CYIL Vol. 7, 2016

CYIL 7 ȍ2016Ȏ THE UNITED NATIONS WAR CRIMES COMMISSION… “A criminal responsibility for the crimes committed on Czechoslovak citizens in the concentration camps Oswieczim and Birkenau falls also on the persons who are in charge of the administration of the concentration camps and eventually on those who actually perpetrated these crimes.” 52 The list contains some infamous names like Rudolf Hoess (Höß), the longest serving commandant of Auschwitz, Hans Liebehenschel, the successor of Hoess, Hans Aumeier and Karl Fritzsch, the deputy commandants, Maxmilian Grabner, the Gestapo official in the concentration camp (responsible for the torture Block 11), Josef Kramer, the commandant of Auschwitz II-Birkenau (and later Bergen-Belsen), Heinrich Schwartz, the commandant of Auschwitz III and others. Most of these war criminals were tried and executed in Poland after the war. On the list there is also a numerous group of medical officers, including Dr. Mengele (No. 304), and many low-ranking SS officers. There are even nine prisoners (perhaps Kapos ) who, according to “Notes on the Case”, “murdered co- prisoners”. 53 In sum, it seems that already in June 1945 the Czechoslovak authorities were relatively well informed on the command structure of the concentration camps as a whole and of Auschwitz-Birkenau in particular. The second part of the Commission’s form, called “Date and Place of Commission of Alleged Crime” (Enclosure 2), was addressed just by one sentence: “The crimes under consideration have been continuously committed during the whole time of the occupation of the Czechoslovak Republic and in all Police Districts.” 54 While the murders of the Czech Jews took place in Poland, their mass arrests (described in detail in “Notes on the case”) happened on the territory of Czechoslovakia. As such, the text entered by Dr. Ečer into the second part is fully in line with the above conclusion that the crime of Holocaust cannot be geographically restricted to the concentration camps. The third part of the form, “Number and Description of Crime in War Crimes List” (Enclosure 3), is perhaps the most interesting one for an international lawyer. Dr. Ečer qualified the crimes in Auschwitz and Birkenau as: “I. Murder and Massacres – Systematic Terrorism. III. Torture of Civilians. IV. Deliberate Starvation of Civilians. VII. Deportation of Civilians. VIII. Internment of Civilians under Inhuman Conditions. IX. Forces Labour of Civilians in Connection with the MilitaryOperations of the Enemy. XIV. Confiscation of Property. XXXIII. Indiscriminate Mass Arrests.” 55 This part is further elaborated under the title “Particulars of Alleged Crime” (Enclosure 5) that provides a commentary to most of the listed crimes and paints to its reader the real picture of inferno in Auschwitz and Birkenau. In relation to the “Indiscriminate Mass Arrests”, it is explained that these arrests corresponded

52 Ibid. , Enclosure 7, p. 12. 53 Ibid. , Enclosure 7, p. 12.

54 Ibid. , Enclosure 2. 55 Ibid. , Enclosure 3.

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