Exterior view of Landsberg prison where German war criminals were interned.

Photograph | Digitized | Photograph Number: 66321

Overview

Caption: Exterior view of Landsberg prison where German war criminals were interned.
Date: Circa 1946
Locale: Landsberg, [Bavaria] Germany
Variant Locale: Landsberg Am Lech
Photo Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Joseph H. Williams
Event History: Landsberg Prison continued to function as a penal facility after Adolf Hitler's incarceration there in 1924 until Hitler's rise to power. During the first six years of the Nazi regime (1933-1939) the structure served as a memorial to Hitler's incarceration. More than 4,000 visitors came to the prison, which also served to host ceremonies of the Hitler Youth. Between 1945 and 1957, the facility became a prison again, this time for Nazi offenders convicted in the subsequent Nuremberg trials of the International Military Tribunal. Ohlendorf and Pohl were executed there, and the last convicts were released in 1957. Today, the facility remains a prison under the administration of the Corrections Department of the Bavarian Ministry of Justice.

[brief by the Senior Historian's Office, USHMM]

https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007884.
https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10008194.

Photo Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Copyright: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Provenance: Joseph H. Williams

Keyword: EXTERIORS LANDSBERG PRISONS PRISONS (LANDSBERG) VIEWS
Photo Designation: PURSUIT OF JUSTICE -- Concentration Camp/Atrocity Trials -- US Army Trials -- Prison/Views

Biography: Joseph Haley Williams, born in 1920 in Front Royal, Virginia, fought with the 9th Division, 47th Company at Safi, Sicily, and the Mulde River operations in Germany. In the autumn of 1946, just prior to the October executions of those Nazis already convicted of war crimes, Lt. Williams's unit (Company 'L') was sent to Landsberg to take command of and tighten the prison's security. In 1946 the prison had approximately one thousand inmates, most of whom were convicted concentration camp guards and administrators from Dachau, Mauthausen, Buchenwald, and Kaufering. As the commandant in charge of prison security, Lt. Williams oversaw security, requisitioned houses for his two hundred troops, received new prisoners, and supervised executions. From the fall of 1946 to the fall of 1947 he acquired an intimate familiarity with all of Landsberg's operations and activities, and developed noteworthy relations with many people there. In 1947 he was stationed in Italy for duty unrelated to the war crime trials.

[Source: Williams, Lt. Joseph H; Captor-Captive, Jacksonville, Girtman Press, 1986.]