The research project, which has been conducted by Dr. Sara Berger since April 2023 and is funded by the Alfred Landecker Foundation, focuses on audio recordings from trials relating to Nazi crimes. These recordings are an important but little-noticed historical source that offer a variety of new approaches to the scholarly examination of the mass murders and the way the two German states dealt with their Nazi past after 1945.
Focusing on the audio tapes, the empirical study analyzes how the Holocaust was dealt with in West and East German trials on »Operation Reinhardt« between 1966 and 1985. In the extermination camps in occupied Poland, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka, more than 1.6 million Jews were murdered in gas chambers between 1942 and 1943. Hundreds of thousands more were shot during deportations and ghetto liquidations.
The investigation focuses on audio recordings from West German trials on Sobibor, which took place in Frankfurt am Main from 1973 to 1977 and in Hagen from 1982 to 1985. Individual audio tapes from East and West German proceedings on the deportations from the General Government to Belzec and Treblinka will also be included in the analysis.
The thematic focus of the study is, first, on the narratives of those involved in the court proceedings, with particular attention to the terms used by defendants, witnesses, and the court to describe the mass murder.
Secondly, it examines the interactions and dynamics of the trial proceedings, in particular the dialogues between the court personnel and the survivor witnesses and defendants. Thirdly, it examines the complex emotional expressions of all those involved in the trial and the atmosphere of the proceedings.
