Stutthof trials

The Stutthof trials were a series of war crime tribunals held in postwar Poland for the prosecution of Stutthof concentration camp staff and officials, responsible for the murder of up to 85,000 prisoners during the occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany in World War II.

SS-Sturmbannführer Max Pauly was put on trial by a British military court in Germany but not for the crimes committed at Stutthof; only as the commandant of the Neuengamme concentration camp in Hamburg.

[2] During the first trial held at Gdańsk from 25 April to 31 May 1946, the joint Soviet/Polish Special Criminal Court tried and convicted of crimes against humanity a group of thirteen ex-officials and overseers of the Stutthof concentration camp in Sztutowo and its Bromberg-Ost subcamp for women located in the city of Bydgoszcz.

The commandant of the Stutthof and Neuengamme concentration camps SS-Sturmbannführer Max Pauly was sentenced to death in Germany at about the same time.

The second commandant SS-Sturmbannführer Paul-Werner Hoppe (August 1942 – January 1945) was apprehended in 1953 in West Germany and later sentenced to nine years imprisonment.

[2] SS-Rottenführer Emil Strehlau was sentenced by the court in Torun (Wloclawek) on 23 April 1948 to death for war crimes.

[14] In 2021, Irmgard Furchner, a German former concentration camp secretary and stenographer at Stutthof who worked for camp commandant Paul-Werner Hoppe,[15] was charged with 11,412 counts of accessory to murder and 18 additional counts of accessory to attempted murder,[16][17][18] On 20 December 2022, she was found guilty and sentenced to a suspended jail term of two years.

[19][20] On 20 August 2024, the German Federal Court of Justice would reject Furchner's appeal and uphold her conviction.

The execution of guards of the Stutthof concentration camp on Biskupia Górka Hill near Gdańsk on 4 July 1946. In the foreground were the female guards sentenced to hang: Barkmann , Paradies , Becker , Klaff , Steinhoff (left to right)
The execution of Steinhoff, Pauls and three kapos 4 July 1946
At trial, 1947, Gdańsk . Left to right: Hans Rach, Fritz Peters, Albert Paulitz [ de ] , Ewald Foth [ de ] , and Theodor Traugott Meyer [ de ]