The Murderers

SOBIBOR NAZIS ON TRiAL IN HAGEN, GERMANY, 1964

Front row:, l-r: Kurt Bolender, Wemner Dubois, Karl Frenzl, Erich Fuchs, Alfred Ittner, Robert Jurhs; Rear row: Erich Lachman, Erwin Lambert,

Hans-Heinz Schutt, Heinrich Unverhau, Franz Wolf

In the Nuremberg Trials, the stories of death camps were little known. The prosecution accused criminals mostly on the basis of the atrocities at Auschwitz aid other well-known Nazi camps where the evidence and witnesses were relatively easy to obtain. As for Sobibor, witnesses had dispersed and the criminals unknown to the authorities.

In May 1945 former Sobibor staff member SS Nowak was recognized in East Germany by a former Sobibor inmate, Meir Ziss. Nowak was arrested by Soviet authorities. SS Hubert Gomerski, another Nazi from Sobibor, was also arrested. Then Johann Kiler was arrested, but as a person who felt compassion for the Jews and secretly tried to help them, he was soon released.

One of the worst murderers, Erich Bauer, the chief of the gas chambers, was found fortuitously. He was recognized on the streets of Berlin by survivors. On September 1, 1951 he was sentenced to death and then, after abolition of the death penalty in Germany, to life in prison.

On September 6,1965, the German court in Hagen initiated the proceedings against thirteen former Sobibor Nazis, accusing them of crimes against humanity. On December 20,1966, the following sentences were handed out:

1. Frenzel, Kal, carpenter, arrested in 1962. Accused of personally killing 42 Jews aid helping to murder approximately 250,000 Jews. Found guilty of personally killing 6 Jews and of helping to murder approximately 150,000 Jews. Sentenced to life in prison.

2. Bolender, Kurt, hotel porter arrested in 1961. Accused of personally killing approximately 360 Jews and of helping to murder approximately 86,000 Jews. Committed suicide in prison before sentencing.

3. Wolf, Franz, warehouse clerk; arrested in 1964. Accused of personally killing one Jew and helping to murder 115,000 Jews. Found guilty of having assisted in the murder of at least 39,000 Jews. Sentenced to eight years in prison.

4. lttner, Alfred, laborer; accused of helping to kill approximately 57,000 Jews. Found guilty of having assisted in the murder of approximately 68,000 Jews. Sentenced to four years in prison.

5. Dubois, Werner, mechanic; accused of helping to kill approximately 43,000 Jews. Found guilty of having assisted in the murder of at least 15,000 Jews. Sentenced to three years in prison.

6. Fuchs, Erich, truck driver, accused of helping to kill approximately 3,600 Jews. Guilty of assisting in the murder of at least 79,000 Jews. Sentenced to four years in prison.

7. Lachman, Erich, mason; accused of helping to kill approximately 150,000 Jews; freed.

8. Shutt, Hans, salesman; accused of helping to kill approximately 86,000 Jews; freed.

9. Unverhau, Heinilch, male nurse; accused of helping to kill approximately 72,000 Jews; freed.

10. Juhrs, Robert, porter - janitor; accused of helping to kill approximately 30 Jews; freed.

11. Zlerke, Ernest, saw mill worker; accused of helping to kill approximately 30 Jews; freed.

12. Lambert, Erwin, tile layer; accused of helping to kill an unknown number of Jews; freed.

Thus, most of the Nazis were freed in a relatively short time; their citizenship rights were revoked only for the duration of the prison sentence.

The most notorious of the executioners, SS Stangl, was arrested in Brazil and extradited to Germany. On July 22, 1970 the Dusseldorf Court sentenced him to life in prison for complicity in the murder of 900,000 people

The Ukrainian collaborators also went into hiding after the war. Only a few were ever caught. Some even made it to the United States and other western countries where they were received in the disguise of anti-Communists and displaced persons.

One of them named Iwan Demjanjuk was a guard in Sobibor who was discovered living peacefully as a retired auto worker in the Cleveland suburb of Seven Hills. In February 1966 he was extradited to stand trial in Israel as “Iwan the Terrible” who ran the gas chambers at Treblinka. It was never proved that Demjanjuk was indeed Iwan and Israeli court was forced to release him. However, it duly noted that there was conclusive proof that Demjanjuk was a guard in Sobibor.

Some guards were tried in the Soviet Union: B. Bielakow, M. Matwiejenko, J. Nikifor, W. Podienka, F. Tichonowski and J. Zajcew were found guilty and executed for their part in the Sobibor crimes. In April 1963, at a court in Kiev where Sasha Pechersky was the chief prosecution witness, ten former Ukrainian guards were found guilty and executed, and one was sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment. In a third trial in Kiev held in June 1965, another three former Ukrainian guards of Belzec and Sobibor were sentenced to death.