Buchenwald trial

The care of mostly emaciated and very sick "Muselmänner" and the burial on the death marches of thousands of prisoners who perished from starvation or shooting presented a difficult task for the United States Army.

[4] On 16 April 1945, 1000 people from Weimar under American command were mandated to visit Buchenwald concentration camp where they could witness the remaining traces of the mass extinction.

[5] The perpetrators were soon caught and detained, including the last commandant of Buchenwald concentration camp Hermann Pister, who was arrested in June 1945 by American soldiers in Munich.

The Command staff was interned in a prisoner-of-war camp at Bad Aibling and was interrogated shortly after the war ended in 1945 by the Counterintelligence Corps.

[6] At least 450 former Buchenwald inmates were called as witnesses, including Hermann Brill, and two truckloads of documentary material from the camp commander was used as evidence.

After lengthy negotiations and hesitant inspection of the investigation files, the Soviet side expressed interest in the proceeding only with respect to the mass killing in Gardelegen, where 1000 prisoners were burned alive.

3 September 1946 was stipulated as the date for the transfer of the detainees and the extensive evidence concerning Buchenwald and Mittelbau; however, no representatives of the Soviet military administration appeared at the meeting point at the border zone.

The eight American officers of the U.S. military tribunal at the trial of former camp personnel and prisoners from Buchenwald. From left to right: Lt. Col. Morris, Col. Robertson, Col. Ackerman, Brig. Gen. Kiel, Lt. Col. Dwinell, Col. Pierce, Col. Dunning, and Lt. Col. Walker.
A SS guard who allegedly abused prisoners was identified on 14 April 1945 by a former Soviet Buchenwald prisoner at Buchenwald.
On 27 May 1945, a former Buchenwald inmate shows American soldier Jack Levine a container with human organs that Nazi physicians removed from camp inmates.
American congressmen visited Buchenwald on 24 April 1945.
German historian and camp survivor Eugen Kogon giving his eyewitness testimony on 16 April 1947 at the Buchenwald trial.