[4] After the closing of Treblinka in October 1943, Hirtreiter was ordered to Italy where he joined a police unit for the so-called anti-partisan "cleansing" operations (Bandenbekämpfung).

His death camp superior, Franz Stangl, went there in order to set up the Risiera di San Sabba killing centre in Trieste.

Unable to pin any specific atrocities on Hirtreiter, a denazification court instead sentenced him to 10 years in a labour camp as a major offender in 1948.

[7] However, in 1949, Hirtreiter was charged with murder after a West German prosecutor read about his denazification case in a newspaper article and decided to conduct his own investigation.

Sawek,[8] or Jeszajahu)[9] Warszawski, who survived in a burial pit wounded, and slipped away under the cover of night, and a second witness, Abraham Bomba.

The court ruled that he had killed at least 10 people, mostly children aged one to two, during the unloading of the transports notably, by grabbing them by their feet and smashing their heads against the walls of boxcars.

First of all, the court considers the murder characteristic of 'other base motives' to be given, since the extermination of people solely out of ideological expediency and in the knowledge of their innocence must be classified as particularly despicable.