`Auschwitz' Is Bernd Naumann's Revealing
Documentary Record of Trial of 22 Nazis
Saul Carson's review of the play
"The Investigation" by Peter
Weiss, in last week's Jewish News,
should induce further reading on
the subject of the Auschwitz trials.
The play is based on actual facts
gathered from evidence at the
trial of the Hitlerite criminals.
These facts are incorporated in an
important new volume, "Ausch-
witz," by Bernd Naumann, pub-
lished by Frederick A. Praeger
(111 4th, NY 3). It was translated
from the German by Jean Stein-
berg and it contains a most im-
portant evaluative introduction by
Hannah Arendt.
Naumann had written the re-
ports of proceedings at the Frank-
furt trial of the monsters who
conducted the extermination of mil-
lions of Jews at the Auschwitz
extermination camp in Poland for
the Frankfurter Algemeine Zei-
tung. This volume in the main
contains these reports. They ex-
pose the crimes and the criminals
and they place in their proper
light the defendants and their
defenders.
There were 22 Nazi criminals
on trial. There was evidence of
arrogance and defiance. There
were verdicts against them. In
one instance, that of Dr. Frani
Bernhard Lucas, it was shown
that on occasions he showed
some compassion. But as in the
other instances, in his, too, there
was the claim of following or•
tiers. They were found guilty but
appeals are pending in their be-
half, and Naumann's record
Closes with these words: "As the
longest German trial on record
ends, only two verdicts have be•
come legally operative—the ac-
quittals of (Johann Arthur)
Breitwiesser and (Johann) Scho-
berth."
Such is the condemnation of the
author. Such is the expose of a
long trial which indicates a result
of pressure to forget, to abandon
trials, to stop trying the guilty.
In "A Note on the Trial," the
author points out that justice did
triumph over the injustice of Ausch-
witz, that only because it was the
"Auschwitz trial," the case against
the chief accused, Robert Karl Lud-
wig Mulka and the other 21 it "has
ethical, moral, social and educa-
tive implications. It has made an
important contribution to the his-
tory of our era. Auschwitz is no
longer 'far away, somewhere in
Poland.' It has come close to us.
It has now been linked to the mass
murder of individuals committed
by other individuals. The trial has
pitilessly held up this crime for all
to see, and therein lies its justifi-
cation."
But the "sole task" of the
jury "was to establish guilt
within the framework of the
penal code," Naumann asserts,
and he explains: "The Frank-
furt court . . was not an as-
sembly of angels of vengeance
F
World Book Lore
geance .
. they were not
meant to map out the road
that a cleansed people should
henceforth take. The chief
judge, in his oral summation,
made it clear that the judges and
the jury had not conducted an
`Auschwitz trial' and had not
sat in judgment over Germany's
past. The greater insights into
the political, legal and psycho-
logical conditions of the National
Socialist era undoubtedly gained
in the course of the trial could
not influence the jury 'to depart
from its legally mapped out
course and venture forth into
areas closed to code'."
Constantly, throughout the pro-
ceedings at Frankfurt, as recorded
by Naumann, there were heard the
assertions "we only did what we
had to do" and "I only carried out
the orders of the doctors." And
there were the admissions akin to
"they all knew what was going
on."
The evidence is devastating. The
defense was, as indicated, arro-
gant, determined to stick to the
idea of lack of personal guilt be-
cause it was "the order" from
above.
Could Nazis have resisted or-
ders? Hannah Arendt, in her
valuable introduction, makes an
interesting point:
"One thing is sure, and this
one had not dared to believe any
more — namely that everyone
could decide for himself to be
either good or evil in Ausch-
witz.' (Isn't it grotesque that
German courts of justice today
should be unable to render jus-
tice to the good as well as the
bad?) And this decision de-
pended in no way on being a
Jew or a Pole or a German; it
did not depend even upon being
a member of the SS. For in the
midst of this horror, there was
Oberscharfuehrer Flacke, who
had established an 'island of
peace' and didn't want to believe
that, as a prisoner said to him,
`we'll all be murdered. No wit-
nesses will be allowed to sur-
vive.' I hope,' he answered,
"there'll be enough among us to
prevent that'."
"There is the son of an SS man
on duty who comes to the camp
to visit his father. But a child is
a child, and the rule of this par-
ticular place is that all children
must die. Thus he must wear a
sign around his neck 'so they
wouldn't grab him, and into the
gas oven with him.'
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
the baby and dressed me so as
to make me look older. (The
mother held a third child by
the hand.) When Dr. Lucas saw
me he probably realized that
the baby was not mine. He took
it from me and threw it to my
mother.' The court immediately
knows the truth. "Did you per-
haps have the courage to save
the witness?' Lucas, after a
pause, denies everything. And
the woman apparently still ig-
norant of the rules of Ansel'.
witz—where all mothers with
children were gassed upon ar-
rival—leaves the courtroom, un-
aware that she who had sought
out the murderer of her family
had faced the savior of her own
life. This is what happens when
men decide to stand the world
on its head."
"There is the prisoner who
holds the selectees to be killed
by the 'medical orderly' Klehr
with phenol injections. The door
opens and in comes the prison-
er's father. When all is over: 'I
cried and had to carry out my
father myself.' The next day,
Klehr asks him why he had
cried, and Klehr, on being told,
`would have let him live! Why
hadn't the prisoner told him?
Could it be that he was afraid of
him, Klehr? What a mistake.
Klehr was in such a good mood.
Such are the indictments, the
revelations, the exposes, the evi-
dence of at least two acts of kind-
ness—Flacke's and Lucas'.
"Finally, there is the woman
witness who had come to Frank-
furt from Miami because she had
read the papers and seen the
name of Dr. Lucas: 'the man
who murdered my mother and
family interests me.' She tells
how it happened. She had ar-
rived from Hungary in May,
1944. held a baby in my arms.
They said that mothers could
stay with their children, and
therefore my mother gave me
And Miss Arendt makes the add-
ed observation that "Bernd Nau-
mann was wise to abstain almost
completely from analysis and com-
ment and to concentrate on the
actual dialogue—the questions that
were asked, the answers that were
given, thus maintaining consistent-
ly the great drama of court pro-
ceedings. The documentary value of
this book is of the very first order
—for all those who would rather
face the truth than live with illu-
sions in self-deception. Whatever
Friday, November 18, 1966-15
there is to know about the nether-
most regions of Nazi Germany we
know."
Naumann's "Auschwitz" is one
of the very important additions to
the accumulating evidence of the
Nazi crimes and to the mounting
library dealing with the holocaust.
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There was to have been the
search for truth, but Naumann
states that "neither the judges nor
the jury found the truth—in any
event, not the whole truth."
Miss Arendt comments that "in-
stead of the truth, the reader will
find moments of truth, and these
moments are actually the only
means of articulating this chaos
of viciousness and evil." Her com-
ments on the Naumann point about
truth-finding continue:
"There is the boy who knows
he will die, and so writes with
his blood on the barrack walls:
`Andreas Rapaport — lived 16
years.
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There is only this reference to
Flacke in Naumann's chronicle of
events at the Frankfurt trial. After
the witness had made the reference
to Flacke commented upon by Miss
Arendt, the judge asked: "Do you
wish to say that everyone could
decide for himself to be either
good or evil in Auschwitz?", the
witness replied: "That is exactly
what I wish to say." What an in-
dictment of Germans' brutalities!
"There is the 9-year-old who
knows he knows 'a lot,' but
`won't learn any more.'
"There is the defendant Boger,
who finds a child eating an apple,
grabs him by the legs, smashes
his head against the wall, and
calmly picks up the apple to
eat it an hour later.
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