Victims as Witnesses in Trials of Nazi Perpetrators. An Analysis of their Changing Role in the Sixty Years of the Federal Republic

通过这一项目，将在一本专著中系统地研究国家社会主义的前受害者在联邦共和国纳粹罪行法律处理中的作用。围绕奥斯维辛集中营和灭绝集中营以及索比卜灭绝集中营的罪行审判，将在60年的时间里重建国家社会主义受害者作为刑事起诉受害者证人的重要性以及他们如何认识到自己的作用。该项目将展示这在审判中扮演的角色。这两名小组成员将在1950年至2011年期间在他们的法律框架内将受害者作为证人进行审查。在这一过程中，将追踪审判的进程，从最初寻找证人、在其本国听取主要是外国证人的证词、证人出庭到在判决理由中评估他们的证词，并将其置于各自的当代历史背景中。重点将同样放在受害者--证人在诉讼中的待遇以及他们自己的意图、行为和经历上。这一时间框架包括在对纳粹罪行的法律处理方面不同程度的时期，对个别罪行评估的不同刑法解释，以及对个别集中营中的罪行的日益增长的历史认识。最后，必须考虑到幸存者作为证人的地位的重大社会转变，从将其用作法律证据，到被视为当代目击者。这些审判伴随着各种不同的公共利益。根据一篇论文，这反过来又影响了法律裁决。在详细的分析中，将提供一个例子，说明受害者群体和司法人员之间的沟通是如何发生的，这对检方产生了哪些后果，以及它是如何改变的。受害者协会和犹太组织对证人的传唤产生了相当大的影响。他们的作用也将在该项目的框架内讨论。比较研究的目的还在于将那些受到迫害的人作为一组不同利益的不同群体加以关注。广泛的材料首先可以在案件和总共18个法律案件的审判卷宗中找到，这些材料包括诉讼记录、录音记录、司法人员与证人之间以及利益集团与证人之间的通信。此外，还将包括外交部和联邦新闻办公室等参与的联邦当局的文件，但也包括受影响的联邦州司法部的文件。

With this project, the role of former victims of National Socialism in the legal treatment of Nazi crimes in the Federal Republic will be systematically examined in a monograph. Focussing on the trials of crimes in Auschwitz concentration and extermination camps and Sobibór extermination camp, the significance of victims of National Socialism as victim-witnesses for the criminal prosecution and how they perceived their own role will be reconstructed over a period of 60 years.It is important for this selection of crimes that the victim-witnesses from Auschwitz constituted heterogeneous victim groups, whereas the few victim-witnesses from Sobibór were all Jews. The project will demonstrate which role this played in the trials.The two team members will examine victims as witnesses in their legal framework between 1950 and 2011. In the process, the course taken by the trials, from the initial witness search, the hearing of the mostly foreign witnesses in their homelands and the court appearances of the witnesses to the evaluation of their testimony in the reasons for the judgement, will be traced and placed in the respective contemporary historical context. The focus will be equally on the treatment of the victim-witnesses in the proceedings and their own intentions, conduct and experiences. The time frame encompasses periods of differing intensity in terms of the legal treatment of Nazi crimes, diverging penal interpretations on the appraisal of individual crimes, as well as a growing historical knowledge about the crimes in the individual camps. Finally, a major societal shift in the status of the survivors as witnesses, from their utilisation as legal evidence to being regarded as contemporary eyewitnesses, must be taken into account. The trials were accompanied by a public interest that varied. According to one thesis, this in turn impacted on the legal findings.In a detailed analysis, an example will be provided of how communication between victim groups and members of the judiciary took place, which consequences this had for the prosecution and how it changed. The victims' associations and the Jewish organisations exerted a considerable influence on the calling of witnesses. Their role will also be addressed in the framework of the project. The aim of the comparative study is to also place those who were persecuted at the centre of attention as a group of heterogeneous people with differing interests.The extensive source material is to be found above all in the case and trial files for the total of 18 individual legal cases, in records of proceedings, transcripts of recordings, and correspondence between the members of the judiciary and the witnesses as well as between the interest groups and the witnesses. Furthermore, the files of participating federal authorities such as the Foreign Ministry and the Federal Press Office will be included, but also those of the ministries of justice in the federal states affected.