Belsen Trial

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The Belsen Trial was one of several trials for war crimes and crimes against humanity that the Allied occupation forces conducted against former officials and functionaries of Nazi Germany after the end of World War II.

The Belsen Trial (or, officially, Trial of Josef Kramer and 44 others) began in a Lüneburg courtroom on September 17, 1945 against 45 former SS men, women and kapos (prisoner functionaries) from the Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz concentration camp. The trial took place before a British military court and lasted until November 17, 1945.

The defendants faced charges for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in these two concentration camp through their participation in the torture and mass-murder of camp inmates. All except Starotska were accused of having committed such crimes at Bergen-Belsen; Starotska, Kramer, Klein, Weingartner, Kraft, Hoessler, Borman, Volkenrath, Ehlert, Gura, Grese, Lothe, Lobauer and Schreirer were also charged with atrocities committed at Auschwitz.

Georg Kraft, Josef Klippel, kapo Ilse Lothe, Oscar Schmitz, Fritz Mathes, Karl Egersdorf, Walter Otto, Eric Barsch, Ignatz Schlomovicz, Ida Forster, Klara Opitz, Charlotte Klein, Hildegard Hahnel, and Antoni Polanski were acquitted.
One defendant, Ladislaw Gura, was removed from the trial due to illness.

For those found guilty, the sentences were as follows:

Josef Kramer, Fritz Klein, Peter Weingartner, Franz Hössler, Juana Bormann, Irma Grese, Elisabeth Volkenrath, Karl Francioh, Anchor Pichen, Franz Stofel, and Wilhelm Dorr were sentenced to death by hanging.
Erich Zoddel was sentenced to lifetime imprisonment.
Deputy wardress Herta Ehlert, Otto Calesson, Heinrich Schreirer, kapo Helena Kopper, and Vladislaw Ostrovski were sentenced to 15 years imprisonment.
Kapo Hildegard Lobauer, and guards Ilse Forster, Herta Bothe, Irene Haschke, Gertrud Sauer, Johanne Roth, Anna Hempel, Stanislawa Starotska, and Antoni Aurdzieg were sentenced to 10 years imprisonment.
Gertrude Fiest, and Medislaw Burgraf were sentenced to 5 years, Frieda Walter to 3 years, and Hilde Lisiewitz to one year.

All the executions were carried out on December 13, 1945 by hanging at the prison in Hameln.

A second Belsen Trial was conducted at Luneberg from June 13-18, 1946 by a British Military Court to try Kazimierz Cegielski, a Polish National who was a "KAPO" ("Camp Police") at Bergen Belsen, arriving there in March 1944,according to his testimony. KAPOS were prisoner-trustees assigned by the SS as overseers over their fellow prisoners. They tended to be "political" or criminal prisoners. There were five Kapos in Belsen, two of them under the name "Kazimierz" differentiated as "Big Kazimierz" (the defendant) and "Little Kazimierz.

Cegielski was charged with cruelty and murder and was noted for beating and at times killing the sick and weakend prisoners with large wooden sticks or poles. While in Bergen Belsen he was having an affair with a prisoner, a young Jewish woman from Amsterdam, Henny DeHaas. He was caught in 1946 when he came to Amsterdam ostensibly to find and marry DeHaas. He was convicted on June 18, 1946 and sentenced to death by hanging. The day before he was to be hanged he made a statement saying his real name was Kasimir-Alexander Rydzewski. He was executed at Hameln Prison at 9:20 A.M. on October 11, 1946.