text:
German Justice System
wolfiedubois
Case study of the trial of a former guard of Auschwitz Concentration Camp
simpanSimpan German Justice System Untuk Nanti
The Dry: A Novel
The Good Daughter: A Novel
Wrongful Death: A Novel
Cleaning the Gold: A Jack Reacher and Will Trent Short Story
The Sleeping Beauty Killer
The Bone Tree: A Novel
Natchez Burning: A Novel
Plain Truth: A Novel
The Plea: A Novel
If I Run
Baltimore Blues: The First Tess Monaghan Novel
The Dark Side of Midnight: The Other Side of Midnight, Rage of Angels, Bloodline
Chasing Darkness: An Elvis Cole Novel
The Tenth Justice
Bringing Adam Home: The Abduction That Changed America
A Study in Charlotte
The Girl on the Bridge
Walking Shadows: A Decker/Lazarus Novel
The German Justice System: A Case Study
CLAUS JORDAN
For a short time during the war, Gottfried Weise was a German guard in the Auschwitz concentra-
tion camp. Was he therefore automatically a subhuman not deserving to be heard? Gottfried Weise
asserted that he did not do anything evil in these months, and ten former internees who could re-
member Weise confirmed this. However, two other witnesses accused Weise of murder. Shouldnt
both sides be heard and their arguments weighed? That is the way it is meant to be in a state under
the rule of law. But, as we shall see, reality is very different. In fact, the case of Gottfried Weise is
an example of the hypocrisy of the entire German establishment, not just the legal system.
Totally convinced that they are in the sole possession of the absolute truth regarding the Holo-
caust, they simply refuse to even consider the possibility that they could be wrong, and that their ac-
tions could cause tremendous sufferings for innocent people. As soon as the Holocaust is involved
in any court case, prosecutors and judges, media and politicians, en masse, simply ignore all exon-
erating evidence!
In a very important book, Rdiger Gerhard has documented how, during the first trial in 1991, the
judges refused to hear or accept any evidence from the ten friendly witnesses presented by defense
lawyers for Gottfried Weise.
These inmates did not witness the alleged crimes claimed by others,
and thus could not contribute anything to clarification, so went the courts reasoning. Since, in the
eyes of German law courts, a crime is almost indisputably proved of having occurred as soon as a
Holocaust survivor claims that it happened, German courts more or less do accept only incrimi-
nating evidence. Consequently, the ensuing criminal proceedings merely serve the purpose of estab-
lishing the dimension of the crime, naming the culprits and meting out the punishment they deserve.
The following article describes the Sisyphus-like struggle of the defense team in their attempt to
exonerate Gottfried Weise and make those blinded by their arrogance and self-righteousness see the
light of truth. They failed in the first; Gottfried Weise died without justice being done. His constant
friend and defender Claus Jordan also passed away. May this article help to make the second goal
come true.
1. Preface
Germanys justice system is based on the principle of a separation of powers. The administration
of justice is supposed to be independent of politics. It does, however, have to conform to the law,
and laws are passed by political bodies. So far, so good at least as long as legislative practices in
turn are committed to upholding the legal traditions that have evolved over time and have been tried
and proven in practice.
But if legislative practice begins to be guided by political opportunism, and if special laws are
passed to which jurisprudence must bow, then the administration of justice becomes a tool of poli-
tics.
The 1979 rescission of the statute of limitations for murder in Germany is an example of special
legislation that has had grave consequences. The decision to revoke this statute was the result of po-
litical pressure. Concerns regarding potential miscarriages of justice were rationalized away. The
R. Gerhard (ed.), Der Fall Gottfried Weise, 2
ed., Trmer, Berg 1991, pp. 31ff., 40, 43-47, 51ff., 60, 73. See M.
Khlers article for a more general view.
GERMAR RUDOLF (ED.) DISSECTING THE HOLOCAUST
case of Gottfried Weise, set out in this chapter, shows how very justified these concerns were and
how thoughtlessly all cautions were swept under the table.
It is my hope that the discussion of this case will prompt the correction of the legislative error of
1979 and that the German justice system will return to its naturally evolved tradition, as it was pre-
dicted that same year:
[] Perhaps there will in fact be a few new cases that are brought to trial as a sort of justification
(eagerly seized upon) for the rescission of the statute of limitations. According to the experts, however,
it is not likely. In light of the strict rules of evidence, which cannot be tampered with, it is doubtful that
any verdicts can still be handed down. One day, around the year 2000, the stipulation that murder is
not subject to a statute of limitations will be discovered amongst the nooks and crannies of our justice
system, and people will wonder how this came about. The umpteenth revision to the Criminal Code will
then casually correct the problem unless by that time we will have a state which claims for itself that
omnipotence that we [Germans] are yet free to call hubris.
2. Rescission of the Statute of Limitations: Breach of Legal Tradition
On March 20, 1979, and July 3, 1979, the members of the Bundestag, the lower house of the then
West German Parliament, debated on the rescission of the statute of limitations for murder. The cor-
responding bill was passed into law on July 3, 1979, with a very close margin of 255 to 222 votes.
2.1. Influence From Abroad
Naturally, there was interest in this question abroad, but this interest was fostered by German cir-
cles as well. For example, in an article titled American Delegation on the Issue of Rescission: To-
day at Schmidts the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported about a tour by the Los
Angeles Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies that had been financially supported by the
German Foreign Office in Bonn.
Members of the Israeli Parliament also sought to influence the
decision-making process at the urging of German authorities. For example, Gideon Hausner, mem-
ber of the Knesset and the Israeli Holocaust Center Yad Vashem, reports that German Federal
Chancellor Helmut Schmidt urged him to impress upon the German legislators that National Social-
ist crimes must not be allowed to lapse under a statute of limitations which he proceeded to do
most insistently.
2.2. Judicial Concerns
Reminders that Article 103 of the German Basic Law prohibits retroactive laws were brushed
aside with reference to a 1969 decision of the Federal Constitutional Court. The opponents of the
rescission of the statute of limitations raised further judicial concerns. Dr. Alois Mertes (CDU/CSU)
pointed out the conflict between justice, and peace as required by the law. In European legal tradi-
tion, limitation means exclusively the protection of the state [and certainly of the individual as
well] from miscarriages of justice. And:
In the countries belonging to the Anglo-American legal community, the state safeguards against the
risk of injustice in other ways, namely through the principle of opportuneness and through especially
strict rules of evidence. In German and European law, limitation is the necessary corrective to the
principle of legality. [] Incidentally, it is one of the great hypocrisies of our time that the punitive
F. K. Fromme, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), July 5, 1979: Was man sagt, und was man meint.
Debate on the 18th revision of the Criminal Code; see Plenary Transcripts 8/145 and 8/166.
FAZ, March 15, 1979: Den Vorhang nicht fallen lassen.
FAZ, June 18, 1979, p. 11: Vlkermord darf nicht als normales Verbrechen gelten.
CLAUS JORDAN THE GERMAN JUSTICE SYSTEM: A CASE STUDY
purpose of expiatory justice is everywhere relegated to second place in favor of resocialization, while in
the case of National Socialist crimes expiation is made the foremost and sole purpose of punishment
even after 35 to 47 years of resocialization.
In his statement of position, Hans-Jochen Vogel, then Federal Minister of Justice, did not express
any concern about miscarriages of justice, but responded merely to the suggestion that alleged Na-
tional Socialist criminals could no longer be convicted anyway due to lack of evidence. He com-
mented that modern techniques of criminal investigation were able to
secure evidence of crimes and perpetrators in a way that allows the conviction of the criminal even
decades after the fact.
But he made no mention of applying the techniques of modern criminology to ensure the preven-
tion of miscarriages of justice.
Opponents of rescission who feared that convictions might result despite insufficient evidence
cautioned against one-sided investigation.
Proponents, on the other hand, cited the principle of in
dubio pro reo i.e., when in doubt, acquit which practice they clearly considered a matter of
This certainly was shown even more clearly by Friedrich Fromme, co-editor of the Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung, in his aforementioned newspaper article where he wrote of the strict rules of
evidence, which cannot be tampered with, as of something self-evident and to be taken for granted.
Apart from (pseudo-)morally suspecting each other, all discussions that flare up time and again
about the rescission or prolongation of the statute of limitations in the Bundestag altogether concen-
trated on the question, how to punish the allegedly committed NS-injustice best, but never on the
question, if a perpetuation of evidence after such a long period of time can possibly clear up the ac-
tual events of the past. Since everybody was convinced of the reality of all sorts of alleged crimes, a
criminological hearings of evidence were deemed to be necessary only in order to assign alleged
guilt and therewith the supposed need for penance.
None of these self-evident matters were acknowledged in the case of Gottfried Weise: Weise
was convicted with nary a thought given to the acquittal demanded by reasonable doubt. To the de-
fendants detriment, the strict rules of evidence were tampered with most grossly. There was no sign
of modern forensic or criminal investigation in his trial, least of all where such endeavors would
have resulted in an exoneration of the accused. However: H.-J. Vogel had suggested such tech-
niques for strictly one-sided purposes, namely to procure incriminating evidence.
2.3. The Fig-Leaf: An Expert Report
Originally the statute of limitations was to be rescinded only for cases of so-called NS-murders.
Members of Parliament Maihofer and Helmrich openly supported this plan. However, constitutional
concerns were raised about such very obvious special legislation, so that in the end the rescission
was applied to murder in general.
The question regarding the constitutionality of a general rescission of limitation for murder re-
mained open. In his capacity as expert, Professor Bckenfrde had stated that the rescission of limi-
Plenary Transcripts 8/166, p. 13235. Emphasis in the transcript.
Plenary Transcripts 8/145, p. 11612.
Eg. Dr. Lenz (Bergstrae, CDU) in the Bundestag debate of March 29, 1979, Plenary Transcripts 8/145, p. 11609.
Eg. Dr. Schwarz-Schilling (CDU), Plenary Transcripts 8/145, p. 11644.
Cf. Deutscher Bundestag, Presse- und Informationszentrum (ed.), Zur Verjhrung nationalsozialistischer Verbrechen
in Zur Sache. Themen parlamentarischer Beratung, vol. 3-5/80, Bonn 1980.
Cf. F. K. Fromme, FAZ, Feb. 14, 1979: Die Angst vor dem, was man will.
tation becomes unconstitutional if it means that normative regulations of trial procedure can no
longer be uniformly applied. He wrote:
[] This may happen, for example, if [] the results obtained are random at best, i.e., due to the un-
stoppable deterioration of evidence, insurmountable investigative difficulties, lack of opportunity for ef-
fectively securing evidence, fundamental uncertainty or insufficient objectifiability of the crime.
It is beyond the scope of this report to ascertain whether a rescission of the statute of limitations for NS-
murders or for murder in general would reverse into such impracticability. This requires a detailed
practical understanding and assessment of actual conditions, particularly of the investigative and evi-
dential problems involved [].
In other words, this report did not state that the rescission was constitutional. Rather, it stated that
at the time (1979) no unconstitutionality was yet apparent, and that to determine this matter conclu-
sively it would be necessary to examine the actual conditions of several cases.
2.4. Empty Promises
One empty promise was the assurance, given when an expert report was obtained, that the overall
constitutionality of the matter would be ascertained. In fact, however, clearly no one in politics or
science, no one amongst the guardians of democracy, and no one in the media really wants to know,
else the supplementation and conclusion of the report would long have been commissioned by now,
either from Professor Bckenfrde or from another source.
In 1979, the embarrassing vulnerability of the core issues of constitutionality and miscarriage of
justice were shielded with Bckenfrdes unfinished report as with a fig-leaf, garnished with sanc-
timonious aphorisms.
The case of Gottfried Weise reveals that these were but hollow phrases and empty promises.
3. The Case of Gottfried Weise: an Example of Reversal Into
Impracticability
In 1988, pensioner Gottfried Weise was convicted in Wuppertal on five counts of murder. An ex-
amination of the Wuppertal trial reveals all the characteristics identified in 1979 by Professor Dr.
Bckenfrde as being signs of a reversal into impracticability:
a) Unstoppable Deterioration of Evidence: It has been impossible to obtain the transfer papers
which, together the two other documents on hand, would prove that Weise was not employed at
the alleged site of the crime in Auschwitz until September 1944. (The alleged time of the crime
being June/July 1944.)
b) Insurmountable Investigative Difficulties: The Court was not even able to develop a realistic
conception of the alleged site of the Freimark cases. (cf. Section 3.2.2.)
c) Lack of Opportunity for Effectively Securing Evidence: Both the Public Prosecutors Office
and the Court neglected to obtain a statement from former inmate Dr. Eisenschimmel in due
time. His testimony would have gone a long way towards exonerating the accused. When the de-
fense attempted to secure this testimony, Dr. Eisenschimmel was already so ill that he could no
longer testify.
d) Lack of Objectifiability of the Crime: Wherever concrete facts were concerned, the Court was
always very vague in its findings. In the Freimark cases, for example, the alleged time of the
crime was given as June/July 1944, and the names and sometimes even the sex of the alleged
victims are not stated. This makes it much more difficult to locate concrete counter-evidence
FAZ, June 30, 1979, no. 149, p. 6.
such as might have been possible, for example, by cross-reference to the Auschwitz Death Lists
now available.
The Wuppertal Court overcame the evidential problems only by deviating considerably from the
strict rules of evidence.
Another point which must be mentioned is one that Bckenfrde could not possibly have con-
ceived of because he spoke from the perspective of naturally evolved legal tradition: What hap-
pened in the Wuppertal trial was practically a
e) Reversal of the Burden of Proof: The accused was in the desperate position of being unable to
prove his innocence, e.g., to prove that he could not have been at the alleged site of the crime at
the stated time. The Court was satisfied with contradictory and vague eyewitness statements, of
whose doubtful quality it glossed over with the claim that it was exactly these contradictions that
showed that the witnesses had not coordinated their testimony beforehand. It was up to the ac-
cused to prove his innocence.
It was not until long after the trial that exonerating evidence was found which the prosecutors had
unlawfully avoided and prevented from being obtained in time.
3.1. Overview of the Background, Course and Consequences of the Wuppertal
Trial of Gottfried Weise
3.1.1. Background of the Case of Gottfried Weise
Gottfried Weise was badly injured when a soldier, and lost an eye. He was certified unfit for front-
line or guard duty, and after training as bookkeeper he was detailed to the concentration camp
Auschwitz, where he was first employed in the Hftlingsgeldverwaltung [Bookkeeping for Prison-
ers Funds] outside the Camp and later in the Personal Effects Warehouse II in Birkenau, where the
possessions of camp inmates were stored. There Weise had to supervise a group of Jewish women.
After Auschwitz was dissolved he conducted this group safely to the Allies, via Ravensbrck. All of
his inmates had testified for him: how he had worked to make their lot easier in Auschwitz, that
they had been glad to be reassigned to his command during the transport, that once he had even car-
ried a disabled girl out from under Russian artillery fire. After minute scrutiny in the course of three
years of imprisonment, Gottfried Weise was released. His conscience was clear, and so he pro-
ceeded to do something quite extraordinary: through the Red Cross and the World Jewish Congress
he searched for his former protgs. In the verdict handed down by the Wuppertal District Court,
however, these efforts on the part of the accused are only mentioned disparagingly as signs of his
great cunning.
3.1.2. How Did the Indictment Come About?
In 1962, during the trial of Richard Baer in Vienna, one witness, Herbert Tischler, had told of an
SS Unterscharfhrer or Rottenfhrer Weiser who, he claimed, had killed an inmate when he tried
to shoot a tin can off his head. Thus [William] Tell of Auschwitz was born.
Yet, an official document identified Tischler as an unreliable witness, and it was a known fact that
he was wanted by Interpol for all sorts of criminal acts. But as witness for the prosecution in an NS
trial, Tischler was considered credible. His reference to the alleged Tell of Auschwitz entered the
mills of criminal prosecution. The alleged Tell shooting was ascribed to former Unterscharfhrer
Gottfried Weise. Inquiries were begun in 1980; questionnaires with details of the alleged crime and
with photos of Gottfried Weise were sent to Poland, Israel, Hungary, and the United States.
Verdict of the Wuppertal District Court, Jan. 28, 1988, pp. 104-107.
In other words, witnesses were sought and found. With the example of the witness Freimark I
will show how this search for witnesses and the refreshing of their memories was done.
3.1.3. What Were the Charges?
On June 7, 1985, the Public Prosecutors Office of Cologne charged the pensioner Gottfried
Weise, resident in Solingen, born in Waldenburg on March 11, 1921, with having committed mur-
der in the concentration camp Auschwitz.
On January 28, 1988, Weise was found guilty of five counts of murder and sentenced to life im-
prisonment by the Wuppertal Jury Court headed by Wilfried Klein, now vice-president of the Wup-
pertal District Court.
According to the witness Jzsefne Lazar, the accused committed two murders (the Lazar cases)
in Personal Effects Warehouse II by means of the so-called tin can shooting, where the accused
placed tin cans on the head and shoulders of his victims and then shot at the tins and then at the vic-
tims.
According to the witness Jacob Freimark, the accused also committed three murders (the Frei-
mark cases) in June/July 1944 in Personal Effects Warehouse I, namely:
a) one murder in a hut (the hut murder), and
b) approximately four weeks later, two murders in an area between the camp fence and a ramp
some 30 ft. away (the ramp murders).
3.1.4. How Did the Trial Proceed?
The entire trial took place against the backdrop of a foregoing conviction of the accused in a sce-
nario of hatred. The press and the Court complemented each other. For example, the press report
quoted in the following repeated eyewitness testimony which, though proven to be false,
was gul-
libly accepted at face value not only by the credulous public but also by the Court, which actually
included even this so easily refutable atrocity tale in its written Reasons for Sentence:
Children Were Thrown Alive Into The Burning-Pit
[] When a new transport of inmates arrived at the camp, the children were immediately separated
from the rest of the group, and thrown alive into a blazing fire-pit, [].
Suddenly, the intoxicated Blind One arrived (thats what the inmates called the accused, Weise),
turned the light on and ordered Olga [] to dance [] It was horrible! Outside, the screams of the
children. [] The Blind One ordered the pregnant girl to stand still, and kicked her in the stomach with
his boot. The young woman screamed and collapsed. []
This sort of atrocity tale served to brand the accused as the Beast of Auschwitz not only in the
eyes of the public, but also in those of the Court. While the accused was not convicted for the al-
leged live burnings, the assumption that they did take place and that the accused had displayed a
great deal of callous hard-heartedness most certainly did influence the Court in reaching its verdict.
This is proven clearly by the detailed way in which the Court repeats this atrocity tale in its Reasons
for Sentence and then accuses the defendant of utterly callous hard-heartedness.
The biased attitude of the judges was also clearly apparent in the courtroom. For example, the
VVN the Organization of Persons Persecuted by the Nazi Regime, a group known at that time to
be financed from East Germany and directed by the Stasi, the East German State Secret Service
There was no burning pit at the location mentioned, near Personal Effects Depot II; cf. the chapter by J. C. Ball, this
volume.
Reasons for the Wuppertal Auschwitz verdict of Jan. 28, 1988, p. 96.
Wuppertal newspaper General-Anzeiger, June 10, 1987.
this VVN had handed out fliers in and outside the courtroom. The Presiding Judge offered a gentle
reprimand for the distribution of the fliers in the courtroom something like that, he said, should
not be disseminated about the accused until after he had been convicted. But no stop was put to the
continued distribution of the leaflets.
The constant taking of shorthand notes by representatives of the VVN and by escorts of the wit-
nesses for the prosecution was also not forbidden by the Court, which kindly overlooked it. (Inci-
dentally, Ruth Kulling of the VVN always had a seat in the area reserved for members of the press.)
In contrast, the defense counsel had urged the son of the accused to refrain from taking notes, as do-
ing so was not permitted during the trial. Several times it was also observed that the VVN mem-
bers, after making their shorthand transcripts with impunity, proceeded to read their notes to the
witnesses for the prosecution before these took the witness stand.
In any normal trial the defense could and should have intervened here, but in light of the scenario
of hate that had been tolerated and even partly contributed to by the Court, the defense in the Wup-
pertal trial saw no purpose in doing so. In order to avoid providing even further material for all the
advance preparation and choreographing of the witnesses for the prosecution (in flagrant violation
of all rules of procedure, by the way), the defense counsel had advised the defendant to refrain from
making any statements of his own. After the verdict had been handed down, the press twisted this
accordingly:
The defendants silence, said Klein, showed that Weise had no facts with which to counter the accusa-
tions the past has caught up with him now and will not be hushed up.
No one seems to have noticed the monstrous implications of this statement: the defendant had no
facts with which to counter the accusations! What this suggests is that the accusations advanced in
the indictment and by the witnesses were facts in and of themselves, which the accused was unable
to refute. But accusations, of course, are by no means facts.
But the reversal of the burden of proof, accepted so matter-of-factly by the press, is no mere slip
of the judicial tongue. The closer one examines the trial documents, the more clear it becomes how
much the Court allowed its own bias to guide it. In any normal trial the accused is presumed inno-
cent until proven guilty, and any uncertainty dictates the maxim when in doubt, acquit. In Wup-
pertal this was not so.
In the given situation of reversed burden of proof, it was of course an easy matter to turn all the
many investigative problems, which are well to be expected in such a very late trial, against the ac-
cused especially those set out in Sections 2a-c.
Nevertheless, the accused would have had a fighting chance to prove his innocence if thats the
way it had to be if the Court had not inexorably restricted or downright denied him every oppor-
tunity for doing so. One of the hobbles placed on his defense was that the Court relentlessly per-
petuated the prosecutions one-sided selection of witnesses: the prosecution had a wealth of infor-
mation regarding potential witnesses at its disposal. It was the duty of the Public Prosecutors Of-
fice to sift through these for witnesses for the prosecution as well as for the defense, but this was not
done. Even in the course of preliminary investigations the former inmates were only urged to testify
if they claimed to have incriminating information, such as for example the witness Lazar in her tes-
timony in Budapest on June 2, 1987, and June 16, 1987. The transcripts
show, among other things,
how compassionately and urgently the Presiding Judge Klein who had traveled all the way from
Wuppertal for this purpose strove to persuade the witness to consent to testify in Wuppertal. Po-
Article by Ulla Dahmen-Oberbossel in the Wuppertal General-Anzeiger of Jan. 20, 1988.
Copies of both transcripts were appended to the Motion for Appeal of Aug. 12, 1988.
tential witnesses for the defense were dealt with rather differently. When the defense suggested the
questioning of an ill witness, Ms. Moische Korn, in Israel, this was rejected:
The motion to hear evidence does not indicate any reasons that the witness can be examined in the
foreseeable future.
The defense attempted to counteract this one-sided selection of witnesses by submitting numerous
Motions to summon former inmates (more than twenty) and by further motions to hear evidence,
but all were summarily rejected. These refusals were justified time and again by the comment that
the best these witnesses could do would be to testify that they knew nothing of the alleged crimes
committed by the accused. This sort of testimony was said to be irrelevant because, first of all, the
inmates could not have known everything and, second, after 43 years they could not possibly re-
member exactly.
The Wuppertal Court consistently downgraded Motions to hear evidence, submitted by the de-
fense, to the level of Motions to obtain evidence, only to reject them.
In the first Order for Exemp-
tion From Imprisonment, however, the Provincial High Court and Court of Appeal in Dsseldorf
had stated that in its view all potential witnesses should be heard, since the difficulty involved in es-
tablishing the truth after such a long time warranted this.
This is most remarkable, as it is not the
usual procedure for another court to attend to matters of ascertaining facts; on principle, this is the
sole task of the Court responsible for the trial. The Provincial High Court and Court of Appeal in
Dsseldorf reinforced its opinion by granting Weise renewed exemption from imprisonment after
the Wuppertal verdict.
Another example of suppression of evidence is the testimony of Isaac Liver, given on October 18,
1985, at the headquarters of the National Police in Villejuif, France. The numbers in the following
quoted excerpts refer to written questions to the witness:
No. 2: I worked in Camp Canada, first in Auschwitz in Canada No. 1, then in Canada No. 2, which
was in Birkenau, approximately 4.3 miles from Auschwitz. In 1944 I was in Birkenau [].
No. 4: The name Gottfried Weise and the nicknames the Blind Man or Sleepy are absolutely unfa-
miliar to me.
No. 5: I did not witness the crimes mentioned in this brief and never heard anyone talk about them. I be-
lieve that this story is untrue, as there is no doubt that all the prisoners in the camp and probably those
in the other camps as well would have known of it.
Personally, I feel that this story is untenable; everything described in this brief [!] is completely new to
me and if these things had really taken place in the camp the way they are described, I could not but
have known about them.
An unprejudiced court would naturally have examined precisely this witness in detail so as to
avoid getting a one-sided account of the events, to avoid giving the public a one-sided story, and to
ascertain the powers of recollection and the credibility of the various witnesses by comparing their
testimony. But the Wuppertal Court knew from the outset which witnesses were credible and
which were not. And so the witness Isaac Liver was not heard. The transcript of his earlier examina-
tion, while available to the Court, was not read, thus remaining unknown to the public as well as to
the jury. Other testimony that could have exonerated the accused and corrected the purely negative
way he had been presented to the public was swept under the carpet the same way.
Rejection of Motions to Take Evidence nos. 1-13, quoted here from p. 17 of the Motion for Appeal.
Motion for Appeal, p. 6.
P. 1909f. of the Court files.
Not only did the Court refuse to call witnesses for the defense, it also thwarted the timely presen-
tation of material evidence. This will be discussed in greater detail in Section 3.1.7.2.
3.1.5. Reasons for Sentence
On January 28, 1988, the First Division of the Wuppertal District Courts Jury Court decided that
the accused was guilty of five counts of murder, the overall sentence being life imprisonment. The
first eighteen pages of the Reasons for Sentence are devoted to a representation of the historical
background based on generally known and historically established facts with
reference to, for example: Buchheim/Broszat/Jacobsen/Krausnick, Anatomie des SS-Staates, Walter-
Verlag, volumes I and II; Hofer, Der Nationalsozialismus Dokumente 1933-1945, Fischer-Verlag;
Kogon, Der SS-Staat, Wilhelm-Heyne Verlag.
Auschwitz literature giving sound, verifiable and useful factual information is completely lacking
in this list of works.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the descriptions of the camp, its organization and circumstances,
which take up another 40 pages of the Reasons for Sentence, contain numerous patently and veri-
fiably false claims and statements. For example, on pages 57-58 of the Reasons for Sentence it ac-
tually states, verbatim:
For many of the inmates their most valuable possession was a bowl that served equally for their calls
of nature and for eating.
The purpose served by the concentration camp Auschwitz as mass extermination camp shall not be
discussed in detail here, as the crimes which the defendant committed, i.e., is said to have committed
are not connected with the orders given in the context of the Final Solution.
But details mentioned further on in the Reasons for Sentence repeatedly refer to the well-known
scenario. One example of this is to be found in the context of the Wuppertal Courts attempts to ex-
plain away particularly incredible claims contained in the witness Lazars thoroughly imaginative
testimony. In Budapest, Lazar had stated under oath that she had personally seen many murders tak-
ing place, for example:
3. I could move around freely in Camp Canada and so I could observe how SS-men shot prisoners.
4. Executions happened almost everyday, almost hourly. I saw it with my own eyes.
Now this was in contradiction to the statements of most former inmates who had testified earlier.
But the Court managed to come up with an explanation for this discrepancy. It explained this
gross exaggeration away by stating that the experiences associated with the mass dyings taking
place at the nearby crematoria had fused with the personal memories of the witness.
At numerous other points in the Reasons for Sentence as well, the judges made reference to the
commonly known, historically established facts in which they believe so firmly. For example, the
absolutely unbelievable claim that the accused could take wild potshots in the camp with impunity
is simply rationalized with the comment that after all it is commonly known that the life of an in-
mate was of no value.
Even if one were to accept the commonly known nature of this idea, one ought at least to have
asked how such mad pistol-popping could have been possible without also endangering the other
guards. In a somewhat closer investigation one could have examined old guard books, which would
Verdict, pp. 65, 66.
Verdict, p. 151.
have revealed that every weapon, each and every bullet had to be accounted for. For example, I had
no trouble obtaining a number of sample pages from concentration camp guard books from archives
in Prague pages which document precisely that the procedure of issuing weapons and ammuni-
tion, which every soldier is familiar with, was also observed no less strictly by the concentration
camp guards. With a little less common knowledge and a little more objective investigation, the
Court would not have fallen for that bit of nonsense about the mad beast taking potshots in the camp
whenever he pleased, and getting away with it without so much as a reprimand.
Under German law, there is no appeal in matters of fact, which would permit the re-examination
of the findings which the Court arrived at in this way of common knowledge. In trials of severe
crimes (as murder or denial
) there is no option for appeal, only for revision, which investigates
technical errors of procedure but does not examine facts deemed to have been established as such.
3.1.6. Revision
The defense had concentrated on the Lazar cases, and on the branding of the accused as the
Beast of Auschwitz which they involved. The defense considered the witness Freimark, who did
not enter the picture until quite late, to be so utterly incredible that it felt that a conviction based on
his accusations was impossible. This was a mistake on the part of the defense, which was not versed
in the vagaries of Special Trials. Nothing was impossible in Wuppertal.
The attorney in charge of the revision also focused on the Lazar cases. He believed that evidence
for even partial incorrectness would force a new trial. This was another mistake with tragic conse-
quences for the accused. On March 31, 1989, the Federal Supreme Court quashed the verdict, but
only with reference to these two alleged murders while, surprisingly, upholding it for the remain-
der of the charges, i.e., for the other three alleged murders, the Freimark cases.
3.1.7. The Final Verdict: The Freimark Cases
What was the nature of the very personalized evidence (as the attorney for revision put it) in
these Freimark cases that had not been affected by the revision process? On the basis of Freimarks
testimony, the Wuppertal Court had considered three murders in Personal Effects Warehouse I, the
so-called Old Camp Canada, as being proved:
a) Shooting of an unidentified male inmate on an unspecified day in June or July 1944. This crime
was said to have been committed in a hut described by the Court as Bedding hut.
b) Approximately four weeks later (but still in June or July 1944): shooting of two inmates from
Grodno (sex unspecified). Another inmate is said to have been murdered by SS-man Graf on this
occasion. (This branded Graf as murderer and discredited him as witness for the defense. A Vi-
ennese court had acquitted him, but the Wuppertal Court fought tooth and nail against having the
Viennese records brought in for reference.) These crimes allegedly took place in an area between
a fence and a ramp located on a rail line some 30 ft. from the fence. At the time of the crime,
hundreds of inmates had been boarding thirty to forty wagons via the ramp, while floodlights
turned night into day.
3.1.7.1. Unconditional Faith in Freimarks Statements
For the Wuppertal Court, the testimony of the only alleged eyewitness, Freimark, sufficed to war-
rant a conviction. The Court commented on Freimark:
The credibility of this witness is beyond question.
In this context, German law indeed ranks Holocaust denial as severe as theft, rape, robbery, and murder.
His credible testimony is already enough to convince the Court of the factuality of the crimes of the ac-
cused as these are set out in 1a) and b).
It was very rash to condemn a person to life imprisonment on the sole basis of trust in the veracity
and probity of one single witness. Despite all the difficulties ensuing from the advanced deteriora-
tion of evidence, it was possible to find new proof which reveals that the witness Freimark had not
told the truth.
The Courts unconditional faith in its witness Freimark is incomprehensible. Many such contra-
dictions had already become apparent during the trial; the Court chose to ignore them. For example,
no one had bothered to take note that Freimark had claimed that, having been a Jewish political in-
mate in Auschwitz, he had had to wear a green identifying patch. Closer scrutiny would have shown
that time and again Freimark has given different accounts of this aspect of his internment which, af-
ter all, must have been of paramount importance to him during his time in the concentration camp.
When asked what sort of patch?, he is now known to have answered in the past: red-yellow
(1962), green (1966), green (1968), green and red-yellow (1988), green-yellow (1989).
These and
many other inconsistencies were never investigated by the Wuppertal Court. When the defense
drew attention to contradictions, these references were ignored.
The most important discrepancy is to be found in Freimarks statements regarding the time when
he was ill with typhus. It is undisputed, for example, that Gottfried Weise was not detached to
Auschwitz until late May 1944, and spent the first eight weeks with Bookkeeping for Prisoners
Funds, which office was located outside the camp. The defense was able to prove this on the basis
of two documents. Further, the witness Freimark had stated earlier that he had contracted a severe
case of stomach typhus in late May 1944.
According to the documents at hand, therefore, neither Freimark nor Weise could have been at the
alleged site of the crime at the time claimed for the crime (June/July 1944). But the Court man-
aged to iron out this minor wrinkle: Weise might very well have been assigned to guard duty
every now and then (Weise had been certified unfit for guard duty), and Freimark (who was utterly
infallible any other time) may have been mistaken in his earlier statements. Of course, Freimark
confirmed most happily that, oh well, in that case he had simply not fallen ill until a little later. And
the Court commented that the discrepancies in Freimarks claims regarding the time of his bout of
typhus did not reflect on his credibility as witness because his testimony was supported by circum-
stantial evidence.
Freimark declared that his earlier mistake was due to the fact that during his
questioning in 1968, he had not paid any particular attention in giving the time of his illness.
3.1.7.2. Mis-Timed Circumstantial Evidence
The defense had requested that documentary evidence be obtained to verify Freimarks illness.
The Court received such papers the day before the verdict was handed down, and believed it had
reason to rejoice. The documents that had been located medical papers from concentration camp
Auschwitz proved, it said, that the witness, Freimark, had been examined in the Inmates Infir-
mary in August and September 1944 for suspected typhus. It was felt that, aside from eyewitness
testimony that needed to be artificially lauded to the skies, one had now finally found some material
(even though presumptive) evidence that might serve as spur to the intent to convict: circumstantial
Matthies/Jordan, Aug. 1993: Der Fall Weise Neue Beweise zur Klrung unrichtiger Angaben des Zeugen Freimark
und unrichtiger Feststellungen im Urteil des Landgerichtes Wuppertal vom 28. Januar 1988. Copies of this study are
available in return for photoduplication costs.
evidence to indicate that Freimarks new claim as to the time of his illness was correct. What was
smoothly overlooked was the fact that in his most recent testimony Freimark had claimed October
1944 as the new date of the onset of his illness, not August or September 1944. The Court was
only able to maintain these erroneous claims by consistently refusing all of the Defenses Motions
to bolster this circumstantial evidence with supplementary documentation.
But even this prop, patched together as it was out of fragments of the existing presumptive evi-
dence, had been mis-timed by the Court. It wrote:
In the documents of August 14, 1944, for example, it was noted under no. 9 of the list, regarding the
examination of former inmate and witness Jakob Freimark: 87215 Freimark, Jakob Clinical diag-
nosis: suspected typhus [Typhusverd.], while for other inmates the result given was typhus still sus-
pected [noch Typhusverd.], merely Typhus, etc.
What this suggests is that Freimarks illness was nowhere near a complete recovery (noch Ty-
phusverd. [typhus still suspected] nor even full-blown Typhus), but that there was merely a pre-
liminary suspicion of typhus, in other words, that at most he had only just contracted the disease. It
should be noted, however, that neither among the numerous infirmary documents that were turned
up later, nor among the Court documents, is there any infirmary paper that states noch Typhus-
verd. [i.e., typhus still suspected]. It is also strange that only two of a whole series of relevant
documents, available at the Auschwitz Museum, were read by the Court, and at the last minute. And
what is no less strange is the steadfast claim that there were no further infirmary papers regarding
Freimark. The defense had no opportunity to take a closer look at the laboratory papers, which were
not read to the Court until the day of the verdict. In this way the Court was able to sustain the fiction
that Freimarks illness must have broken out some time after August 14, 1944, and that he had been
fully recovered again by September 18, 1944. Further evidence has been found now which dis-
proves this tale, which was thoroughly unbelievable from the start.
3.2. New Evidence, Motion for Retrial, Dismissal, Objection
A motion for retrial was filed in the case of Gottfried Weise in late 1992. On April 22, 1994, the
District Court in Mnchengladbach dismissed this motion, which decision was communicated to the
prisoner in late May. Weises attorney objected to this dismissal. The new evidence on which the
motion for retrial is based was, in part, ignored completely in the dismissal and, in part, rejected for
technical or insufficient reasons.
3.2.1. The Wrong Time New Evidence for the Incorrect Time Alleged for the On-
set of Freimarks Case of Typhus
3.2.1.1. Infirmary Papers Discovered After the Fact
What baffles one is why a judicial scandal had not already erupted years ago, when it was shown
how casually the Wuppertal Court had interfered with the obtaining of further evidence, because al-
legedly:
[] there is nothing to indicate that the state-operated Auschwitz Museum in Poland has access to any
documents beyond the aforementioned infirmary papers, which have been put at the disposal of the Red
Cross International Tracing Service in photocopy form.
In fact, tens of thousand of infirmary papers are stocked in the polish Auschwitz Museum, which
alone is circumstantial evidence for the enormous efforts that were made in Auschwitz to help the
Verdict, p. 58.
sick inmates recovering, even though the established interpretation of history alleges that sick in-
ternees were selected for being unfit for labor and consequently gassed. As a matter of fact, seven
infirmatory papers pertaining to Freimarks illness were found in the archives of the Auschwitz Mu-
seum:
1. Aug. 13/14, 1944 (Blood, Gruber-Widal und Weil-Felix
, results: not yet sterile),
2. Aug. 28, 1944 (Stool, results: still some pathogenic intestinal bacteria),
3. Aug. 28, 1944 (Blood, results: not yet sterile),
4. Sept. 5, 1944 (Stool, results: still some pathogenic intestinal bacteria),
5. Sept. 8, 1944 (Blood, results: sterile for the first time),
6. Sept. 11, 1944 (Stool, results: only normal coli bacteria, for the first time),
7. Sept. 18, 1944 (Blood, Gruber-Widal, results: still sterile).
The Court based its opinion that in that case Freimark had simply not fallen ill until August
on the two aforementioned papers that were allegedly the only ones that could be found: on two of
seven now known lab papers, specifically the first and last links (Nos. 1 and 7) of the chain of evi-
dence.
If the defense had been granted an opportunity to examine the papers presented by the
Court, then it could have determined even on the basis of only these two lab papers, nos. 1 and 7,
that something was wrong with the Courts interpretation: the results of no. 1 did not yet indicate
sterile, while the results of no. 7 did. If nothing else, then this sterile result on no. 7 had it
been known to the defense would have sufficed to make the defense suspicious. This was the first
instance where the accused was denied a means to defend himself in this particular matter; his sec-
ond means of defense, the obtaining of documents no. 2 through 6, was also denied him and of
course the Motion to obtain an expert medical opinion was refused as well.
The documents found after the fact now prove that Freimarks case of typhus did not break out in
August 1944, as the verdict claims. The sequence of documents shows clearly that Freimark could
not have contracted his acute case of typhus between August 13 and September 18, 1944. However,
his lengthy and severe bout of typhus is undisputed, and also established in the verdict. But the
documents prove that it did not break out and become cured within the time span of August-
September 1944. But when else should the illness have occurred: before or after August-September
1944? The specialists statements now available to the defense state unequivocally that the second
entry of sterile (according to the Gruber-Widal test) at the end of the series of lab tests is typical
for the conclusion of a final check-up in accordance with the regulations pertaining to epidemic
Medical testing methods.
Illustration 1: First sterile entry for
Freimark, on lab report dated Sept. 8,
Sterile entries were also made for the
other two patients.
control at the time in question. This could already be proven by means of the bacteriological find-
ings that have been available since 1990, but evidence regarding the severity and hence the duration
of Freimarks preceding illness was as yet still lacking.
In January 1995 the defense, at long last, also obtained copies of the serological reports. (For an
account of how this evidence was obtained in the face of strenuous official opposition, see Section
5.2. False Claims Made by the Wuppertal Court) These serological reports contain the following in-
formation pertaining to Freimarks blood tests:
August 14, 1944: Titer 1:800
September 8, 1944: Titer 1:200
Titer is the term used for the results of serological tests (degrees of dilution in agglutination
tests). titers are first measurable a minimum of two weeks after the onset of illness, and often not
until much later, approximately 30 days following onset. Values begin at 1:100. As the illness pro-
gresses, titers slowly increase to 1:400 or more.
The agglutinative potential persists for many months following recovery from the illness.
A titer of 1:800 on August 14, 1944, (sample of August 13, 1944) means that Freimark must have
contracted typhus long before that date. All the medical experts consulted agree on this point. Fur-
ther, the titer of only 1:200 (September 8) indicates that Freimarks convalescence was already well
advanced at this time. Therefore, Freimark must have been severely ill with typhus prior to August
1944, in other words, in June/July 1944 as he had stated originally. To establish this as evidence
relevant to the Court, Weises attorney has requested the consultation of a Court-approved expert
but his requests, submitted repeatedly for several years now, have been in vain.
But even without an expert medical report, it can be proven that Freimarks illness cannot have
begun after September 1944, since as Freimark himself testified, he had participated for at least a
few weeks in the preparations leading up to the crematorium Uprising of October 7, 1944. The only
remaining possibility, namely that he fell ill before August 1944, is confirmed by many other state-
ments of Freimarks. His initial claim that he fell ill in late May 1944 is supported in many ways
by his further statements.
In its decision of revision, the District Court of Mnchengladbach again ignores the significance
of the sterile entries, it again ignores the regulations for epidemic control that were in effect in
those days, and it again rejects the consultation of an expert. Weises attorney had requested an
expert report, to be drawn up by an epidemiologist specializing in hygiene and bacteriology. As
the Wuppertal judges before them, their colleagues in Mnchengladbach now claim with universal
expert knowledge that the lab reports give no indication of any final check-up. But while the
Wuppertal judges still maintain that Freimarks hotly contested bout of typhus took place sometime
between August 14 and September 18, 1944, the District Court of Mnchengladbach does at least
realize that Freimark was not acutely ill with typhus during this time. From the perspective of the
Motion for Retrial the defense fully agrees with this. But what the District Court of Mnchenglad-
bach would also like to sweep under the carpet is the question of when exactly Freimark should
have undergone the acute stage of his severe case of typhus, if not in June/July 1944? Understanda-
bly enough, this question is a very uncomfortable one for the supporters of the verdict. In Frei-
marks statements, his resistance activities account so fully for the time from September 18, 1944,
to the Crematorium Uprising (October 7, 1944) that no sufficient time remains. The time of his long
and severe illness, which no one disputes, can thus have been only before August 1944, i.e., in
According to Helmut Denning, Lehrbuch der Inneren Medizin, 6
ed., Thieme, Stuttgart 1964, pp. 86ff.
June/July 1944. And if one will concede this, one must also concede that the only supposed
eyewitness could not possibly have been at the alleged site of the crime at the alleged time.
3.2.1.2. Freimarks Testimony Regarding the Klehr Case
Aside from the complete sequence of laboratory reports, other new evidence also supports Frei-
mars original statement that his illness began in late May 1944. This evidence comes in the form of
statements made by Freimark before he knew where the emphasis would need to be placed in the
Weise case. In 1968, for example, he stated that he had been admitted to the infirmary in May 1944,
with typhus. He then recounts how he was able to observe Dr. Mengele and the medical orderly
(Sanittsdienstgrad) Josef Klehr at their experiments on inmates when he was already feeling bet-
By this time his severe illness (102, 104, 106.3F fever
) had abated and he was up and
walking around as convalescent. His severe illness must therefore have abated in July 1944 at the
latest, for it was found in the Auschwitz Trial in Frankfurt that the orderly Klehr had been trans-
ferred to the satellite camp Gleiwitz in July 1944. According to the Auschwitz Chronicle,
[] from July 1944 [Klehr was] director of the prisoners infirmary in the auxiliary camp Gleiwitz I
In his 1968 testimony, Freimark reported in detail about many of Dr. Mengeles atrocious deeds,
all of which he Freimark had seen with his own eyes. And:
Klehr, the orderly, always accompanied Dr. Mengele.
So Freimark did not see Klehr only once, he saw him a great many times. And, of course, he could
not have seen everything he described in just a single day; he needed weeks of observation. This
permits only one conclusion: to allow for his observation of Klehr and Mengele, Freimarks severe
case of typhus must have been clearing up in early July 1944 at the latest.
In its decision of revision, the District Court of Mnchengladbach suggests that it might well have
been the case that Freimark was in the infirmary on several occasions. After all, the witness had also
stated that he had once been beaten by Dr. Senteler. In suggesting this, the District Court of
Mnchengladbach ignores the precisely documented organization of the health care facilities in the
Auschwitz concentration camp. The Court completely ignores the fact that inmates were admitted to
the infirmary only after being examined by Chief Physician Dr. Zenkteller (not Senteler; cf. also
Section 3.2.5); that they could not simply drop in to visit friends whenever they felt like it; that Frei-
mark himself recounted his experiences with Dr. Zenkteller several times, relating to his bout of ty-
phus; etc.
Freimarks testimony in Tel Aviv, Nov. 20, 1968; doc/172. Regarding quoting method doc/nnn (here doc/172): a
voluminous dossier has been compiled about the numerous claims and data by and about Freimark. Interested persons
may obtain a copy in return for photoduplication costs. Aside from the transcripts of earlier witness testimony by
Freimark, this collection also contains two longer reports or accounts by Freimark:
1) Einsam in der Schlacht [Lonely in Battle], Freimarks autobiographical account in the Suwalki book of 1989
(Jewish Community Book Suwalki and Vicinity: Baklerove, Filipove, Krasnopole, Psheroshle, Punsk, Ratzk,
Vizhan, Yelineve; The Yair Abraham Stern Publishing House, Tel Aviv 1989); texts are partly in English, partly
in Hebrew; Freimarks story has been translated from the Hebrew.
2) Freimarks Yad Vashem report; recollections from 1959, records from 1962 and 1964. (Originally translated into
German from the Yiddish [in Hebrew script].)
Yad Vashem report, pp. 72, 82; doc/156, 162.
D. Czech, Auschwitz Chronicle, 1939-1945, Henry Holt, New York 1989, p. 816.
Freimarks eyewitness testimony in Tel Aviv, Nov. 20, 1968; doc/173.
3.2.1.3. Freimarks Statements on the Course of his Illness
Freimarks case of typhus must have been very severe indeed. In his Yad Vashem report, Frei-
mark recounts as mentioned before that he had frequently run temperatures of 102 to 106.3F.
Also, probably because he was confined to his sick-bed for so long, he had developed a painful ab-
scess on his posterior.
While he was in bed suffering badly from this abscess, the following had al-
legedly been recorded on his card [hospital chart?]: Grober Vital 1/800.
The question remains open whether this Gruber-Widal test is one of those known to us from the
lab reports or whether a test of this kind was already performed during the acute stage of the illness.
The latter cannot be ruled out in light of the evident severity and duration of the illness. In his testi-
mony of 1966, Freimark also remarked that he was laid up with a case of stomach typhus.
testimony of 1968, already cited repeatedly, he reiterated that he had contracted typhus (in May
1944), then added that he made his observations of Mengele and Klehr when I was feeling better
again. So he must have been rather poorly before. And he must have been very considerably im-
proved over the time when he still suffered so severely from the dressed abscess on his posterior,
since he could not have taken the excursions he described while being padded and bandaged as he
was. The abscess, in turn, was the result of protracted confinement to bed combined with the uncon-
trolled voiding of urine and stool typical for stomach typhus. This too shows that the illness must
have begun long before the time when I was feeling better again.
The acute manifestation of his illness, accompanied with collapse and fever up to 106.3F, which
he still stressed vigorously in 1962, rules out that the illness did not break out until Au-
gust/September 1944. A lengthy series of lab tests intended to identify and confirm the disease
would have been utter nonsense, given the intensity of the outbreak and the unmistakable symp-
toms.
All Freimarks pre-1988 statements regarding his bout of typhus indicate that he was severely ill,
and for a correspondingly long period of time. A case of typhus that severe takes weeks from the
time of outbreak to the time it abates. But as demonstrated in the foregoing, the illness must have
begun to abate by early July 1944 at the latest, else Freimark could not have observed Klehrs mis-
deeds frequently. Freimarks severe bout of typhus, which lasted several weeks, must thus have
begun in early June 1944 at the latest. This coincides with the time he specified in 1968, namely
late May 1944. Hence his earlier statements support his testimony of 1968.
Aware though it is of this, the District Court of Mnchengladbach, in its decision of revision, has
turned a blind eye to the fact that Freimark allegedly made his observations of Mengele and Klehr
when he was recovering again in other words, after his severe illness. The Court suggests instead
that Freimark had no doubt been in the infirmary repeatedly. The Court thus ignores not only the
fact that Freimark himself had recounted his observations of Klehr in express connection with his
recovery from typhus. It also ignores the organization of the health care facilities, which are set out
in particular detail in the documentation pertaining to Auschwitz. Without being admitted by the
Chief of the Out-Patient Department, Freimark could not have gained access to the sickward, much
less to the isolation ward for epidemic patients, which is where he claims to have made his observa-
tions. As lab documents prove, Freimark was assigned to Infirmary Compound BIIf. The admitting
physician in the accompanying Out-Patient Department BIId was the Polish Dr. Zenkteller, whom
Freimark recollects in a very emotionally charged manner, and again in close connection with his
case of typhus (cf. also 3.2.5.).
Yad Vashem report, pp. 79, 80; doc/160.
Yad Vashem report, p. 80; doc/161.
Freimarks statement in Tel Aviv, April 29, 1966; doc/168.
3.2.1.4. Freimarks Testimony Regarding his Collaboration in the Preparations for the Cre-
matorium Uprising
Freimark was not ill in August/September 1944. The complete series of lab reports from August
13 to September 18, 1944, proves this. Could Freimark have been so severely ill with typhus after
September 18, 1944, (when he was healthy, as proven) and before October 24, 1944 (when he was
also clearly healthy, and on his way to Sachsenhausen)?
An affirmative answer to this question is already practically ruled out, since the five weeks re-
maining between September 18 and October 24, 1944, would hardly have been enough to allow for
the severe illness per se, much less for the mandatory subsequent quarantine that was necessary to
establish freedom from infection prior to the transfer to another camp.
But Freimark himself provides us with another piece of evidence for the recovered state of his
health after September 18, 1944. According to him, he participated in the preparations for the Cre-
matorium Uprising in close co-operation with Salman Gradovski.
The Uprising took place on Oc-
tober 7,1944. Freimarks involvement must have come after his illness. In Wuppertal, too, it was
expressly noted that in his new testimony Freimark placed the subsequent Crematorium Uprising
in close temporal proximity to this [i.e., the time of his illness].
This is correct, except that the en-
tire illness cannot be slotted into August/September. That was only the time of convalescence and
final check-up. The series of lab reports proves this beyond doubt. But the actual time of illness per
se was in June and July, 1944.
In its decision of revision, the District Court of Mnchengladbach completely disregards the issue
of how Freimarks severe illness (which is proven beyond doubt) is to be fitted into the time-table
of the events in question.
3.2.1.5. Freimarks Testimony Regarding His Recall to the Canada Commando at the Be-
ginning of the Hungarian Transports
When the Hungarian transports began, I was recalled to work in Canada. That was where we real-
ized why they wanted us to purge the camp of Jews. They arrived day and night, these transports from
Hungary. We worked on the ramp, and it was very hard. One transport after the other arrived.
This statement of Freimarks in his report of 1959/1962 once more solidly corroborates his very
definite testimony of 1968, that he rejoined the Canada Commando in May 1944. According to the
Auschwitz Chronicle, the Hungarian transports, whose start was the occasion of his recall, began in
mid-May 1944.
Freimarks initial statement, that he fell ill shortly after this recall, fits in perfectly
with the date he first gave for the start of his illness: late May 1944.
In its decision of revision, the District Court of Mnchengladbach ignores this completely.
3.2.1.6. Freimarks Testimony Regarding His Further Convalescence During the Time of
the Transports from Lodz
In his Yad Vashem report,
Freimark gives a detailed account of his stay in the infirmary while
continuing to recover from his illness. According to Freimark, this rather lengthy stage of convales-
cence coincided with the time of the transports from Lodz in other words, August/September
1944. This, in turn, coincides perfectly with his statement that he had fallen ill in late May 1944.
Suwalki book and Yad Vashem report; doc/108, 109, 111, 139, 141, 142, 145, 152ff.
Verdict, p. 75; doc/177.
D. Czech, op. cit. (note 38), p. 627.
Yad Vashem report, p. 83-84; doc/162, 163.
3.2.1.7. Summary of Section 2.2.1
Gottfried Weises attorney has been pointing out for years that the lab reports do not disprove Fre-
imarks illness in May 1944, but that rather they are powerful evidence for the correctness of this
initial statement. Strangely enough, none of the authorities whose duty it is to ensure that justice is
done has shown the slightest interest. Now, however, this evidence which is already of great con-
sequence by itself is solidly supported by further new evidence. These further evidential pillars re-
sulted from statements of Freimarks which were no less unknown to the Wuppertal Court than the
complete sequence of lab reports, which therefore also constitute new evidence.
The new evidence supporting Freimarks 1968 statement (onset of illness in late May 1944) in-
clude:
1. Lab reports Nos. 1 and 7, which had been misapplied by the Wuppertal Court, as well as the lab
reports Nos. 2 through 6, discovered later i.e., the entire sequence of lab reports, Nos. 1
through 7. This documentary support of Freimarks 1968 testimony very solid support indeed
is reinforced five-fold by the following new evidence contained in other statements of Frei-
2. Freimark was in the infirmary by June 1944 at the latest. Only in this way could he have ob-
served Klehr at his misdeeds when his illness began to abate, i.e., in July 1944 at the latest.
3. Freimarks illness was very severe, and lasted a proportionally long time. It cannot have begun
after the sterile test results of September 9 and 18, 1944, because on October 24, 1944, he was
already healthy and being transferred.
4. In late September/early October 1944 Freimark, then healthy, collaborated in the preparations for
the Crematorium Uprising. Thus, he cannot have been ill at this time.
5. Freimark himself dates his transfer to Canada as mid-May 1944. He recalls the time of the
transfer: When the Hungarian transports began []. The Hungarian transports began in mid-
6. Freimark was still convalescing at the time the transports from Lodz arrived, i.e., in Au-
gust/September 1944.
With reference to the Courts statement that the credibility of this witness is beyond question,
only one conclusion is possible: Freimark himself proves that he cannot have been at the site of
Weises alleged crimes in June/July 1944. The statements he made which indicate that he fell ill in
late May 1944 are considerably more plausible than his suspiciously sudden change of mind in
Wuppertal, that in that case he had simply not fallen ill until August/September 1944.
In its decision of revision, the District Court of Mnchengladbach holds to the Wuppertal version.
3.2.2. The Wrong Place New Evidence For the Incorrect Account of the Place and
Details of the Crime
The murders which are imputed to Gottfried Weise by that part of the verdict that has become fi-
nal were allegedly committed in, i.e., near the old disinfestation facilities (Gas Disinfestation I)
which the Court imprecisely and incorrectly termed Personal Effects Warehouse I (Effektenlager
I).
This is where witness Jakob Freimark claims to have observed them:
A more detailed study has been drawn up on this topic: Matthies/Jordan, Der Fall Weise Neue Beweise zur Klrung
unrichtiger Ortsangaben und unrichtiger Tatvorwrfe im Urteil des Landgerichtes Wuppertal vom 28. Januar 1988,
March 1993, with supplement from May 1993. Copies of this study are available in return for photoduplication costs.
Cf. Matthies/Jordan, ibid., p. 4.
a) The convicted is said to
have committed one
murder in the Bedding
hut on the grounds of
Personal Effects Ware-
house I. The witness
claims to have seen this
while standing amongst
many other inmates in a
square in the camp,
from which point one
could see the entrances
to two identical-looking
huts at the same time.
b) The convicted is said to
have committed two
further murders in the
square between the
loading ramp and the
eastern entrance to Per-
sonal Effects Ware-
house I. The track on
which the loading ramp was located ran along the fence, at a distance of approximately 30 ft..
Therefore, in the eyes of the Court, there was a square of about 1,080 sq. yards [33 ft. (dis-
tance between fence and track) 295 ft. (length of the fence)] between the fence and the loading
ramp.
In contrast to the alleged victims and the alleged time of the crime, the supposed sites of the
crimes are described relatively precisely by the Court. This makes it possible to double-check the
description of the site which the Court accepted in reaching its verdict. This layout of the site was
incorrect.
In its decision of revision, the District Court of Mnchengladbach cannot dispute the incorrectness
of the Wuppertal Courts account of the site, but it deems the incorrect findings contained in the
verdict to be irrelevant.
3.2.2.1. The Wuppertal Courts Incorrect Layout of the Site of the Crime
Both the witness and the Court orientated their accounts of the alleged events on an incorrect lay-
out of the site of the crime a layout that agrees with an equally incorrect sketch that was incorpo-
rated in the verdict.
3.2.2.2. The Correct Layout as Shown by Documents
The following sketch, drawn to scale, shows the correct layout. This sketch is the result of careful
analysis of several American air photos,
the description of Delousing Chamber I (the alleged site
of the crime) as given by documents from the Auschwitz Archives,
and the book by Pressac
which is considered to be the definitive scientific work of Auschwitz literature.
Cf. J. C. Ball, Air Photo Evidence, Ball Resource Services, Delta, BC, 1993, p. 34 (online material is available at:
www.air-photo.com/).
Cf. Archivum des Museums in Auschwitz. Ensemble der Erklrungen zum Raub des Opfergutes, ch. 51, pp. 119-134,
The Incorrect Sketch Endorsed by the Wuppertal Court
Labels X1 and
X2 added by
Jordan.
Alleged square
where approx.
100 inmates
lined up for roll
call. Place where
the hut Murder
was observed.
where 200 to
call; site of the
alleged Ramp
Murders.
In its decision of revision, the District
Court of Mnchengladbach does not dispute
that the sketch which the Wuppertal Court
used to determine the location and nature of
the alleged crimes is incorrect. It also has
nothing with which to contest the correctness
of the sketch drawn from the aerial photo-
graphs. Nevertheless, the Court states that
the US air photo of August 25, 1944, by itself
cannot reflect the conditions in the camp at
the time of the crime, in June/July 1944
[]. This claim is utterly incomprehensi-
ble, since the District Court of Mncheng-
ladbach, according to its own account, has
also seen the US air photos of April 4, 1944,
May 31, 1944, and December 21, 1944,
which together with other evidence
served to verify the sketch.
3.2.3. The Wrong Scenario Cor-
rection of the Alleged Layout
Shows: the Scenario Attested to
Would Have Been Physically
The Wuppertal Court based its conception
of the layout of the site in question not only
on the incorrect sketch but also on witness
testimony, particularly on the testimony of
the witness Freimark. The Court had affirmed that this witness recollected the site in particularly
precise detail. And indeed, he described almost a dozen incorrect details precisely as they appear,
incorrectly, on the Courts sketch. Witness Freimark obviously was not familiar with the alleged
site of the crime from personal memory; he merely went by the faulty sketch.
First of all, two very essential details were wrong:
1. The alleged empty space (square) where Freimark claims to have stood among many in-
mates while witnessing a crime was in fact taken up by a hut (No. 5 in the previous sketch) of
which Freimark obviously had no knowledge. Freimark and his fellow inmates could not have
stood here. Also, there was no other place large enough to accommodate a greater number of
inmates which would have met the requirements of the scenario described by Freimark (two
huts doorways directly visible).
In its decision of revision, the District Court of Mnchengladbach suggests that perhaps it
was not 100 inmates who were lined up. Freimark and the Wuppertal Court had only men-
tioned many. But the work commandos named by the Wuppertal Court, and the information
provided by the Auschwitz Chronicle regarding their numerical strength, does indicate a num-
report of former inmate Josef Odi.
J.-C. Pressac, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, New York
Sketch from C. Jordan
based on US Air Force Aerial Photographs from 1944.
The correct lay-out shows that the open spaces X1 and
X2, shown on the sketch endorsed by the Wuppertal
Court, did not exist.
ber of approximately 100 inmates, calculated as set out in the Motion. Happily, these calcula-
tions are facilitated by the many Auschwitz work detail lists still available which show the pre-
cise numerical strengths of the work details which, according to the Wuppertal Court, were
present at the site of the crime. Once again, any factual resolution of this matter has been re-
jected. The District Court of Mnchengladbach has also completely ignored the second impor-
tant matter: according to the Wuppertal/Freimark scenario, Freimark would have had to be able
to see directly into the entranceways of two huts resembling each other in every detail. The cor-
rect sketch, however, shows that the huts were by no means that similar, and that there is no
conceivable place from which both huts entrances could be directly looked into at the same
time. The District Court of Mnchengladbach ignores the fact that this proves Freimarks ac-
count of the crime to be false.
Especially where the two allegedly identical huts are concerned, Freimarks account of the
crime is typical of the way in which truth was ascertained in this case: originally i.e., at the
time of his first questioning in Israel Freimark knew of only one hut, where all the characters
who played a part in the hut murder got together. In the Wuppertal trial, Freimark then saw
the (incorrect) sketch of the camp, where two identical huts are (falsely) drawn in. The sketch
inspired Freimark, and he revised his initial testimony (the single-hut version) into a two-huts
scenario. He now redistributed the participants in this drama between two huts, for a particu-
larly theatrical account of the alleged events. As proof of his veracity, he concedes that he is no
longer sure whether the Bedding hut, the actual scene of the crime, was the right-hand or the
left-hand one of the twin huts. The Court was so filled with enthusiasm by his nit-picking love
of truth and his detailed knowledge of the scene that it completely overlooked the trap: the two-
huts version works only on the fictional scene of the crime, on the incorrect camp sketch not
on the real scene. It does not fit the real layout; Freimarks account of the crime, and the find-
ings based thereon in the verdict, are false.
2. The scenario of the alleged crimes b), the ramp murders, is based on the following: hundreds
of inmates, working day- and night-shifts, loading up a long freight train of thirty to forty
freight cars, unloading it again, and re-loading it again. Hundreds of tons of freight must be
passed in bundles along long queues of inmates. With utter disregard for blackout regulations,
the large open space between the fence and the ramp is lit bright as day by the floodlights on
the fence. Three inmates manage to set up a hiding place in one of the many freight cars, bring
in a supply of food and water, and hide themselves there. Their absence is not noticed until
shift change. After hours of counting and roll-call, the inmates must begin unloading all the
freight cars again. In the presence of hundreds of other inmates, the fugitives are found, beaten,
and murdered. The time is approximately midnight.
The facts, however, are as follows: the loading rail-line ran right along the fence. Thus, the
ramp did not give access to a square 295 ft. long and 33 ft. wide, but rather only to a strip at
most 3 ft. wide and at most 98 ft. long (approximately 33 sq. yards). There were also no flood-
lights on the fence and no night-time illumination bright as day. As well, there were no
thirty to forty freight cars. The entire loading track could have accommodated a maximum of
six freight cars, and no more than three would have fit alongside the little ramp directly by the
fence. (The former inmate Josef Odi, who unlike Freimark was familiar with the old Gas
Delousing Chamber, and had described it correctly, had already considered it remarkable in-
deed that on some days as many as several freight cars could be loaded!)
In its decision of revision, the District Court of Mnchengladbach avoids commenting on the
physical impossibility of the thirty to forty freight cars in a most unusual way: while quoting
the verdict verbatim at all other times, in this instance the Court simply omits the claim of
thirty to forty freight cars in its quotation from the verdict. Was this deliberately omitted, or
done so through sloppiness? The District Court of Mnchengladbach does not comment on the
other errors in Freimarks account which prove his unfamiliarity with the site. Further, the Dis-
trict Court of Mnchengladbach attempts to gloss over the physical impossibility of setting up
the work commandos (as specified by the Wuppertal Court) between the rail line and the fence
by arguing rather weakly:
First, according to the Motion, there was a distance of 8.9 ft. between the rail line and the
fence, and second, the work details surely did not number as many inmates as the Motion cal-
culated on the basis of statements of the Wuppertal Court and of data from the Auschwitz
Chronicle.
Regarding the first objection, the District Court of Mnchengladbach failed to take note of
the information it had with respect to rail and loading facilities. Otherwise it would at least
have noticed that freight cars protrude over the rail line, i.e., that there were by no means all of
8.9 ft. of open space between the cars and the fence, but rather 5.6 ft. at most. The Court would
have had to realize that it was not possible to walk or stand immediately next to the fence, that
a usable strip approximately 3 ft. wide was all that remained, and that this strip as well was no
longer than just barely 98 ft. (including space for guards at the sides). A closer look would have
revealed to the District Court of Mnchengladbach that it was impossible for more than twenty
persons to line up, much less to work here under guard. And there would have been absolutely
no space left for the alleged beatings and murders to take place and to quote Freimark to be
observed in detail by all the inmates present.
Regarding the second objection, it is rather amazing that the District Court of Mnchenglad-
bach suddenly casts grave doubts on the data given in the Auschwitz Chronicle, that source
which it otherwise deems so extremely reliable (namely, when the data it provides serves to in-
criminate), and it is all the more surprising that the Court does so without even having exam-
ined the documents cited therein (work detail lists). Well, never mind! Loading, unloading and
reloading the thirty or forty freight cars, as was described and ascertained by the Court,
would have required a great many workers, and the Wuppertal Court also stressed this repeat-
edly. But where should these have found enough room under the actual conditions? The Dis-
trict Court of Mnchengladbach leaves this vital question completely open.
Investigations pertaining to the alleged site of the crime reveal many other discrepancies, which
confirm two things:
Freimark testified to many local details that exist only on the incorrect Court sketch, not in ac-
tual fact. He clearly had no personal memories of the site.
Many of the incorrect details ascertained by the Court are integral parts of the scenario which
is the basis for the account of the crime and the corresponding findings of the Court.
These two points alone prove that the testimony of the witness Freimark, and the account of the
alleged events subsequently set out in the verdict, are false.
3.2.4. The Wrong Gottfried
In the Wuppertal trial, witness Freimark repeatedly declared that the accused was indelibly im-
pressed on his memory as Gottfried. This was rather surprising even then, for in his earlier tes-
timony those samples of it which were known at that time Freimark had never mentioned
Gottfried Weise, the man who was allegedly so indelibly impressed on his recollections.
For details cf. Matthies/Jordan, op. cit. (note 48).
3.2.4.1. New Evidence: the Real Gottfried of Freimarks Recollections
In the meantime, lengthy reports and witness statements of Freimarks have come to light which
were not yet known at the time of the Wuppertal trial. In 1959/1962, for example, Freimark wrote a
very long report for the Yad Vashem, detailing everything he remembered about Auschwitz. Frei-
mark clearly spent years intensively reviewing his Auschwitz memories for this purpose, and these
accounts contain something quite astonishing: at that time, Freimark recollected a completely dif-
ferent Gottfried (and only this different one):
When Oskar [an inmate chief overseer] was sent home, he was replaced by another German, named
Gottfried. He was from the Sudetenland. He was a terrible son-of-a-bitch. An assistant overseer served
under him, a Belgian named Leon. The two of them were dreadful murderers.
So in 1962, Freimark clearly associated the name Gottfried with an inmate. Freimark had to en-
dure his tyranny when he was skilled laborer in the weaving mill. And if he had remembered
more than one murderous son-of-a-bitch named Gottfried, is it really credible that he would at that
time (1962) have mentioned exclusively the one of whom he only knew in very general terms that
he was a terrible son-of-a-bitch and a murderer, and would have completely forgotten about the
very memorable one-eyed Gottfried Weise even though according to Freimarks testimony of
1985 he had observed this Gottfried commit several very definite murders, at great peril to his
own life?
3.2.4.2. The Wuppertal Theory of Successive Reproduction
The Wuppertal Court believes it has found a way to explain the workings of Freimarks memory.
The Court explained that despite the great passage of time his simple recollection of the central
event [showed] the high degree of accuracy of his recollections. Further, the Court exhibited psy-
chologically motivated empathy for the way in which Freimark first did not, then did remember
The witness, the Court explained, successively reproduced his memories around emotion-
ally charged focal points and had thus not been affected by external influences.
To Freimark, the name Gottfried was no doubt a focal point for the reproduction of emotion-
ally charged fragments of memories. Does it not seem reasonable to suspect that Freimark succes-
sively reproduced the wrong Gottfried?
3.2.4.3. How was the Accused Identified?
In the trial of Gottfried Weise, the identification of the accused was carried out in a gross devia-
tion from any serious recognition process.
As already mentioned in the context of Isaac Livers
statements, potential witnesses for the prosecution were given a questionnaire providing informa-
tion regarding the suspect and the charges brought against him.
An accompanying series of photo-
graphs included several of the accused, which, however, is probably of lesser importance in this
case, as the one-eyed Gottfried Weise is easily identified anyhow. It is thus no surprise that Frei-
mark, who had several opportunities to study the photos, knew very well which of them showed the
accused. And as though that had not been a bad enough travesty of the identification process, the
Wuppertal Court even permitted the staging of this farce in the courtroom:
Verdict, p. 187; doc/180.
Cf. the works of Prof. Dr. Michael Stadler, Institute of Cognition Psychology, University of Bremen; cf. esp.
Stadler/Fabian/Wetzels, Wiedererkennen des Tters oder Identifizieren des Beschuldigten?, in Bremer Beitrge zur
Psychologie 100(1) (1992).
Regarding similar practices in medieval witch trials, see the chapter by M. Khler, this volume.
Much as though a great weight had suddenly lifted from his shoulders, he [Freimark] said that he had
immediately recognized Slepak, Gottfried, when he had entered the courtroom, and then, looking at
the accused, he continued: Yes, thats him. Let him take off his glasses. He wasnt wearing glasses
back then. Im inmate 87215. Do you recognize me? Flipping back and forth in the photo folder that he
had been given, and getting more excited and upset by the second, he identified the accused after only a
few moments: Im looking, and I think Im in Auschwitz again. Thats him (photo 8). No doubt about it,
thats him (photo 14). I saw him like that (photo 2). Thats him too. Theres no doubt, these pictures
show Slepak. Thats the man sitting here today.
3.2.4.4. The Wrong Gottfried: Result of Successive Reproduction of Emotionally Charged
Remnants of Memories
Freimarks considerable prowess as an actor in the Wuppertal courtroom shows how thoroughly
he was able to embrace a role that accrued to him from successive reproductions of his memory.
How could the wrong Gottfried have evolved in his mind?
When he was first questioned about Gottfried Weise in 1985, the name Gottfried was still in-
delibly impressed on his memory, but any recollections of the actual person had already faded. He
is then questioned quite pointedly about a presumed murderer named Gottfried. To Freimark this
name is a focal point for emotionally charged remnants of memories. One of his emotionally
charged remnants is the certain belief that all SS-men employed in Auschwitz participated in the
machinery of murder.
Two emotionally charged remnants now combine in his mind to produce a
new focal point for successive reproduction in a fictional construct that is growing ever more real
to him. A photo album is placed before him, showing men wearing the hated uniforms of concentra-
tion camp guards. Unlike the others, one of them is portrayed several times. He has only one eye
that makes him stand out: Sleepy, or Slepak, whom they had specifically asked about! And his
name is Gottfried! Goodness gracious! Freimark now feels certain that he has found his man. All
thats still lacking is the appropriate story. And Freimark proceeds to successively produce memo-
ries of other emotionally charged remnants, drawing on things experienced, read and heard: the
story that inmates who had hidden in a freight car were shot. Of course:
Hadnt he, Freimark, actually seen that happen himself? Lets see, what was that all about again?
Right: an inmate from Grodno
or was it two?, and Graf had shot him?
Were there perhaps even
more of them? But of course: there were three, and two of them were shot by Gottfried. Yeah,
sure, hed already been a dreadful murderer back in the weaving mill. And where did he shoot the
two of them? Well, surely there were freight cars to be loaded, standing outside the Old Canada
area, and the fellow in charge there used to shoot, too.
So was that Gottfried? Of course, who else should it have been, if not that terrible son-of-a-bitch?
Sure, he was the one! Incidentally, his surname was Weise. Oh really? Well, I still think of him by
his first name.
Whats that? 1944, not 1943? Well, all right then!!! 1944!
Verdict, p. 182; doc/179. Again, there are parallels to the witch trials: every defendant is guilty!
For Freimark, the name of the town Grodno seems to be another focal point for emotionally charged remnants of
memories. In his imaginative account of how he participated in the murder of a fellow prisoner, his accomplices are
again three inmates from Grodno, who were then executed; doc/67.
Verdict, pp. 196-197; doc/182.
Freimark of 1985 grows ever more certain. And it is not long before he can recount his subjective
truth with such astonishing accuracy and realism that the witness-hunting public prosecutor is ec-
static and the Wuppertal judges are all the more so.
In its decision of revision, the District Court of Mnchengladbach comments on all this:
The supposition advanced by the appellant, that the witness Freimark could have confused the appel-
lant with a functionary inmate named Gottfried is not a statement of fact commensurate with the re-
quirements for admissibility. The appellant has not submitted any concrete evidence pointing to such a
confusion. The witnesses he has proposed to call in order to establish the state of witness Freimarks
knowledge with respect to the appellant and the inmate Gottfried are not suitable as a source of evi-
dence because they cannot contribute anything towards establishing what the witness Freimark knew at
[Note: the testimony of 58 witnesses, all of whom were in the same area as Freimark, had been
proposed as evidence to establish that the inmates did not know their guards by their first names.]
3.2.5. Other Wrong Gottfrieds in Freimarks Accounts
It is incredible to see how thoughtlessly a German Court applies the previously described theory
of successive reproduction. To emphasize how great the danger of wrong Gottfrieds is with
story-tellers like Freimark, the following gives just one example of the many other instances where
Freimark has mis-identified persons:
In his Yad Vashem report (1959/1962), Freimark describes how the infamous Dr. Mengele, as-
sisted by Dr. Knott and Dr. Schor, took a quart of his blood.
In his 1966 testimony regarding Sachsenhausen, Freimark then claimed that a Dr. Senteler (cor-
rectly: Zenkteller) had taken this quart of blood.
In his Suwalki report of 1989 (Einsam in der Schlacht [Lonely in Battle]) he again names Dr.
Mengele and Dr. Knott as having taken the blood, but this time without mentioning Dr. Schor.
Freimarks memories focus on a central event, namely the taking of the blood. His tendency to ex-
aggerate turns the quantity into an entire quart. But nevertheless: the taking of the blood the cen-
tral event very likely did indeed take place. The acting persons, on the other hand, are freely ex-
changeable in Freimarks imagination. It is easy to see why Freimark named Dr. Zenkteller (1966)
as being the one who had taken the blood: Freimark hated this physician and in 1966 accused him
of, among other things, having carried out selections. The central experience was that this in-
mates physician had had to decide which patients were to be admitted to the infirmary for treat-
ment. Freimarks penchant for exaggeration turned this into Selections For The Gas Chambers
a charge which, as is well known, bodes ill for anyone accused thereof. Unlike Gottfried Weise,
however, Dr. Zenkteller was lucky: he was Polish, was given a fair trial in Poland, and was acquit-
Had he been German, the matter would no doubt have ended tragically for him too.
According to the Court (Verdict p. 196; doc/182) two inmates were indeed shot by one Unterscharfhrer Wigleb in
1943 after attempting to hide in a wagon under some things that were to be shipped out. Because of the 1943 incident,
former Unterscharfhrer Graf was charged in Vienna as accomplice, but was acquitted. According to Freimark, in
1944 he was again an accomplice in a precisely identical event, this time committed together with Weise. Clearly
Freimark had heard about the event of 1943 and proceeded to impute it to Gottfried Weise. Incidentally, Freimark had
originally stated 1943 as the date for this event as well, and it took the joint efforts of the Prosecuting Attorney and the
judge to persuade him to revise the date to 1944.
Yad Vashem report, p. 72; doc/160ff.
doc/167, 168. In the transcript it was first typed, then crossed out with the same typewriter: also took a liter of my
blood.
doc/139.
Hefte von Auschwitz, no. 15, p. 45, footnote 90.
In its decision of revision, the District Court of Mnchengladbach does not waste time on such
considerations. It did not even take note that the name of the physician accused by Freimark was ac-
tually Dr. Zenkteller. Similarly, by failing to consider this Polish physicians duties, which are
known in detail, it also neglected to ensure the proper evaluation of Freimarks statements.
4. The Freimark Case
In Freimarks various accounts, there are many other examples of persons, places and incidents
being mixed up. These have been discussed in greater detail in a separate analysis of claims and
data by and about Freimark.
On the basis of the statements he made in the course of the Freimark
Case statements which, due to the talkativeness of the witness, are amply available the goal-
oriented nature of his testimony can be well analyzed. The overriding goals which become apparent
time and again are:
a) the desire for revenge for his incarceration, and
b) the desire for self-aggrandizement.
Freimark adapts these overriding objectives to his individual case-oriented goals. In 1966, for ex-
ample, his desire for revenge was directed against Dr. Zenkteller. When he realized that, being Pol-
ish, Zenkteller an able Polish army medical officer, by the way was immune to false allegations,
Freimark redirected his accusations at Dr. Mengele. Freimark also manages to adapt his overriding
desire for self-portrayal to the conditions presented in each individual case. In his Yad Vashem re-
port of 1959/1962, for example, he still wrote a great deal about his heroic work for the Resistance
movement of the Camp Underground, and about his no less heroic participation in the preparations
for the so-called Crematorium Uprising (October 7, 1944). At that time he still gave the time of the
beginning of these preparations as August 1944. That fit in well with the actual beginning of his
illness, May 1944. In the Wuppertal Trial, however, it was necessary for him to postpone his illness,
since otherwise he could not have incriminated the accused. To prevent any conflict with his alleged
heroic feats in the Resistance movement, he now gives the time he fell ill as late October 1944. This
in turn clashes with his transfer to Sachsenhausen, which can be precisely dated as October 23,
1944. In writing his heroic epic Einsam in der Schlacht [Lonely in Battle] for the Suwalki book in
1989, after the Wuppertal Trial, he therefore restricts himself to only very vague comments about
his participation in the Uprising of October 7, 1944, and shifts the starting date of his illness to yet
another time December 1944.
Incidentally, some American friends of a young Israeli were sent translations of the Suwalki book.
At first the Israeli was so moved by Freimarks account that he did not think he could go on read-
ing. But then he did read on. He provided the translation free of charge, annotated with the com-
ment: This man is a fucking liar!
In its decision of revision, the District Court of Mnchengladbach:
The credibility of the witness Freimark is in no way compromised by this comment.
5. The Wuppertal Case
5.1. The Bias of the Wuppertal Court
In Wuppertal they were happy about Freimarks so precisely tailor-made memory. Freimark was
the Courts dream witness.
Up until then, nobody had wanted Freimark as witness. Neither in the Sachsenhausen Trial nor in
the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial had he gotten the role he longed for, and even the clerk who took
down Freimarks Yad Vashem report seems to have harbored a few doubts, as his skeptical ques-
tions would indicate. But in Wuppertal, Freimark was finally given stage center. The Presiding
Judges common knowledge and his desire to create a memorial for the victims of Fascism pro-
vided for the proper staging of his presentation. The judge himself expounded on the nature of his
common knowledge in the verdict; his desire for a memorial was initially known to the author of
this article only through hearsay, and so I made inquiries. The result: in late 1985 the Wuppertal
newspaper had reported about the many deaths that had occurred in the concentration camp Kemna
that had existed near Wuppertal from mid- to late-1933. A curious Wuppertal inhabitant asked why
the names of the murdered persons were not given on the new Kemna Memorial. It turned out that,
happily, there had been no casualties in Kemna at all, and the allegation of many dead was thus
wrong. The newspaper named the City Archives as its source. The City Archives named judge
Klein as theirs. And judge Klein did not consider the polite inquiry, now addressed to him, to be de-
serving of a reply.
The appropriate stage-set for the trial was provided courtesy of the Wuppertal Antifa, the anti-
Fascist scene: the VVNs metastasis whose fellow-travelers and hired applauders happened to be
particularly numerous in Wuppertal and included the local press. The trial which was then enacted
in Wuppertal has already been reviewed in detail in the book Der Fall Weise:
the bias exhibited by
the Wuppertal Court, the disparate treatment and valuation of the witnesses for the prosecution and
the defense, the refusal of numerous motions to hear evidence, and the suppression of exonerating
evidence. I have already mentioned a further example of the suppression of evidence practiced in
Wuppertal (Section 3.2.1.1, lab reports). A separate report
discusses further aspects of the one-
sided valuation of evidence in Wuppertal, and I will dispense here with a repetition of the details set
out in the book and the report. Copies of the book were sent to all the members of the Bundestag
[German parliament], and the report went to all those persons directly responsible: the Federal
President, the Federal Chancellor, the Federal Minister of Justice, the Chief Minister in charge, and
the regional Minister of Justice. The response: with a few exceptions, there was a general denial of
responsibility, references to the separation of powers, and referrals to the Public Prosecutors Of-
fice, which in turn states succinctly that it perceives no need for action without responding to so
much as a single one of the arguments submitted.
This situation is not only unfortunate for the individual tragic case in question, but should be a
cause of sleepless nights for anyone concerned about how far Germany is actually under the rule of
5.2. False Claims Made by the Wuppertal Court
The Wuppertal Court made several false claims. A number of them have been known for some
time. For example, it has been proven ever since 1990 that the Courts claim that no further docu-
mentation was available regarding Freimarks illness was false (see Section 2.2, New Evidence).
Copy of the unanswered letter, C. Jordans files.
Rdiger Gerhard, Der Fall Weise Dokumentation zu einem Auschwitz-Birkenau-Proze: Ein Lebenslnglicher
fordert Gerechtigkeit, 2
ed., Trmer, Berg am See 1991. For example, see pp. 31-33, statements of Dr. Hans
Eisenschimmel (not read into evidence) and Henry Isaac Liver (ignored); p. 51, refusal to consider the Vienna File; p.
60, witness Kierski (disparaged as having insufficient perspective); p. 73, witness Burger (exonerating evidence given
by a witness for the prosecution is simply glossed over and explained away).
Jordan, March 15, 1992: Der Fall Weise Fakten zum Wiederaufnahmebegehren. Copies of this work are available in
return for photoduplication costs.
Another false claim was that the medical records of convalescing patients were always marked ty-
phus still suspected (see Section 3.1.7.2, Mis-Timed Circumstantial Evidence).
In early 1995, particularly weighty evidence came to light regarding further false claims made by
the Wuppertal Court. On January 12, 1995, Charles Biedermann, Director of the International Trac-
ing Service in Arolsen, sent the Federal Secretary of the Interior (Bonn) the lab papers, including
the serological results, that had been held back for such a long time. In his accompanying letter, he
wrote apologetically that it was not the ITSs fault that these documents had been held back for so
long. In 1988 the Presiding Judge Klein had merely said:
The issue of decisive importance in this trial [of Weise] is the question whether the witness Jakob
FREIMARK was still interned in the concentration camp Auschwitz on September 18, 1944, as the ITS
had confirmed earlier in a memo to the Bavarian Landesentschdigungsamt [State Compensation Of-
fice].
Not until now [letter, Federal Department of the Interior, December 19, 1994] have you informed us
that in fact every single lab test as well as its nature and results were of vital importance in the trial.
Contrary to this, judge Klein gave the impression both during the trial and in the verdict that he
had in fact searched for such medical records and one might be sure that none existed.
The letter of the ITS reveals, as an aside, that judge Klein must have had access to Freimarks
Compensation File. The defense is still denied even the slightest glimpse of this file.
6. General Problems Entailed in Very Late Trials
In its every stage, the Weise Trial entailed problems which most likely did not arise only in this
case, but in other, similar trials as well. What happened and continues to happen in the case of
Gottfried Weise, therefore, is a general model of the legal problems created by the rescission of the
statute of limitations.
Now these admittedly are problems lying within the province of jurists, a province where I really
have no business interfering. But I would not presume to intervene in someone elses province if I
could see someone in responsibility doing his duty there.
6.1. The Generation Gap
The Baden-Wrttemberg Minister of Justice, Eyrich, noted as early as 1979 that a generation gap
was to be expected in trials taking place so very long after the alleged crimes. The process of reach-
ing a verdict, Eyrich said, could be compromised by the fact that the younger generation, to which
the judges belong, cannot properly conceive of the conditions and framework of the crime which
they themselves, after all, never experienced.
No doubt Eyrich perceived the generation problem first and foremost with respect to the evalua-
tion of events of the war the absolute necessity to obey orders, etc. But even in the case of
Gottfried Weise, who is charged with completely private murders committed on a whim, as it were,
and by no means in compliance with any orders, even in this case the younger judges were quite
unable to properly conceive of many things.
A contemporaneous witness who remembers the difficulties encountered in the cremation of the
Dresden bombing victims, for example, would surely not have fallen for the atrocity tale of children
being burnt alive in open-air burning pits. Or another example: anyone who had ever been on guard
duty himself would certainly have wondered where Weise might have gotten the ammunition he
This date of Freimarks presence in Auschwitz had never been questioned and was not an issue at all.
FAZ, Feb. 9, 1979, p. 5.
wasted in shooting wildly about in the camp, why the Guard Register contained not a single entry
about the shootings, etc. etc.
One example shall suffice to show how completely incapable the younger generation of judges in
Mnchengladbach was of understanding and properly conceiving of the conditions and situations
of those days:
One of Freimarks many mistakes was his claim, made in the Suwalki book of 1989, that he had
been interned in a prisoner-of-war camp at Allenstein. The camp was called Stalag 10a.
Ac-
cording to Freimark, this was where the Polish Captain Kachacinski told him:
I invite you to join the underground organization that we will set up. You will be the contact to all the
camps. You will be the contact between the camps. You will be given work that will enable you to move
freely between the camps. As electrician you will test the electrical fences.
In the Suwalki book, Freimark proceeds to fill several pages describing his underground activities
as electrician.
In his Yad Vashem report, he tells of similar work done in Auschwitz and refers to the experience
he had gained in Stalag 10a:
We went to work in the Polish underground. We went around the camp and made sure that the signs
were hanging properly and that the small fence in front of the electrical fence was in order. I was the
foreman in this work detail because I said I was already experienced as electrician. I had already done
this kind of work in Stalag 10a.
This statement also does not suffice to compromise the credibility of the witness Freimark, because on
page 70 the witness only states that he had pretended to be an electrician in order to be assigned to a
special unit, which he indeed was; and that he had been made foreman there. Thus, the witness Frei-
mark does not claim that his presence in the Prison Camp was a matter of fact.
The District Court of Mnchengladbach did not even pay attention to the abbreviation Stalag.
As we know, this did not stand for Strafgefangenenlager [Prison Camp], as the District Court in-
correctly claims, but for Stammlager [Main Camp], which was the term for regular prisoner-of-
war camps as opposed to Oflag = Offizierslager [Officers Camp]. In light of this, how should
the judges at Mnchengladbach have thought to ask the questions that would have immediately oc-
curred to any member of the war generation? For example: how did Freimark, who allegedly was 16
years old at that time, ever get into a prisoner-of-war camp at all? And why were there so many Pol-
ish officers there, who after all are known to have been quartered in separate Officers Camps? But
this did not ring a bell for these younger judges who, luckily for them, were born too late to be
subject to doubts raised by experience. Instead, they come to the easily refutable false conclusion
that it was possible for Freimark to simply pretend that in Auschwitz. Even the excerpt which the
District Court of Mnchengladbach quotes from Freimarks Yad Vashem report shows that he had
not said anything about pretending there. In the Suwalki book he even proceeds to build up a
whole series of his heroic deeds around his work as electrician. If the District Court of Mnchen-
gladbach considers this work to be pretense, then it must also relegate Freimarks entire Suwalki
report to the realm of fable. In other words, it must acknowledge Freimark to be utterly unreliable,
as petitioned by the defense.
Suwalki book, p. 314; doc/120.
Freimarks Yad Vashem report, p. 70; doc/155.
6.2. Wilful Application of Standard Theorems of Forensic Psychology
While the Wuppertal Court did dutifully read the textbooks on the forensic application of psy-
chology, it stretched the theorems it found therein to the breaking point. Something which holds
true for normal trials cannot simply be extended as is to the new kind of Special Trial we have
here. For example:
The forgetting process over time, which the Court did take note of in some detail,
is illustrated
by a bell curve in the book by Bender, Rder and Nack
. It is downright frivolous for the Wupper-
tal Court to attempt in pseudo-scientific manner to apply such forgetting bell curves in unmodified
form in cases where the events to be recalled are 41 years removed, such as in the case of Frei-
marks first questioning. It ought to have been noted that the forgetting bell-curves of textbook
fame are based on forgetting times on the scale of months, of a few years at the very most not of
several decades.
6.3. Disregarded in Wuppertal: the Tendency of Very Late Testimony to be
Goal-Orientated
Bender, Rder and Nack point out that testimony given in the course of a trial is frequently geared
towards a desired goal (in other words, incrimination or exoneration of the accused). For this rea-
son, remnants of memories are often deformed to make them expedient; untruths are attached to
true details. Further they state:
132. Whereas the comprehensiveness and reliability of recollections deteriorate with time as a matter
of course, the subjective certainty of the informants the conviction that their recollections are com-
plete and reliable frequently exhibits the opposite trend: they (allegedly) become all the more certain,
the farther back the actual event lies in time.
133. This phenomenon is related to the increased probability that remote events are more frequently
retrieved from the depths of memory because the informants have thought about, have mentally occu-
pied themselves with the events in question. But such a resurrection of earlier memories not only rein-
forces thought patterns, it also falsifies and expands them. Given this prerequisite, the farther back an
event is, the more our informants have ultimately forgotten how little they had remembered of the event
shortly after it happened.
This classic textbook speaks of even 30 days as long-term. Freimark was first questioned about
the case of Gottfried Weise after 41 years, i.e., 15,000 days an intervening period 500 times as
long. During this period, additional things he repeatedly heard and read influenced his memories in
an emotionally highly charged manner. The ever-changing content of his testimony at different
points in time speaks for itself: fading memories are overlaid with things heard, read and imagined.
The problems in ascertaining truth, as already noted for regular trials by renowned authors spe-
cialized in this field, occur all the more with exponentially increased severity in political special
trials conducted decades after the alleged fact. In the Federal Republic of Germany, the problems
that arise are made taboo for reasons of foreign affairs or public education. Academic research is
not subject to such fetters in the U.S.A.
Verdict, pp. 187, 188; doc/180, 181.
R. Bender, S. Rder, A. Nack, Tatsachenfeststellungen vor Gericht, 2 vols., C. H. Beck, Munich 1981, v. 1 p. 46.
R. Bender, S. Rder, A. Nack, ibid., v. 1 p. 48.
6.4. Ignored in Wuppertal: The Survivor Syndrome
The problem of the Holocaust Survivor Syndrome received international attention at the time of
the Wuppertal trial. Medical sources told me that the Ukrainian-American psychiatrist Dr. O.
Wolansky was one of the leading experts on this subject today, and I was referred to a seminar he
had given on this subject on January 25, 1993, at a Congress held in the Polish Consulate in New
York and attended by 150 Polish, White Russian and Ukrainian physicians. To quote an excerpt:
Well-known Ukrainian-American psychiatrist Dr. O. Wolansky explained the persistent psychological
and psychiatric damage caused to the mentation of the majority of the concentration camp survivors.
He indicated that in regard to Holocaust survivors alone, over 1600 medical articles and books [have
been] written on this subject in the past 50 years, which resulted in the term Holocaust Survivor Syn-
drome. He explained that the true horrors and the stress of the concentration camps were forgotten by
survivors with the passing of the years, and were supplanted by group fantasies of martyrdom borrowed
from heard or read materials or by delusions confabulated anew. He illustrates this phenomenon with
the effusive and emotional testimony in Jerusalem of the Jewish Treblinka survivors at the Demjanjuk
trial which subsequently turned out to be what in legal terms and before a more neutral tribunal could
be called prejudice and/or fabrications.
It was revealed in the Wuppertal trial that Freimark had been under psychiatric care. The symp-
toms of Survivor Syndrome which Dr. O. Wolansky listed in his seminar
fantasies of martyrdom borrowed from heard or read materials,
delusions confabulated anew, and
effusive and emotional testimony
may be found in Freimarks accounts in great number, in the form of attached untruths as set out
by Bender, Rder and Nack.
7. Cautio Criminalis
In advocating the rescission of the statute of limitations, Herr Schwarz-Schilling soothingly
pointed to the allegedly matter-of-course maxim of in dubio pro reo [when in doubt, acquit]. As
though to reaffirm his confidence in this practice, he released a postage stamp in 1991 (in his erst-
while capacity as Postmaster General) which commemorated the four-hundredth anniversary of the
birth of a man who had made outstanding contributions to the development of the western worlds
legal traditions.
At a time when all the world (he himself included) still believed in witches, Jesuit priest Friedrich
Spee von Langenfeld advanced his Judicial Considerations Regarding the Witch Trials. Of
course the heinous crime of witchcraft must be combated, he said, but precisely because witchcraft
was such an especially grave crime, the accused must be granted every possible avenue of defense.
One might wish that those in charge of our justice system today would read Spees book and take
his advice to heart.
Of course no one still believes in witches who go flying off on their brooms at
night to meet with the devil. But the belief in particularly heinous crimes as a matter of common
knowledge is firmly entrenched. And of course physical torture is no longer used today, unlike in
the witch trials of medieval times. Even in the post-war Special Trials it has not been the method of
choice since the early 1950s. But defendants accused of crimes commonly known to have been par-
ticularly heinous are still denied the full range of avenues for defense demanded by Spee more than
News release, Jan. 25, 1993, Polish Historical Society, PO Box 8024, Stamford, CT 06905, USA; cf. Paul Chodoff,
Post-traumatic disorder and the Holocaust, American Journal of Psychology Academy Forum, Spring 1990, p. 3.
Friedrich Spee von Langenfeld, Cautio Criminalis oder Rechtliches Bedenken wegen der Hexenprozesse, dtv, Munich
360 years ago. How, for example, was Gottfried Weise to defend himself against being branded
the Beast of Auschwitz if the flaming burning-pits, the burning of live children, the mass gassings
going on all around him, the meters-high flames shooting out of the crematoria chimneys were so
commonly known? It was only logical for the Wuppertal judges to allow the beast thus branded no
As a high-ranking jurist informed me, one of the elements ensuring the citizens firm understand-
ing of their legal position is that verdicts which have become final are not open to nitpicking. I beg
to differ. Even the judicial Demigods in Black may err. It is very important to keep them from be-
coming ideologically blinded and subject to preprogrammed errors. The uncertainty about ones
legal position which the rescission of the statute of limitations has caused must be remedied. Even
those defendants who are charged with special crimes must be able to defend themselves without
restraint, and persons who speak up in their favor must not be defamed out of hand as Nazi and
potential arsonist, as it happened in Solingen to Herrn Kissel for daring to put in a good word for his
neighbor Weise.
In 1979, journalist Fromme predicted that our naturally evolved German legal traditions would be
silently restored in about the year 2000. Isnt it high time that Bckenfrdes expert judicial re-
port is finally concluded with the analysis of a concrete legal case?
No one seems to have the
courage to grasp the nettle, neither in the matter of principle nor in the individual case of Gottfried
Weise. In this case, a retrial had already been
requested in late 1992. A few months later,
Weises attorney attempted to find out from
the District Court of Mnchengladbach how
the processing of the application was proceed-
ing. The application could not be processed, he
was told initially, because the documents re-
quested had not yet been provided by North
Rhine-Westphalia.
Then a game ensued, not unlike what we as
children used to call Schraps lost his hat.
The Pardons Office had the documents. No,
not that office, a different one. No, not that one either. Finally, in late November 1993, the District
Court sent a memo with a voluminous enclosure. The Public Prosecutors Office of Cologne the
same one that had achieved Weises conviction had had the files since July 1993, and had drawn
up a lengthy decree in which it attempted, with a great many words and very little content, to sub-
stantiate that the application for retrial should be refused. In a further decree of December 1993,
the Public Prosecutors Office brought forth additional arguments for refusal. In January 1994
Weises attorney submitted the refutation of all these arguments to the District Court. In late May
1994 the application for retrial was refused, which the defense appealed. The Provincial Court of
Appeal at Dsseldorf refused the appeal, without hearing and without comment. The Federal Con-
stitutional Court did not admit the appeal, on the grounds that first the Provincial Court of Appeal at
Dsseldorf would have to hear the appeal it had refused earlier. And since early 1995 the Dssel-
Cf. the flier which Herr Kissel saw himself forced to distribute because the media denied him the right to publicly
correct the vicious incendiary slander that had been directed at him; cf. reprint of this flier in U. Walendy, Historische
Tatsachen no. 59, Verlag fr Volkstum und Zeitgeschichtsforschung, Vlotho 1993, p. 38.
In the meanwhile, Prof. Bckenfrde has become a judge of the German Federal Constiutional Court himself.
dorf Court of Appeal is waiting for the documents and files to resurface from somewhere within
Chief Minister Raus jurisdiction.
How long is this playing-for-time going to continue? After two previous strokes, Gottfried Weise
has just undergone a massive operation for cancer, followed by pneumonia, and has suffered a third
stroke. To some, a natural solution might seem the easier way out.
For as long as those responsible continue to shirk their duties, all we have left to us is the prayer
which I found inscribed on an Upper Bavarian house,
invoking Saint Michael, the champion of
justice, to stand by us in evil times.
8. Addendum by Michael Grtner
Since the first German Edition of this book has appeared, the situation of the presented case has
almost sensationally changed. Due to his meticulous, unremitting efforts, the severely disabled vet-
eran Dr. Claus Jordan has discovered facts, which place the verdict of 1988 against Gottfried in an
absurd light.
8.1. The Documents
8.1.1. Scene of the Crime
Documents about the railway connection of the Personal Effects Warehouse I were found in a
Moscow archive. This includes documents about a delousing facility that was operated therein.
These documents are being complemented by air photos of the western Allies and of the German
Luftwaffe. First researches on these documents are leading to the assumption that the Auschwitz
main camp only had a simple rail line passing by rather than a ramp.
8.1.2. Operation of the Delousing Facility of Kanada I
Furthermore, the documents of the Moscow archive show that the delousing facility of the Per-
sonal Effects Warehouse I directly attached to the Main Camp was out of operation at the alleged
time of the crime as it was ascertained by the court. It has been removed into the Auschwitz Main
Camp before. A highly modern microwave delousing facility with a huge capacity was installed at
this place. For this we succeeded in finding an up to now unknown archive, which shows the capac-
ity of this facility. More detailed results were published recently.
8.1.3. Time of the Crime
The International Tracing Service in Arolsen, Germany, has delivered documents via the German
Federal Ministry of the Interior, which prove more facts:
8.1.3.1. Documents Known at the Time of the Verdict
On January 28, 1988, one day before the verdict was announced, the Wuppertal Court received
documents about the typhus illness of Freimark, the only witness for the prosecution, via the Inter-
national Tracing Service. Instead of involving an medical expert in the assessment, the court judged
itself in its absolute power because of the urgency of the case.
Date of this writing: May 1995.
Ohl.Michael Kmpfer des Rechts / steh uns bei / wenn uns droht was schlechts. AD 1993.
Unfortunately the beautiful color photograph of this house inscription cannot be reproduced here; it was confiscated by
a certain lady Prosecuting Attorney.
H.J. Nowak, Kurzwellen-Entlausungsanlagen in Auschwitz, VffG 2(2) (1998), pp. 87-105 (online:
vho.org/VffG/1998/2/Nowak2.html), see his contribution in this handbook.
Dr. Jordan must be thanked for his self-sacrificing efforts, that years after the verdict more docu-
ments were found in those delivered to the court, which give additional information about Freimark.
According to a renowned judge, this alone should suffice for a retrial of the case.
8.1.3.2. New Documents about Freimark
In a letter of January 12, 1995,
the International Tracing Service of Arolsen reported about a
complete series of laboratory reports concerning Freimark via the German Federal Ministry of the
Interior (The International Tracing Service is not allowed to give direct information.) The Tracing
Servce received these results of the Hyg.-bakt. Untersuchungs-Stelle der Waffen-SS Sdost [Hy-
gienic-bacteriological Research Department of the Waffen-SS South East] regarding Freimark,
starting at August 14, 1944, ending at September 18, 1944, and including the highest research num-
ber 79698, directly from the Auschwitz State Museum. According to the book Inventararchival-
ische Quellen des NS-Staates,
these files of the Hygieneinstitut include 151 volumes for the years
According to a first statement of a medical expert, as Dr. Jordan could establish, these laboratory
reports prove that the witness Freimark was not ill at the time period in which the court placed his
typhus illness. On the contrary, he was probably ill as he has described in his first statement
(May/June 1944).
8.2. Omitted Hearing of Evidence by the Court
The above quoted letter of the International Tracing Service additionally proves that the Wupper-
tal judge Klein did not even try to search for more detailed documents about Freimarks illness.
Judge Klein has told the Tracing Service that the only question decisive for this trial would be if the
witness Freimark was still interned in Auschwitz in September 18, 1944.
But the supportive Motion to Take Evidence of the defense, dating January 18, 1987, said clearly:
Visual assessment of the original laboratory reports at the Auschwitz State Museum, Ausch-
witz/Poland.
The International Tracing Service wrote in January 12, 1995:
Only now [December 12, 1994] we were told by you [Ministry of the Interior], that instead of this all
laboratory reports as well as their method and result were important for this trial.
SEVEN years after the verdict, the International Tracing Service Arolsen sends TWENTY enclo-
sures to the Ministry of the Interior! The Tracing Service had received these very documents from
the Auschwitz State Museum as micro film copies already in 1978.
Gottfried Weise is sitting in prison with a life sentence, because the German judge Klein didnt
consult the evidence.
Dr. Claus Jordan died in June 21, 1995, four days before his 70. birthday. He didnt have the
privilege to finish his efforts and to see Gottfried Weise, whom he always considered to be a inno-
cent man, back in freedom. But at the very least, he joined the ranks of those being prosecuted for
their contributions and work for justice: In March 1995, the Tbingen judge Stein started judicial
Ref. T/D -288240.
Heinz Boberach p.p. Institut fr Zeitgeschichte. Subtitle: Die berlieferung von Behrden und Einrichtungen des
Reiches, der Lnder und der NSdAP, K.G. Saur, Munich 1991.
Thus the Int. Tracing Service quotes the judge in its letter, note 87.
inquiries against him, because this article allegedly incites the German people to hatred against the
With this contribution, his work on behalf of Gottfried Weises freedom and honor, Dr. Claus Jor-
dan courageously fought for the truth, as he always did.
His friends continue his work.
Gottfried Weise was released from detention on a mercy plea in April 1997 because he was se-
verely ill (cancer). He died in the spring of 2000.
Amtsgericht Tbingen, Ref. 4 Ls 15 Js 1535/95.
Kamp Konsentrasi Auschwitz
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