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.
Biography
Gregor Ebner (1892-1974), SS-Oberfuehrer, was Chief of the Main Health Department of Lebensborn. Ebner joined the NSDAP in 1930, and the SS shortly afterward. He was considered an expert on matters of "racial hygiene," and became a special SS lecturer on "problems of racial selection." A close friend of Heinrich Himmler from their school days, Ebner was able to secure a position in the RuSHA, the Office of Race and Resettlement in the Lebensborn program, a system of houses for women of Aryan descent and SS men to "breed" children. At the Steinhoering Lebensborn house, Ebner presided over the birth of some three thousand illegitimate children and performed reproduction experiments on women. As a physician, it was Ebner's duty to determine which children from occupied territories were suitable for "Germanization". Those that were deemed suitable, often the children of Poles or Czechs, were kidnapped; those that were not suitable were often deported to concentration camps. Towards the end of the war, Ebner was captured. He was tried for crimes against humanity, war crimes, and membership in a criminal organization as one of the defendants in the "RuSHA Case" in Nuremberg. He was acquitted of the first two charges, and convicted on the the third, but was released, having already served his time. He died in 1974, still convinced that Lebensborn was the salvation of German blood.
[Source: Henry, Clarissa and Hillel, Marc. "Of Pure Blood". McGraw Hill, c.1976.]
