Josef Oberhauser was the only Nazi to be successfully convicted for war crimes committed at the Bełżec extermination camp.

Background and career

Josef Oberhauser was born in Munich during World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

. He went on to become an agricultural labourer until he joined the SS in November 1935. Oberhauser, as a member of the "SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler" was involved in the 1939 Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

 campaign. During that time, he was promoted to the rank of SS-Oberscharführer

Oberscharführer

Oberscharführer was a Nazi Party paramilitary rank that existed between the years of 1932 and 1945. Translated as “Senior Squad Leader”, Oberscharführer was first used as a rank of the Sturmabteilung and was created due to an expansion of the enlisted positions required by growing SA membership...

.

Initial conviction

Josef Oberhauser was sentenced to 15 years in prison by a Soviet military tribunal

Military tribunal

A military tribunal is a kind of military court designed to try members of enemy forces during wartime, operating outside the scope of conventional criminal and civil proceedings. The judges are military officers and fulfill the role of jurors...

 in East Germany for charges relating to euthanasia. He was provided with an amnesty on 28 April 1956. Following his release, Josef Oberhauser served as a casual labourer, bartender and waiter in Munich.

Bełżec extermination camp

Oberhauser had been posted to Bełżec extermination camp from November 1941 until 1 August 1942 as the leader of guard platoon. In 1963 the Bełżec trials began and Oberhauser was one of 8 defendants charged with war crimes committed there. On 30 January 1964, all of the defendants bar Oberhauser were acquitted due to the collapse of the prosecution case but re-arrested shortly thereafter. Oberhauser appeared before the court again in January 1965. He was found guilty and sentenced to 4 years and 6 months imprisonment. Oberhauser was released after serving half of his sentence. He died in 1979. Oberhauser was unwillingly filmed for Claude Lanzmann's documentary Shoah

Shoah (film)

This page is about the film by the name of Shoah. For other uses, see Shoah Shoah is a 1985 French documentary film directed by Claude Lanzmann about the Holocaust...

, released in 1985.

External sources

• Jewish Virtual Library