{∅, {∅}, {∅, {∅}}} : Rage Against the Meat Grinder

The next day I saw the corpses in the barracks.


Strippel denied any involvement in the shooting. His denial, however, did not help him and on 1 June 1949, the court handed down its verdict: Strippel was sentenced to twenty- one life sentences “for twenty- one counts of murder”. On top of that, he received another ten years in prison for serious bodily harm “in an indefinite number of cases”.

He was sent to Butzbach Prison, 40 kilometers north of Frankfurt. Here he became an odd job man for the prison doctor and, not least because of his self- confident, often harsh demeanor, soon had considerable influence among the other prisoners and guards. He told the officials that he had merely done his duty in the concentration camps, nothing else. And they empathized with him.

The imprisoned Nazi criminals, including Strippel and the Frankfurt Gestapo chief Heinrich Baab, could not complain about the officials’ lack of understanding anyway. On 20 April, Hitler’s birthday, the group were able to celebrate undisturbed. Indeed, on that very day, Strippel had the opportunity to remember the incidents that marked the end of his cruel SS career: 20 April was the day on which the twenty Jewish children were murdered in the basement at Bullenhuser Damm. Strippel, however, did not want to remember anything. Least of all his participation.

“Today is the first time I have heard of an execution that allegedly took place in the basement of the school on Bullenhuser Damm. I had not received orders from any authority for this execution, nor had I passed on orders to my subordinates. I can no longer say where I was on the night of 20- 21 April 1945,” he said on the record on 10 May 1965, when an investigator from the public prosecutor’s office in Butzbach sat opposite him.

The statement by four SS men involved in the crime claiming he also took part in the hanging of the children was considered by Strippel to be a conspiracy. “The only way I can explain it is that each of the accused had every conceivable interest in shifting the blame for the killing of the children onto me,” he said of the allegations. The public prosecutor’s office accepted his claim and discontinued the investigation.

Shortly thereafter, the Frankfurt jury concluded the Buchenwald trial in Strippel’s favor. One of the prosecution’s witnesses had been described as “generally unreliable” in another trial. Although the witness was only a marginal figure in Strippel’s trial, the judiciary granted him a discount on his sentence, whereby the ten years he was due to serve for serious bodily harm “in an indefinite number of cases” was reduced to five years. The life sentences remained. The twenty- one dead 25

Jews from Buchenwald could not be pleaded away. Nevertheless, Arnold Strippel managed to pull off another coup: a retrial was once again permitted on the basis that Strippel may not have acted “as a fanatical National Socialist” in the collective murders, as the first verdict had so far assumed. First, the arrest warrant was revoked and Strippel left Butzbach Prison on 21 April 1969.

As a man with a shady past, he did not have to worry about such existential things in Germany, and he quickly found a new job working as a bookkeeper for a Frankfurt business. A conscientious worker, the company was satisfied with its new accountant.

The process of the retrial then followed, which like so many other Nazi proceedings, dragged on and on. Former prisoners – insofar as they had survived the camps – often found it difficult to remember details, and the defense lawyers knew how to use this in their client’s interest. After five months, the court finally announced the verdict of the retrial: it was still clear that Strippel was involved in the shooting of the twenty- one Jewish prisoners on 9 November. However, the Frankfurt judges Seiboldt, Steffgen and Dr Zander regarded him as being merely an “assistant”, and for that sentenced him to six years in prison, to be served at Butzbach. Strippel would also receive compensation for his imprisonment of 121,500 marks. This was a lot of money at the time, amounting to seven times as much as his concentration camp prisoners would have received as compensation for the same amount of time, had they managed to escape from Strippel.


During questions in the Bundestag, the SPD member for parliament, Norbert Gansel, spoke for many when he asked:

“How does the Federal Government judge that the former SS Obersturmführer and concentration camp guard Strippel. . . receive compensation for being imprisoned of 120,000 DM, while victims of Nazi tyranny only received compensation of 5 DM per day of imprisonment; and will the Federal Government initiate an amendment to the Federal Compensation Act with the aim of ensuring that victims of Nazi tyranny are not discriminated against in this macabre way against their tormentors?”

State Secretary Hermsdorf, on the other hand, argued against this during questions in the Bundestag on 9 May 1973: “The compensation paid to the concentration camp guard Strippel related only to material damage such as loss of earnings, reimbursement of social security contributions and expenses incurred in criminal proceedings. . .Given the extent of the damage and the number of victims, the damage caused by the loss of freedom could neither be completely balanced nor fully settled.”

Arnold Strippel cared little about the parliamentary questions or public debates. He was now a wealthy citizen and bought a comfortable condominium in Frankfurt- Kalbach. What’s more, the ex- SS Obersturmführer knew how to protect his property and his rights. When trees were due to be planted behind his house, he appeared at a meeting of the local advisory board.

One of the participants remembers: “A tall, strapping man, loud and self- confident. He complained that the trees would shade his balcony.” In the end, the trees were planted far away from Strippel’s apartment.

But even in his bourgeois condominium, he could not escape the past. In November 1975, he and thirteen other concentration camp henchmen were once again on trial. This time in Düsseldorf, for crimes committed at Majdanek.

Majdanek was the name given to the concentration camp set up by the Waffen- SS 5 kilometers east of the Polish city of Lublin. How many people died there in the gas chambers, or were shot or beaten to death, no one knows, although historians estimate 350,000 lost their lives. More than 1,500 SS criminals and concentration camp guards carried out their murderous service here, with only a few of them being tried after the end of the war, let alone being convicted. The courts showed little interest in prosecuting the Majdanek criminals, despite a wealth of incriminating evidence provided by the Poles.

Public prosecutors spent twelve years investigating. Initially there were forty- seven accused, but this was then reduced down to fourteen. The rest were left in the all- too-complicated mesh of the German judiciary system.

When the presiding judge Günter Boden opened the trial in Room L 111 of the Düsseldorf Regional Court, he had no idea that it would become one of the longest in the Federal Republic of Germany’s history: the verdicts would not be announced until May 1981. He also could not know that this five- year trial, this years- long dispute over perpetrators and actions, about guilt and punishment, would become more of a symbol for German jurisprudence than of making the reality and scale of the “Lublin Death Factory” known to the world.

Arnold Strippel was also in the dock on the opening day of the trial. The allegation: in July 1942 he was said to have been involved in the killing of forty- two Soviet prisoners of war at Majdanek. Of course, once again, Strippel denied everything.

He sat in the dock with a somber expression, at times shielding his eyes with dark sunglasses and giving the impression that it was all very boring and had nothing to do with him. On the 337th day of the trial, 6 June 1979, there was a commotion in the courtroom when Strippel unintentionally took center stage. In the audience were eleven Frenchmen, members of the association

“Sons and Daughters of Deported Jews from France”, who were following the trial. Among them was the Parisian dentist Henri Morgenstern. His father was murdered in Dachau, and his cousin Jacqueline was hanged on 20 April 1945 in the basement of the Hamburg elementary school on Bullenhuser Damm. She was just 12 years old. The man in charge of the murder operation was Arnold Strippel.

“Nazi murderer, Nazi murderer!”, the group chanted, pointing at Strippel. The room stewards intervened as the judges left the room, as did some of the accused and their lawyers. Strippel remained demonstratively seated. Henri Morgenstern stood in front of him and, with tremendous excitement, began to speak, in German: “We are here because we are the children of the victims you executed. We owe the fact that we are still alive today to a true miracle. It’s almost unbelievable that any of us can still be here to protest today, because almost all Jews were executed. . .Look at Strippel, this murderer who doesn’t dare look me in the face, a coward, a child murderer! He hanged my little cousin Jacqueline Morgenstern. Look at this killer lowering his head!”

“A scene from the Old Testament,” is how Günther Schwarberg later described these moments in his book Der Juwelier von Majdanek ( The Jeweler of Majdanek), a rousing contemporary document in which he described the life and death of the Jewish jeweler Samuel Antmann and his family in the Majdanek concentration camp.

After the day of turmoil, the trial quickly returned to normality.

An unbearable normality. While former prisoners remembered the horrors of Majdanek with often tearful agitation, the accused, seemingly unimpressed, sat on their benches and either talked to their lawyers, read newspapers, or dozed off – as if what was happening there had nothing to do with them. When they were called upon to justify themselves, they did so monotonically:

“I was only following orders” or “I can’t remember that anymore”. No one wanted to remember. No one felt guilty. No one knew anything.
Strippel’s behavior was no different than his co- defendants’.

“I was just following orders from my superiors,” he said, declaring the whole process to be a “gross injustice”, a show trial. Some of the defense lawyers seemed to share the same opinion as their clients, trying by any means possible to hinder proceedings.
Time and again they questioned the credibility of the witnesses.

“Equal to zero” was their probative value, which was all lawyer Stratmann could say without receiving a reprimand from the judge.

On 26 June 1981, the defense lawyers made their pleas, with all of them demanding acquittals for their clients. Strippel also made his closing words: “I am completely innocent,” he said. And: “In my life, I have always stood up for everything I have done.”

In their closing statement, the prosecution considered Strippel to be a “person who could be used for any purpose”. On 30 June 1981, visibly nervous and with a moving voice, Richter Bogen announced the verdicts:

– Hermine Ryan- Braunsteiner, two counts of murder: life imprisonment.

– Hildegard Lächert, aiding and abetting in the murder of 100 people: twelve years imprisonment.

– Hermann Hackmann, aiding and abetting in the murder of 141 people and the execution of 200 to 400 ill persons: ten years imprisonment.

– Emil Laurich, aiding and abetting in five counts of murder: eight years imprisonment.

– Heinz Villain, aiding and abetting in two murders, assisting in the murder of 18,000 people and taking part in the selection of 1,500
people: six years imprisonment.

– Fritz Heinrich Petrick, aiding and abetting in 41 counts of murder: four years imprisonment.

– Thomas Ellwanger, aiding and abetting in 100 counts of murder: three years imprisonment.

– Heinrich Groffmann: acquitted.

And Arnold Strippel? He was sentenced to 3 years and six months in prison for being an accessory to 41 counts of murder.

After the verdict was announced, a storm of protest broke out in the courtroom. Shouts of “Scandal!”, “Shame!”, and

“Unbelievable!” could be heard in the auditorium. Once peace had been restored, Judge Bogen spent eleven long hours justifying the verdicts. Regarding Strippel, he explained that “no excesses had been reported. . .” and although he had been sentenced to several years in prison, he could go home that evening as a free man. The arrest warrant had been overturned and Strippel could now be sure that he would not have to atone for his murderous deeds in Majdanek. He had lawyers, doctors, and all the necessary documentation, and so returned to his accustomed life as a well- off pensioner in his condominium in Kalbach.

The trial had come to an end. A scandalous trial. A German trial. The defense lawyer for an accused SS guard was elected carnival prince by the Düsseldorf Carnival Association; an elderly woman, who had been particularly committed to taking care of one of the accused SS guards during the trial, received the Order of Merit from the Federal Republic of Germany from President Carstens for her “self- sacrificing work”; finally, a former SS Unterscharführer called Heinrich Groffmann, a sadistic thug from Behringen whom witnesses described as being particularly cruel and who had been accused of murdering 17,102 people, walked out of the courtroom a free man.

And even in the case of the gruesome murder of the twenty Jewish children in Hamburg, Strippel had no need to fear that the judiciary would disturb his tranquil life as a pensioner.

Relatives filed further complaints, but the wheels of the German judiciary grind slowly – as is so often the case when it comes to Nazi perpetrators. Before a new lawsuit could take place, the judges wanted to know whether Strippel was even capable of standing trial. The answer was provided by three renowned Frankfurt experts on request. Their diagnosis: Not able to stand trial. A neurology expert, Professor Fischer, certified that Strippel was a “multimorbid patient”. His colleague, Professor Schöppe, senior physician of internal medicine, who saved Strippel from imprisonment after the Majdanek verdict in a report dated 17 September 1985 (diagnosis: “unfit to be imprisoned”), once again agreed that he was “unable to stand trial”.

Spring 1992: I am back in Kalbach. The curtains in Strippel’s window are drawn.
Despite repeatedly ringing the bell, no one opens. I walk over to the neighboring houses. The front gardens are all well- kept, presenting an orderly terraced- house idyll.
I ring the bells and sometimes a door opens. Arnold Strippel?

“No, there’s nothing to say about that; I have no opinion.” Doors are closed, sometimes in a friendly, embarrassed way, but mostly jerkily, accompanied by a brief, often loud and aggressive, comment: “Get out of here, quickly!”

Only Frau R. lets me in. An hour later, having told her about her neighbor’s career in the concentration camps, she seems perplexed and depressed. She knew nothing about it. The murder of the Jewish children leaves her speechless for a while.

“But with everything that’s happened,” she says later, pulling her little daughter close to her, “at some point there has to be peace.” Peace for the perpetrators?

Years later, in the autumn, I am back in Kalbach searching for clues. The name Strippel can no longer be found on the doorbell on Talstraße. The neighbors only vaguely remember the old man with the robust appearance. “Strippel? No, there’s no one here of that name,” says a young woman, briskly. “He died a few years ago,” says an older man in a broad Hessian dialect.

His grave cannot be found in the cemetery behind the small church.





This chapter was taken from German author Helmut Ortner.