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PETR VÁLEK CYIL 7 ȍ2016Ȏ
Hitler and the members of the German Government need not be proved again in
the present case. Here it is based on the same facts as in the cases of Buchenwald
(Ž 11/44), Dachau (Ž 10/44), Natzweiler (Ž 12/44) and others. It may be sufficient
to refer to these cases.“44
The next group of listed persons comes from the German security apparatus,
ranging from the leadership of the Ordnungspolizei and Reichssicherheitshauptamt
(from No. 33 to No. 54) to the local “Police Authorities”. In fact, the overwhelming
majority of these individuals (fromNo. 58 to No. 265) are officers, some of them being
members of the SS, who served in these authorities in the Protectorate of Bohemia
and Moravia, Reichsgau Sudetenland, the Prussian Province Ober-Schlesien, the Land
Bayern (Regierungsbezirk Oberpfalz), Reichsgau Oberdonau and Niederdonau.45
In the “Notes on the Case”, it is explained that “[a] criminal responsibility for the
crimes committed on Czechoslovak citizens in the concentration camps of Oswieczim
and Birkenau lies further on those persons who ordered the arrest of Czechoslovak
citizens and their internment in a concentration camp, and on all those who carried
out these orders.”46
This conclusion certainly makes sense – without the involvement of the efficient
German security apparatus in the Protectorate and in the above-mentioned provinces, the
Czech Jews could have never been murdered in Auschwitz and Birkenau. The systematic
pattern of genocide was later reflected in Article 3 of the 1948 Genocide Convention,47
covering not just “complicity in genocide”, but a much broader “conspiracy to commit
genocide”. Dr. Ečer was rightfully applying the same concept, used previously in other
war crimes trials, making criminally responsible the police officers operating outside
the concentration camp. In modern international criminal law, this form of individual
criminal responsibility would be called a “joint criminal enterprise”48 and is also set
out in Article 25(3)(d) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court 49 (as
“a group of persons acting with a common purpose” 50 ).
The final group of listed persons includes the leadership of SS-Wirtschafts- und
Verwaltungshauptamt (the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office), that ran
the concentration camps, and the officials of the camps Auschwitz and Birkenau (from
No. 266 to No. 369).51 Dr. Ečer, in his “Notes on the case”, stated the following:
44 Ibid., Enclosure 7, p. 1.
45 Ibid., Enclosure 1, p. 4-19.
46 Ibid., Enclosure 7, p. 1.
47 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Paris, 9 December 1948),
published in Czechoslovakia under No. 32/1955 Sb.
48 SCHABAS, W. A. The UN International Criminal Tribunals, The former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Sierra
Leone, Cambridge 2008, p. 309-314.
49 SCHABAS, W. A. An Introduction to the International Criminal Court, Cambridge 2008, p. 215-219.
50 The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court was published in the Czech Republic under
No. 84/2009 Sb.m.s. or is available at:
51 See supra note 35, Enclosure 1, p. 19-24.