Auschwitz Trial Testimony of Otto Wolken

The Frankfurt Auschwitz trial was held in Frankfurt, West Germany, from December 1963 to August 1965. Following the 1946 convictions of 23 former Auschwitz personnel in Kraków, it was the second major postwar trial charging a group of Auschwitz camp officials. The Frankfurt Auschwitz trial was the largest case against war criminals ever held in West Germany.¹

Like the jurists at the trial of Adolf Eichmann, prosecutors in Frankfurt hoped that the trial would educate the public about the Holocaust and the crimes committed under Nazi rule.² More than 300 witnesses testified—including over 200 survivors of the camp. They added personal experiences and details to the expert testimony of historians. This provided a view of everyday life in Auschwitz from the prisoners' perspectives. One historian notes that their narratives touched on three main themes—the terrible conditions in the camp, the perverse bureaucratic nature of death at Auschwitz, and the degree of individual responsibility exercised by the SS.³

All of these themes appear in the testimony of Otto Wolken, an Austrian Jewish physician imprisoned in Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1943. Wolken managed to survive working as a prisoner doctor. He later provided key information on the campaign of mass murder in Nazi camps. Immediately following the liberation of Auschwitz in January of 1945, Wolken wrote a chronicle of his experiences in the camp. In 1946, he was called as a witness to testify before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg.

As the first survivor to take the stand in Frankfurt, Wolken testified for two hours. He gave detailed descriptions of atrocities committed by the camp's German doctors. Wolken had worked closely with members of the SS, and his testimony was revealing partly because he was one of the few Jewish prisoners with this perspective. In the featured passage, Wolken reflects on his encounters with Jewish children sent to their deaths in Auschwitz. Wolken's testimony shows that these children knew that they were facing their deaths, but they still managed to stay calm and composed—and to show defiance to their murderers.⁴

For more on the Kraków trial, see the Experiencing History item "On the Auschwitz Trial in Kraków (impressions)."

See the related Experiencing History item The Eichmann Trial Testimony of Zivia Lubetkin to learn more about the prosecution's preparation and approach.

Devin O. Pendas, The Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial, 1963–1965: Genocide, History, and the Limits of the Law (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 156-157. Despite massive coverage from the German media, Pendas concludes that the primary goal of the trial—to captivate and educate the German populace about the genocide—was not achieved. Ibid, 286–287. See also Rebecca Wittmann, Beyond Justice: The Auschwitz Trial (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005).

For other primary sources relating to the experiences of Jewish children during the Holocaust, see the Experiencing History items, Diary of Janusz Korczak, Diary of Michal Kraus, Diary of Đura Rajs, Address Book Owned by Richard Weilheimer, and Portrait of a Jewish Youth with Disabilities Named Eric.

This translation of Wolken's testimony is courtesy of the Fritz Bauer Institut.

There are three other incidents that remain with me, which I have not been able to forget because they involve children.¹ It was after the big selection on January 21. One of those who was to be gassed lost his nerve and was raving and screaming. And so I was sent from the clinic into the block to see what could be done. There was also a little boy in there, who had been with us in the camp, from the town of Będzin. I asked him: 'Well, Jurek, how are you?' and he said, 'I'm not scared. It's all so horrible here, it can only be better up there.' There were two convoys which came from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz, in three-month intervals. They had been condemned, as I only learned later, to exactly six months in the camp. So in exactly six months time everyone in the first convoy would be sent into the gas chambers. Those in the second convoy, which arrived three months later than the first, were still in the camp and I witnessed a block elder, speaking with a nine-year-old boy from the Czech camp, from the Theresienstadt camp, with good rapport. He said to the boy: "Oh, Karli, you know so much!" And the boy replied: 'I know that I know a lot. And I also know that I will not learn any more than I already know, and that's the sad part.'

One time, it was already summer—and we rarely had any children, they usually only came to us by chance—a group of ninety children arrived all at once. The ghetto in Kaunas had been emptied, the women were sent to Stutthof and the male children with their parents, with the fathers, were sent to Dachau. From Dachau the children were sent to Auschwitz, and ended up in the quarantine camp. They stayed with us for a while and then they were sent off and gassed. The head of the group was a fourteen-year-old boy and he encouraged them, saying: 'Just get on, onto the vehicle.' And when he had gotten on himself and the children began to yell, he said: 'Don't shout, you saw how they murdered your parents and grandparents? Well, now it's our turn. We will see them all again up there.' And then turning to the SS-men: 'But, don't for one minute think that you'll get off lightly! You'll all going to croak just as you're sending us to croak!' They beat him, but he'd said exactly what he'd felt was necessary at that moment. A brave kid!"

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