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Father Johann Maria Lenz, a former inmate of Dachau, testifies at the trial of former camp personnel and prisoners from Dachau.

Photograph | Photograph Number: 11453
Father Johann Maria Lenz, a former inmate of Dachau, testifies at the trial of former camp personnel and prisoners from Dachau. Lenz was commissioned by the Vatican to write a book about the camp.

Father Johann Maria Lenz, a former inmate of Dachau, testifies at the trial of former camp personnel and prisoners from Dachau.

Lenz was commissioned by the Vatican to write a book about the camp.

Photographer
Gasiewicz
Date
1945 November 29
Locale
Dachau, [Bavaria] Germany
Photo Designation
PURSUIT OF JUSTICE -- Concentration Camp/Atrocity Trials -- US Army Trials -- Dachau
Photo Credit
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park

About This Photograph

Event History
The Dachau concentration camp trial opened on November 2, 1945 in Dachau, Germany. Forty individuals who had participated in the operation of the Dachau concentration camp were charged with the murder and mistreatment of foreign nationals imprisoned there. Among those charged were Martin Gottfried Weiss, the camp commandant from 1942-1943; Dr. Klaus Karl Schilling, an SS physician who was brought to Dachau to find a method of immunizing people against malaria; and three former prisoners. The trial lasted from November 15 to December 13, 1945, with seventy witnesses called for the prosecution and fifty witnesses called for the defense. All forty defendants were found guilty, with thirty-six being sentenced to death by hanging (including Weiss and Schilling), one sentenced to hard labor for life, and three sentenced to hard labor for ten years. A few of the sentences were reduced after a review board determined the defendants were involved to a lesser degree than originally believed, but most were upheld. Weiss was executed on May 29, 1946 and Schilling on May 28, 1946, both in Landsberg Prison.

https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007145.

Keywords and Subjects

Rights and Restrictions

Photo Source
National Archives and Records Administration, College Park
Copyright: Public Domain
Source Record ID: 111-SC-225441
 
Record last modified: 2009-05-21 00:00:00
This page: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1045926