I Didn't Know What Auschwitz Was": the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial and the German Press, 1963-1965
"I didn't know what Auschwitz was": The Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial and the German Press, 1963-1965 Devin 0. Pendas* On December 20, 1963, the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial opened before the State Court (Schwurgericht) at Frankfurt am Main. Ginther Leicher, covering the trial for the Allgemeine Zeitung/Neuer Mainzer Anzeiger, described the scene thus: "A huge mass of journalists, photographers and camera people from all over the world and half-empty seats in the visitors' gallery: these are the contradictory emblems of the public interest in the Auschwitz trial, which opened last Friday, four days before Christmas, in the Frankfurt City Council chambers."' In this Article, I examine the seeming paradox that the Auschwitz trial could attract such considerable attention from the mass media while remaining a matter of indifference, if not open hostility, for much of the German public. In other words, I ask what the relationship is between the Auschwitz trial as a trial, as a media event, and as a "moment" in the West German public sphere. Trials for mass atrocity are often viewed as at least potentially engendering a historical narrative of truth, one aimed at securing reconciliation and social solidarity in the aftermath of genocide.2 But of course, such an understanding of trials as pedagogical events * William Rainy Harper Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Chicago. This Article is part of a dissertation entitled, "Displaying Justice: Nazis on Trial in Postwar Germany," which is currently being revised for publication. A German version of this Article was given as a public lecture at the Fritz Bauer Institute in Frankfurt am Main in November 1997, and a shortened version was presented at the conference "From Trials to History" at the Einstein Forum in Potsdam, January 25-27, 1998.
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