- Caption
- View of the defendants and their counsel during a session of the RuSHA Trial.
- Date
-
1947 October 20 - 1948 March 10
- Locale
- Nuremberg, [Bavaria] Germany
- Variant Locale
- Nurnberg
- Photo Credit
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Hedwig Wachenheimer Epstein
- Event History
- On September 30, 1947, the U.S. Military Government for Germany reconstituted the Military Tribunal I, which had earlier been convened for the Doctors' Trial, to try the RuSHA Case. The 14 defendants were all leading officials in the RuSHA or Main Race and Resettlement Office, a central organization in the implementation of racial programs of the Third Reich, or in other organizations with parallel missions, such as the Lebensborn Society and the Main Office for Repatriation of Racial Germans. The indictment against them listed three counts: crimes against humanity, war crimes and membership in criminal organizations. The defendants were accused of criminal responsibility for many aspects of the Nazi racial program, including the kidnapping of "racially valuable" children for Aryanization, the forcible evacuation of foreign nationals from their homes in favor of Germans or Ethnic Germans, and the persecution and extermination of Jews throughout Germany and German-occupied Europe. The trial ran from October 20, 1947 to February 17, 1948. The tribunal rendered its judgment on March 10. It found eight defendants guilty on all counts, five guilty only of membership in a criminal organization, and one not guilty. The sentences were announced the same day. The chief defendant, Ulrich Greifelt, was sentenced to life in prison, seven to terms of between 10 and 25 years, five to time already served, and one was acquitted.
https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007079.