page_title: Ernst Heinrichsohn
section_title: Prosecution
hierarchical_section_title: Ernst Heinrichsohn / Prosecution
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Scherl: Im Konzentrationslager von Drancy (Frankreich) 1941. Einige jüdische Advokaten, die zur Zeit im Lager interniert sind. UBz von links nach rechts: Weill, Valensi, Azoulay, Ulmo, Cremieux, Eduard Bloch und Pierre Mas ADN-Zentralbild-Archiv II. Weltkrieg 1939 45 Nach der Besetzung Frankreichs durch die faschistische deutsche Wehrmacht werden auch hier die nazistischen Rassengesetze angewendet. Im Judenkonzentrationslager von Drancy (Frankreich) 1941. Einige jüdische Advokaten, die zur Zeit im Lager interniert sind. UBz von links nach rechts: Weill, Valensi, Azoulay, Ulmo, Cremieux, Eduard Bloch und Pierre Mas.
context_page_description: Ernst Heinrichsohn was a German lawyer and member of the SS who participated in the deportation of French Jews to Auschwitz during World War II.
context_section_description: On 7 March 1956, Heinrichsohn was sentenced to death by a French court in absentia. A formal prosecution (and conviction) by the Allies prevented any like proceedings in the Federal Republic of Germany. This procedural issue was only cleared in 1975 (based on the reconciliation agreement of 1971), against the resistance of the FDP politician Ernst Achenbach. In 1976, an initiative of the French historian and Holocaust survivor Serge Klarsfeld made public his involvement in the Holocaust. Heinrichsohn responded with a sworn statement to the council, stating that he was not the Gestapo agent known as "Heinrichson". This affidavit was accepted not only in the community but also by the board of the CSU, whose Secretary General Edmund Stoiber did not want to interfere or prejudice a pending investigation. Heinrichsohn was re-elected with 85% of the vote and no opposition on part of the SPD when he ran again for mayor. In 1977, the incriminating documents published by Klarsfeld where discounted by the Oberlandesgericht Bamberg, which declined to strip Heinrichsohn of his law license on the strength of this evidence. In June 1978, Serge Klarsfeld organized a political demonstration of about eighty French in Miltenberg.
  In 1979, Heinrichsohn along with Lischka and Herbert Hagen was indicted for "having knowingly aided the intentional, unlawful, cruel, insidious, and basely motivated killing of human beings". The indictment was partially based on an assessment authored by Wolfgang Scheffler. Heinz Röthke had already died in 1965 without ever having been apprehended, although he also had been sentenced to death in France. 
  On behalf of the plaintiffs, Serge Klarsfeld had put together a collection of documents from those found in Paris Gestapo files, which among other things showed Heinrichsohn's involvement in the deportation of Greek Jews and of Jewish children. Heinrichsohn's lawyer Richard Huth had stated in court that Klarsfeld (who was a Jew of Romanian birth) had no agency to represent French Jews. Heinrichsohn had declared in court that he fely no sense of guilt because he had only been apprised of the Jews' murder after the war had ended, and that he merely selected Jews for work assignments. However, Heinrichsohn was identified by witnesses; it was demonstrated that he had had small children and the sick deported. The  historian and Holocaust survivor Georges Wellers was able to relate particulars about Heinrichsohn by quoting from a document describing the conditions in Drancy during Heinrichsohn's tenure, which he had already penned in 1946.
  On 11 February 11 1980, the Circuit Court of Cologne sentenced Heinrichsohn to six years in prison, Lischka to ten, and Hagen to twelve years. The residents of Bürgstadt had rallied around their mayor during the trial, and took up a collection to provide 200 DM in bail to allow him to move freely during the appeal. However, he was arrested in March 1980 because of an alleged flight risk. The Federal Court upheld the verdicts on 16 July 1981. On 3 June 3 1982, he was released early by decision of the Oberlandesgericht Bamberg, after the Landgericht Bayreuth rejected his release in March 1982 because he had not yet served two thirds of his sentence. The remainder of his sentence was remitted in 1987. Heinrichsohn professed no guilt and was even charged with a further count of perjury in the aftermath, due to having testified at the trial of Modest Graf von Korff that he had been completely unaware of the murder of Jews. He eventually lived with his new wife in a town close to Bürgstadt.
  The opening of the trial in Cologne had been a late vindication of the efforts of Serge Klarsfeld and his wife, Beate Klarsfeld, to bring German and French Holocaust perpetrators to justice. The relatively heavy prison sentences for the defendants was a novelty in the case-law of the Federal Republic of Germany.
  Bürgstadt's residents remained convinced that Heinrichsohn was innocent, as journalist Lea Rosh documented in several television features for ''Kennzeichen D''.
caption: Heinrichsohn organized the railway transports of Jews from the Drancy internment camp: French lawyers detained in Drancy, 1941
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