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Male and Female Holocaust Perpetrators and the East German Approach to Justice, 1949-1963
- Holocaust and Genocide Studies
- Oxford University Press
- Volume 24, Number 1, Spring 2010
- pp. 56-84
- Article
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Bringing to bear newly available secret police, court, and other documents from the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), this study analyzes two lesser-known trials of Nazi perpetrators of the Holocaust in Galicia. One case features a typical German gendarme convicted but released from prison in the 1950s; the other features a married couple who shot Jews and others on an SS agricultural estate. Both cases highlight East German investigation methods and prosecutors' use of evidence, while the second affords an opportunity to consider gendered aspects of wartime crimes and postwar trials. On the basis of these cases the author examines how evolving political considerations in the 1950s and 1960s shaped investigations, judicial processes, and sentences.