Preliminary Investigation and Initiation of Proceedings against Dr. Horst Fischer
Horst Fischer was responsible for the selection of at least 70,000 human beings, primarily Jews, at the ramp in Auschwitz, in the prisoner infirmaries, and in the Buna/Monowitz concentration camp operated by the SS and I.G. Farben, where he was the SS camp doctor in charge. In 1965, East German investigators arrested the former SS physician, the highest-ranking concentration camp doctor ever to stand trial before a German court.
After Auschwitz, Fischer had counted on being able to carry on with his life unchallenged and to continue his medical career in a seamless fashion. By using simple ploys and keeping his crimes a secret, he had managed to build a middle-class existence as a country doctor with his wife and four children in the GDR. Fischer regarded the possibility of punishment for crimes committed during the Nazi era as a closed chapter. His expectation was by no means unrealistic: The GDR took a systematic approach to the prosecution of Nazi crimes only to the extent of consistently covering up its own shortcomings in this area. In East Germany, as in the West, infliction of penalties for the crimes committed in the Nazis’ biggest concentration and extermination camp proved to be coincidental, rather than planned. The country doctor had attracted the attention of the Ministry for State Security (MfS) not because of his activity at Auschwitz, but because of his high degree of “contacts with the West.” He was in a socially valuable career field, as East Germany had a shortage of physicians. In combination with Fischer’s tactics of concealment, this probably was the decisive factor in the ability of the former concentration camp doctor to go undetected until the summer of 1965.
In connection with the first and second Auschwitz Trials in Frankfurt am Main (1963–1965, 1965–1966), legal action against Fischer became attractive to the SED leadership because his case could be used to bring up the role of I.G. Farben in Auschwitz.
The preparations for and conduct of the trial of Fischer demonstrate the MfS’s systematic exertion of influence on Nazi trials, true to the SED’s treatment of these proceedings as political criminal cases. The secret police subjected each individual phase of the trial to a process of exact planning. Importance was attached solely to obtaining as much “political-operative” advantage as possible in the East-West German clash of political cultures. As an SED official explained, “In my opinion, it would be beneficial to hold the trial two to three weeks before the conclusion of the West German proceedings, that is, in late February/early March. It would need to last only a few days, but its course and verdict would have to be such as to influence the West German trial, openly proclaim the guilt of I.G. Farben, and involve the participation of several representatives from Western countries.”[1]
The “public” proceedings before the Supreme Court of the GDR in East Berlin and hand-picked courtroom spectators were intended to invest the East German system of justice with an aura of adherence to the rule of law and create an international reputation.
The coordination of the Fischer complex with the accessory prosecution in the second Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial took place under the direction of the MfS, which remained in control of the proceedings at all times. The secret police was the real source of inspiration for the trial’s conception and exploitation as propaganda. The established practice of adopting the secret police’s final report almost unchanged as the state prosecutor’s bill of indictment was employed prior to the Fischer trial as well.
The indictment charged Fischer in particular with having conducted selections in the prisoner infirmaries of the main camp and the subcamps, specifically of I.G. Farben’s Buna/Monowitz camp, and in the work detachments there. In addition, he was charged in connection with supervision of the SS disinfection detail, which was responsible for discharging the poisonous gas into the Birkenau gas chamber, disguised as a “sauna.” Further, he was accused of having sanctioned the physical mistreatment of prisoners in his role as SS doctor and of having monitored the performance of these punitive measures. In his function as the deputy of the SS garrison doctor, Fischer was charged with having requested Zyklon B for extermination of prisoners on several occasions. Finally, the principal charge was that Fischer was responsible for the selection of as many as 75,000 people at the Birkenau ramp and their subsequent murder.
Adhering to the official definition of fascism, the prosecution sketched a rather one-dimensional picture of the camp complex at Auschwitz. Quickly, it became exclusively a question of I.G. Farben and its cooperation with the SS. It was possible to get the impression that the managers of I.G. Farben had taken a seat in the dock next to Horst Fischer, the former deputy SS garrison doctor. Nonetheless: If you overlook the propaganda formulas, which bore no relationship, even an indirect one, to the accused in terms of criminal law, then, in the main, the history of the largest Nazi concentration and extermination camp was outlined correctly and the everyday living conditions of the prisoners were reconstructed with historical accuracy. In describing the crimes with which Fischer was charged, the prosecution repeatedly reverted to the subject of “the pleadings of the accused.” On some charges, the chief public prosecutor was forced to invoke solely the statements of the defendant. Fischer’s personal records and the sketches he made of the site were used as evidence.[2]
(CD; transl. KL)