little boy's life. When the class was over he vowed to himself that he would never do such a thing again to a human being. Teaching and living for him, he vowed, would from that moment forward involve making room for each of his students and each of the people he knew outside the classroom to speak about the rabbits they had seen.

And he kept his vow. It was as simple as that-and so infinitely complex as keeping such vow during the German occupation of France.

-Ed. Carol Rittner and S. Myers, Courage to Care (New York University Press, 1989) 112-15.

Adolf Eichmann

A long-standing member of the Nazi Party who made his way up the hierarchy, becoming an expert on the Jewish question and Jewish emigration before the war. During the war he headed the IVB4 program in charge of sending Jews by trains to the death camps.

Adolf Eichmann was born in 1906 near Cologne, Germany, to a middle-class Protestant family. After his mother died, his family relocated to Linz, Austria. After graduating high school, Eichmann tried a number of jobs and was not successful in any of them. At the age of 26, he joined the Nazi Austrian Party; two years later he joined the SS (group of Nazi soldiers that protected the Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler) as a corporal at Dachau concentration camp. Soon thereafter he began working for Heinrich Heydrich, the head of the SD, or the Security Service of the SS. Initially Eichmann was put in charge of investigating Freemasons. Then he was given the task of investigating possible solutions to the Jewish question. After the Anschluss (the annexation of Austria into Germany by the Nazis in 1938), Eichmann headed the Central Office for Jewish Emigration. In 1939 he returned to Berlin, where he took charge of the IVB4 office, a section of Reich Main Security designated to implement the Nazi policies toward the Jews in Germany and Nazi-occupied territories. 

During the war years, Eichmann worked on the Einsatzgruppen policies designed to eliminate Jews in occupied areas. He witnessed several of the Einsatzgruppen actions. He and his colleagues decided that the use of mobile gas vans would be a more efficient manner of eliminating Jews.

In January 1942 Eichmann helped coordinate the Wannsee Conference, where the Nazi leadership spelled out their plans to murder the Jews of Europe. . Henceforth, Jews were to be deported to permanent death camps in Poland and gassed in permanent facilities rather than by mobile gas vans. Eichmann was in charge of the transport trains, taking Jews to their final destinations. Now, Obersturmbannfuhrer (a high-ranking major in the SS), Eichmann was the chief administrator of the "final solution."

Following the surrender of Germany to the Allied forces in May 1945, Eichmann spent some time in an American internment camp but managed to escape. He then made his way to Argentina, where he lived for several years under an alias until the Mossad (Israeli organization for intelligence and special operations) located and arrested him in 1960.

Avner Less of the Israeli police interrogated Eichmann for hours in 1960. Throughout the interrogation Eichmann insisted that he was a loyal bureaucrat who did what he was told and did not initiate policies of the "final solution." The following selection from the interrogations offers a glimpse into Eichmann's defense and character.

Eichmann: Her Hauptmann, Bureau IVB4 never received extermination orders. Never! Its work was transportation and nothing else, subject of course to certain conditions. For instance, it could never send out an order to Paris or The Hague or Brussels saying, "Load a thousand people into a train." There were always guidelines to be followed. The evacuating authority had to know what was being done and what people were involved. Naturally, Bureau IVB4-this I must admit-had to pass on this information in accordance with others from above...

 - Adolf Eichmann, quoted in Eichmann Interrogated: Transcripts from the Archives of the Israeli Police (1984), 123-24.

For more information on Adolf Eichmann, see Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior, "Eichmann in Jerusalem," (Brookline: Facing History and Ourselves National Foundation, Inc., 1994), 455.

Hans Friedrich

A member of the Einsatzgruppen (Nazi mobile killing squads) who testified about his hatred of Jews since childhood. In adulthood he showed no remorse for his activities.

Hans Friedrich was a member of one of the SS infantry units (SS 1st Infantry Brigade) that was sent to the East to reinforce the Einsatzgruppen in the summer of 1941. His unit mainly operated in Ukraine. He admits shooting Jews into a large killing pit. He also admits that he thought nothing of the victims, standing just a few meters in front of him. His main thought was to "aim carefully." He never felt bothered by his act. One action that Friedrich took part in was in the town of Ostrog on August 4, 1941, where 10,000 Jews were gathered. Eyewitnesses report that Jews were killed in batches of 50 to 100 at a time all day long. Friedrich explains how he was involved and had no empathy for the victims. While growing up he learned to hate Jews. His father, a farmer, worked with local Jews who served as traders. Friedrich heard from his parents that Jews gained too much profit from their transactions. "If I'm honest I have no empathy [for the Jews]. For the Jews harmed me and my parents so much that I cannot forget . . .. My hatred towards the Jews is too great." 

Otto Ohlendorf

A well-educated leader of Einsatzgruppen B (a mobile Nazi killing squad).

Julius Streicher started his career as an elementary school teacher and then entered World War I, where he earned the Iron Cross. He was dismissed from the army in 1918 because of his outspoken criticism of the newly formed Weimar Republic, which he despised for its acceptance of the Treaty of Versailles. In 1919 Streicher helped establish an antisemitic party in Bavaria that merged with the nascent National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazis) in 1921. Streicher became closely allied with Hitler and joined the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. In 1925 Streicher became gauleiter (party leader) of the district of Franconia. Four years later he became a member of the Bavarian legislature. When Hitler became chancellor in January 1933, Streicher was elected to serve in the Reichstag (the national parliament). Throughout these years Streicher was virulent in his antisemitic views, which permeated his speeches and publications such as the newspaper Der Stuermer and children's books such as The Poisoned Mushroom.

In the spring of 1933 Hitler put Streicher in charge of planning a boycott of Jewish businesses and professional offices. As the thirties wore on, Streicher became infamous for his corrupt practices and abuse of power. His campaigns against the Jews were so extreme that even his Nazi colleagues considered them excessive. In 1940, shortly after the outbreak of the World War II, Hitler banned Streicher from all Nazi posts.

During the war Streicher continued publishing antisemitic articles and stories.

Week after week, month after month, he described Jews as ‘vermin in need of extermination.' In a typical article he ranted that the Jew was not a human being, but ‘a parasite, an enemy, an evil-doer, a disseminator of diseases which must be destroyed in the interest of mankind.' In May of 1939 (4 months before the war began and 25 months before the invasion of Russia), Streicher told his readers, 'A punitive expedition must come against the Jews in Russia. . . .the Jews in Russia must be killed. They must be exterminated root and branch.'

-Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior, "A Man of Words" (Brookline: Facing History and Ourselves National Foundation, Inc., 1994), 429.

Baldur von Schirach

The leader of the Hitler Youth movement.