Der Ankläger des Frankfurter Auschwitz-Prozesses

Contemporary witness interview with Gerhard Wiese

As a young public prosecutor, Gerhard Wiese represented the prosecution against 20 men in the first Frankfurt Auschwitz trial (1963-1965): they were accused of murder and aiding and abetting murder in various capacities in the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp. Wiese wrote the indictment against Wilhelm Boger, among others. The "Devil of Auschwitz", as Auschwitz prisoners called him because of his brutal interrogation methods, had begun his police career with the Württemberg Gestapo in the "Hotel Silber" and worked for the Political Department in the Auschwitz concentration camp from 1942 to 1945.

Now 96 years old, Gerhard Wiese is the last surviving prosecutor of the Auschwitz trial. In the "Hotel Silber", he talks about the triggers that made the trial possible in the first place, his work for the Hessian Attorney General Fritz Bauer and the trial that was to become the "trial of his life" and which today has a firm place in the collective memory.

The event is the closing event for the special exhibition "Gestapo in Court. The persecution of Nazi criminals", which can be visited at the Hotel Silber memorial site until July 23.