From the Records of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial, Part 3

1. From Single Prosecution to Giant Trial

As the first two parts of this series reported,[1] the judicial investigations concerning crimes committed in concentration camp Auschwitz were initiated in early 1958 due to the accusation by Adolf Rögner, who was at that time in prison. Stuttgart prosecutor Weber had several times described Rögner as a “contradictory and psychopathic professional criminal” (v. I, p. 106r, also p. 85r).[2] For this reason the prosecutor's office was unwilling to request the arrest of Wilhelm Boger. Then, on the basis of the testimony of the witness Paul Leo Scheidel, they decided to go ahead. One week after Scheidel's testimony the request was made (v. I, pp. 128f.) and the following day it was approved by the court (v. I, p. 130).

In a conversation with Hermann Langbein, the president of the Communist-oriented Auschwitz Committee, on Nov. 4, 1958, which was a month after Boger was arrested, Stuttgart chief prosecutor Schabel indicated he would,

Parallel with the prosecution of Boger in Stuttgart, the revelations by journalist Thomas Gnielka of the left-wing Frankfurter Rundschau brought about a gigantic judicial investigation in Frankfurt. On Jan. 15., 1959, Gnielka sent general prosecutor Fritz Bauer, in Frankfurt, documents from concentration camp Auschwitz, which recorded the dates when prisoners in Auschwitz had been shot by guard personnel while trying to escape and who they were, and also an (incomplete) list of the guard detachment at Auschwitz (v. 1a, p. 1, 2/1-2/20).[4]

At the request of Dr. Bauer,[5] the Federal high court decided that the prosecutions against 95 named former SS men who had served at Auschwitz should be combined and that all should be tried before the Land court Frankfurt.[6]

2. The Boger Swing

A certain amount of space was devoted to the so-called “Boger swing” described by the witness Scheidel in the last part of this series. According to the statements of various former prisoners it was a torture instrument which the accused former Gestapo officer Boger used while interrogating prisoners to force them to talk. Although I have so far analyzed only three of the more than seventy volumes of the investigation for the Auschwitz trial, it is still worthwhile to make a small list of the characteristics of this instrument as they have been described by various witnesses, see the table below.

If one applied statistical methods to solve the puzzle of the Boger swing the most probable description would be that of Hugo Breiden. This is supported by the statement of the accused Wilhelm Boger, who confirmed during his first interrogation that during his period of service “intensive interrogation methods” had been used, including blows with a baton, hanging by the hands tied behind the back from a hook in the ceiling, and also the use of the “swing”, which Boger described almost the same way as the prisoner Hugo Breiden. Boger claimed that through his efforts the hangings from the ceiling were discontinued, and that he never administered more than 3 to 5 blows with the baton, so that the prisoners never suffered bodily harm.[7] He also disputed that he had ever participated in any killings.[8]

3. Unbelievable Statements

3.1 General

Mere comparison of the diverse statements on the so-called Boger swing demonstrates that not all that the witnesses say can be taken at face value, even as to what they say is the source of their knowledge. In what follows, a number of statements that are unbelievable or at least suspect on various grounds are noted and briefly analyzed.

3.2 Josef Kret

Volume 1 of the Auschwitz notebook, which deals with the history of the punishment bunker of the political detachment in the main camp of Auschwitz, was introduced as evidence in the investigations.[9] The second part of this notebook contains the report of Josef Kret on his own experiences. Part of this report was summarized as follows by the judicial chief investigator:

When two bodies of approximately the same mass are tied together with a rope and then caused to rotate, they turn about a common center of mass which, depending upon the relative proportions of the masses, will be nearly in the middle of the rope. Therefore, as the said capo began to swing his victim around, he would himself be swung, since the same forces that act on his victim also act on him. If the victim were not a small child, the procedure described would be physically impossible and is proved to be a lie.

3.3 Wilhelm Boger

During his first interrogation, Wilhelm Boger was asked about the events on the “ramp” in Birkenau. Boger described this ramp correctly as a railway siding leading into the camp. During an investigation against SS members who were suspected of misappropriating property of the incoming prisoners, he stated he had only occasionally had anything to do with the ramp in Birkenau. Boger testified as follows about the sorting of the incoming prisoners:[10]

It may be that Boger himself was never involved in the sorting, but what he describes here can not have taken place. The ramp in Birkenau was only completed in May 1944. Its head end ran between the two large crematories II and III, and it was only a relatively short distance on foot from the ramp to the crematories. It is unthinkable that goods trucks would have been used to carry incoming prisoners on the ramp to the crematories. Apparently Boger confused the sorting procedures in Birkenau with those done at the railway platform in the main camp at a time when the railway siding to Birkenau had not yet been completed. >From the main camp to the camp at Birkenau the distance was nearly 3 km. Prisoners who were weak or unable to walk may in that case in fact have been carried by goods truck. Because of the distance, it would have been impossible to know firsthand the exact destination of these goods trucks in the camp at Birkenau. Therefore, it is clear that Boger has confused his personal experiences with things he has heard.

It is also amazing that Boger was never asked anything further about the gassings he mentioned. Since the supposed mass gassings constitute a much greater crime than that of which Boger was accused, one must wonder at the lack of interest of the examining officials. This lack of interest, however, is typical, as most interrogators, whether police, prosecutors, defense attorneys or judges, were usually satisfied when their preconceptions were confirmed. No one had any interest in an investigation of what was stated.

3.4 Curt Posener

At the request of the Communistic Auschwitz Committee, former Auschwitz inmate Curt Posener filed a complaint against Boger, who, Posener asserted from his own experience, tortured prisoner Walter Windmüller to death. Posener stated:[11]

Any man will confirm without hesitation that no man would be able to stand up on the muster ground and whisper to the man in front of him when his testicles are crushed to the degree that blood flows from his pants. Posener did not write the truth.

3.5 Hugo Breiden

The witness Breiden, who has already been mentioned, reported frequently that there had been murders by shooting in the neck in concentration camp Auschwitz, and that in his opinion every officer in the camp was implicated in same, including Boger. He described such events as follows:[12]

Prisoners on their way to execution have always been bound for the simple reason that practically no one will go willingly to be executed. Therefore it is nonsense to state that some strongman had to hold the person to be executed by the arms. This is apparently an imaginary production.

Since 1928 Breiden had been punished by law frequently, the last time being a sentence of 18-months at the reform school and three years loss of civil honor for procuring. He was probably one of the common criminals who were sent to concentration camp Auschwitz.[13]

3.6 Herbert Kurz

The following comment occurs in the interrogation transcript of this witness:[14]

It is somewhat improbable that a middle-level interrogation officer should carry out such mass shootings, and would do so alone. It is also improbable that someone should remember the number of executions so closely after 15 years. Further, it is doubtful that a weapon would have been specially adapted for the purpose of such executions. It is also improbable that anyone would kill by shooting in the neck from a distance of 8 m., and it is especially improbable that anyone-how did this witness know that it was a Jew?-could or would hold the culprits tight with outstretched arms. People intended for execution are generally tied up securely and not held tight in such an absurd way-with outstretched arms! One can not kill 98 persons one after the other in this way. This testimony is false, and the witness is not believable.

3.7 Anatol Indulski

This witness, already noted through his unorthodox testimony on the Boger swing, reported on his claimed experiences with Boger in his letter to the Communistic Auschwitz Committee. Probably truthfully, he writes that during his time at Auschwitz he had had an account at the camp commissary where he could deposit small amounts of money for safekeeping. Because at one point a sum was not paid out that he believed was owed him, he complained, whereby the political detachment was called in due to suspicion of misappropriation. Indulski then stated that Boger berated him without cause, yelled at him and brutally beat him, after which the money he was owed was paid to him.[15] If the disposition of the SS to this prisoner had been so brutal and reckless, how probable is it that he would have been paid his money? The two things do not fit together. The witness apparently thought he needed to clothe his positive experience-the political detachment made sure he received his money-with a negative experience in tune with the Zeitgeist.

3.8 Adolf Rögner

After the prosecutor's office had gathered several witness statements from former Auschwitz prisoners incriminating Wilhelm Boger, they began to take even Adolf Rögner seriously and interrogated him. Rögner served up his colorful concoctions by the bushel:[16]

• He could make concrete accusations against 1,400 to 1,600 persons, of which he could name about 160. No man can have so much particular knowledge over so many persons from his own experience. This demonstrates again Rögner's métier: professional accuser and perjured false witness.

• The small babies of incoming prisoners were supposedly ripped from the arms of their parents and thrown onto a pile-40-50 babies, whereby those on the bottom were crushed or suffocated. From there the babies were allegedly thrown onto a goods truck and then thrown still living into the booming crematory ovens. Every father and every mother will confirm that he or she would rather be shot than to permit such a treatment of his or her children. Such a treatment by the SS would have necessarily led to an uprising of the prisoners that could only have been bloodily suppressed by a massive use of firearms. Therefore, it can be completely excluded that any treatment even remotely like what was described ever happened.

• Rögner claims that he hid behind a tree near the ramp in Birkenau, from where he saw the following:

  “Therefore I kept myself hidden behind a big tree and watched what was happening. Then I saw how Boger went off to the side with a Jewish girl about 15 years old who had just come in on the last transport. […] When Boger and the girl were about 150 m. from his other colleagues-I myself was about 15-20 m. from the scene of the incident-Boger spoke to the girl and right afterward hit her powerfully, causing her to fall to the ground unconscious. I could not understand what Boger said to the girl, but I assume that he wanted to use the girl for sexual purposes. After the girl had been stricken unconscious, Boger could no longer accomplish his shameful purpose, because the selection commando had come closer in the meantime and he would be afraid to be seen. Boger had torn some of the clothing from the girl's body, and some of it he had cut off with his pocket knife-or maybe it was a stiletto. After the girl was stripped down to her underclothes and stockings […]. Then he drew his pistol and shot the girl once each in the left and right breast. Then he stuck the pistol barrel in the girl's genitals and fired one more shot.”

  When the interrogating officer-who had evidently kept his head-commented that because of these shots Boger's activities would have been noticed, Rögner adjusted his statement by adding that in Birkenau “throughout the camp, every day at all times of the day and night” one heard shots, so Boger's murder would not have been noticed. Also no one would have noticed the corpse right away.

  This is the sort of Nazi Sado-pornography that has become so successful. But there are two catches. First, not even in Auschwitz was there gunfire at all hours, and, in any case, three shots at the ramp would not have gone unnoticed. Second, there were no trees near the ramp in Birkenau near which Rögner could have hid.

• Rögner further asserts that children arriving at the ramp were so terrified by the brutality of Boger and other SS members that they clung to the legs of Boger and the SS members, whereon Boger shot them. As if children would cling to the legs of those terrorizing them.

• Rögner asserted further:

  “After the arrival of another prisoner transport in Auschwitz II Boger took one of the babies that lay on the floor, unwrapped it from its diapers, so that it was completely naked, took it by the legs and hit it by the head against the iron edge of the goods car, at first lightly and then with much greater force, until the head was completely squashed. Then he twisted around the arms and legs of the already dead child and threw it to the side.”

  Rögner supposedly watched all this take place at the ramp while he hid behind a tree-but there were no such trees there.

• In addition, Rögner asserted he had witnessed approximately 30 further single murders committed by Boger, that they had been committed in a similar or more gruesome way, and that he had witnessed Boger's excesses of torture, which he observed “unnoticed through the keyhole or through the window”-how childish. Boger stated that the room in which he applied “intensive methods of interrogation” could not be seen into from outside.[17]

The greatest liar in all the land,
the denouncer Rögner is that man.

This comment that the official who interrogated Rögner added to the transcript is especially shocking:

Thus Rögner's perverse brain-spooks quickly developed into “facts of the case” and it is openly admitted that Rögner was allowed to “refresh” his “memory” from the propaganda material he had assembled.

3.9. Ludwig Wörl

This witness stated that in Auschwitz 50 to 300 persons were shot per day, about 100 per day on average.[18] This would mean that practically all registered prisoners who died in Auschwitz were shot, which is clearly not the case.

4. Believable Statements

4.1 General

When he was confronted with the partly wild accusations of former prisoners, Wilhelm Boger made a significant point in his response:[19]

While one can expect that accused persons will attempt to deny responsibility for or to minimize the crimes of which they are charged, at the same time one can expect the opposite behavior from the victims. That does not mean that anything an accused person says that is self-incriminatory must be considered true, but it should almost always be considered that whatever a former victim says that is exculpatory is true, assuming that the accused can no longer pose a threat to him. The last is certainly the case with respect to former SS members, who since 1945 have been generally subject to an open season worldwide without legal restraint. In contrast to the very influential and well-organized former prisoners' organizations, since the end of the war there has arisen not one organization that could represent the interests of former SS members in a political way.

The following passages and excerpts from witness statements are presented because they contradict the usual clichés with unusual honesty and credibility or merely because the witnesses have resisted the general hate hysteria that even then hung over the concentration camp system of the Third Reich.

4.2 Artur Hartmann

This witness was assigned to potato peeling duty because he suffered a foot injury when he arrived in the camp, which he remembers as the duty assignment given many sick or unfit-for-work prisoners-which contrasts with the standard cliché that such prisoners were gassed. Every week those who had become fit for work were reclassified and sent to other tasks. He reported the case of an SS man who had mistreated prisoners and who was later executed for this and other crimes. In any case, he was not mistreated by the concentration camp personnel.[20]

4.3 Henryk Bartoszewicz

This witness worked in the leather works during part of his imprisonment in Auschwitz. He reports in emotional terms on the fact that Boger interrogated him and some of his comrades because of their membership in a resistance organization and kicked him. Amazingly, Bartoszewicz says nothing about the so-called “Boger swing” or about other worse tortures. Although a member of the underground, he was not mistreated any further and he was apparently even able to secure himself favored treatment through bribery. He erred however, in believing that Boger had ordered the execution of several of his partisan comrades. Boger was merely an interrogation officer.[21]

4.4 Aleksander Gorecki

This prisoner reported how Boger came into the infirmary quarters of the main camp of Auschwitz to fetch a prisoner who had just undergone bladder surgery and was scheduled to have prostate surgery. Setting aside whether Gorecki's statement makes sense in detail, it is interesting to discover the noteworthy fact that prisoners in Auschwitz were given surgery to preserve or restore their health.[22]

4.5 Adolf Rögner

Even Rögner's testimony is not completely falsified. For example, with respect to his stay in concentration camp Dachau he reported that in May 1943 he was treated in the infirmary there with the result that he was later able to work again.[23]

4.6 Konrad Lang

Konrad Lang was an inmate of Auschwitz from 1940 to 1945 and in 1943 was chief capo in a plant of the German Armaments Works, where he supervised approximately 2,000 prisoners. He claims to have had dealings with Boger only once, with respect to an attempted sabotage investigation:

Apparently Lang was fairly high in the prisoner heirarchy in the camp and presumably came in contact with many prisoners as well as with many officials of the camp. This makes it utterly amazing that he knows nothing of murders by Wilhelm Boger. If Lang had something to hide (collaboration with the Germans, mistreatment of prisoners) he would have been blackmailable and would have done everything possible not to arouse the ill-will of the prisoner organizations-that is, he would have testified against Boger, even to the point of telling lies. But he says nothing accusatory about Boger. Apart from love of the truth, I can think of no reason why Lang would testify the way he did.[24]

4.7 Moritz Salomon

Salomon claims that he was so badly mistreated by Boger that he was subsequently “fit for gassing”. Nevertheless, a miracle happened and Salomon was sent to the infirmary and restored to health.[25]

4.8 Felix Lubecki

“As I have already explained, I never witnessed mistreatment or other brutalities on the part of Boger. But he was generally feared by us prisoners in concentration camp Auschwitz and everyone stayed away from him. People said Boger hit people, but no prisoner ever told me he had been hit by Boger.”

Witness Hugo Breiden said that Boger's methods of torture were “known worldwide.”[26] How can it be then, that Lubecki knew nothing about them? Either he was grossly out of touch, in which case he was not fit to be a witness, or professional criminal Breiden and his ilk were not honest, which we have already shown to be the case elsewhere.

4.9 Jakob Lewinski

The testimony of Lewinski is unquestionably the most impressive that was made in 1958 during the investigations for the Auschwitz trial.[27]

According to his testimony, Lewinski, who was classified as a half-Jew by the Nuremberg Law because he was the son of a Jewish father, was sent to Auschwitz because he had refused to divorce his wife, who was classified as a full-Jew. His wife was apparently deported at the same time he was, but not with him, and he never heard from her again. She was later declared legally dead, but no one ever knew what her fate had been.

Lewinski claims that it was only later that he heard that the sorting on arrival at Auschwitz was what meant the difference between life and death in the gas chamber. In any case, he does not say that he already knew that.

He described his living conditions in the work camp Auschwitz-Monowitz as “humane”.[28]

Lewinski stated that because of the 12-hour workday with insufficient nourishment there was initially a high death rate, but conditions improved and the death rate was substantially reduced.

Bear in mind: this prisoner was not only imprisoned for unjust cause, but also lost his wife because of this government. He must have possessed decency of high order to be able to make such a statement. One can only say, hats off!

Lewinski had a clash with the political detachment because he had bribed a civilian worker at Buna in order to receive larger amounts of money and packages from his mother in Berlin. He shared the contents of these packages with the aforesaid civilian worker, but word of this illegal arrangement leaked out and he was ordered to appear before Boger to be questioned. Because the money he was sent amounted to several thousand Reichsmarks, Boger suspected Lewinski of planning a large-scale breakout. Lewinski described how Boger questioned him. First he was made to stand at the camp gate where he watched the work commando march out, which they did “as if to the sound of a brass band”.[31]

Next he was “intensively” interrogated by Boger, that is, whipped on the seat of the pants to make him talk. Since Lewinski knew nothing about an escape attempt or other illegal activity, and denied having done anything wrong he irritated Boger to the point where the latter hit him with his fists. Finally Boger gave up and believed Lewinski that there was no conspiracy behind this case of corruption. Lewinski said the transcript of the interrogation that he was given to sign was exact and objective. Three SS members consulted together on what should be done with Lewinski:[32]

That irritated Boger once more, whereupon he gave Lewinski five more strokes of the whip, which caused Lewinski to almost lose consciousness. Then supposedly Boger said:

When Lewinski mentioned that he had had nothing to eat or drink the whole day, Boger fed him from his own provisions. As punishment for this incident of corruption Lewinski was given a week's stay in detention barracks. Boger then designated Lewinski for “special treatment”-Lewinski stated Boger instructed the SS orderly as follows:[33]

The official interrogating Lewinski wrote this dry comment:[34]

Consequently, Lewinski was classified as a “useless” witness for the purposes of the prosecution. From a historical viewpoint, however, Lewinski's statement is a priceless example of truthfulness and decency.

Notes

First published in Vierteljahreshefte für freie Geschichtsforschung, 7(1) (2003), pp. 95-101. Reproduction of the first two pages of the transcript of the interrogation of Jakob Lewinski are reprint there; more pages are posted on the internet (vho.org/VffG/2003/1). Translated by Michael Humphrey.