Trials of Members of Einsatzkommando 8 in West Germany: Gaswagen and the Holocaust in Mogilev
In 1942, in order to execute the genocide of Jews in Belarus, along with carrying out mass executions, the Nazis began to use gaswagens. In June 1942, a «special vehicle» appeared at the disposal of Einsatzkommando 8 in Mogilev. Based on the trials’ recordings and protocols, it can be assumed that at least 2,500 Jews of the Mogilev region were poisoned in gas vans (gaswagens). Details of the crimes committed by the Nazis with the use of gas vans became known in the 1960s, when lawsuits were held in the Federative Republic of Germany against former members of Einsatzkommando 8: A. Garnishmacher, G. Richter, G. Haase, G. Schlechte, K. Strohammer. The paper sets the goal, using the example of trials against the members of Einsatzkommando 8, to determine what legal assessment West Germany justice gave to the Nazi atrocities associated with the extermination of Jews in gaswagens. On the one hand, the trials against former members of Einsatzkommando 8 testified to the desire of German justice to critically rethink Germany’s recent past, to ensure the principle of inevitability of criminal responsibility for Nazi criminals. On the other hand, the outcomes of the trials under consideration indicated that West German Themis, as well as the overwhelming majority of the citizens of the Federal Republic of Germany, refused to treat the former members of Einsatzkommando as criminals. In German society, the prevailing opinion was that the blame for the Holocaust and other crimes of National Socialism lay exclusively with A. Hitler and his entourage (G. Himmler, R. Heydrich, etc.). The rest of the Germans were only «hostages of the regime» who «due to special life circumstances» were forced to perform the criminal orders of the Fuehrer. In juridical practice, that approach took shape in the theory of complicity, based on which the German courts assigned minimal punishments to Nazi criminals, and often the courts completely exempted them from criminal liability.