In the GDR, the prosecution of war crimes had come almost to a standstill in the 1950s. In the summer of 1965, while the first Auschwitz trial was under way in Frankfurt am Main, Horst Fischer, formerly a high-ranking concentration camp doctor, was arrested. After Fischer was tried before the Supreme Court of the GDR in proceedings that were under heavy political influence, he was found guilty on March 25, 1966, of having been jointly responsible for the murder of several thousand people. During the trial, Fischer admitted what a large number of Auschwitz survivors asserted under oath: that he had participated in selections at the ramp in Birkenau and in the Auschwitz I and Buna/Monowitz camps, as well as in the infirmary of I.G. Farben’s corporate camp. Fischer was sentenced to death and executed.