Konrad Morgen
Subtitle: The Conscience of a Nazi Judge
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: May 07, 2015
Language: eng
Format: hardcover
Number of pages: 216
ISBN-13: 9781137496942
Description: "Georg Konrad Morgen was a judge in the SS courts, placed in charge of prosecuting crimes committed in Nazi concentration camps, including Buchenwald, Dachau, and Auschwitz. Although delegated by Heinrich Himmler to root out corruption, Morgen remarkably went on to prosecute camp officers for the murder of prisoners. He secured the convictions of several concentration camp commandants, two of whom were executed for their crimes. Yet, despite being face-to-face with the horrors of the Nazi killing machine, he was unable to prosecute anyone for the systematic extermination of the Jews. Instead he tried to unsettle the system by seeking an arrest warrant for Adolf Eichmann, albeit for minor offences, and the chief of the Auschwitz gestapo. This is a moral biography of Morgen, focusing on how he felt, thought, and deliberated about the challenges of his unique position. In wartime memos and correspondence, both official and private, as well as his post-war interrogations and his gripping testimonies at war-crimes trials, Morgen's moral and legal reasoning is placed at the fore. What emerges is a deeply equivocal figure whose strong but flawed sense of justice was unequal to the extraordinary circumstances of the Third Reich. "--
Notes: Source title: Konrad Morgen: The Conscience of a Nazi Judge