The following is a guest post by the Director of the Global Legal Research Center Peter Roudik. Peter is a frequent contributor to In Custodia Legis. He has written a number of posts, including on “Ukraine: Two Understandings of Lustration,” “Crimean History, Status, and Referendum,” “Regulating the Winter Olympics in Russia,” “Soviet Law and the Assassination of JFK,” and the “Treaty on the Creation of the Soviet Union.” This blog post is part of our Frequently Asked Legal Questions series.
Recently, people all over the world remembered how the Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated 70 years ago on January 27, 1945. Our readers might be interested to learn about the legal basis for the Soviet authorities’ involvement in the collection of evidence, investigation of crimes committed in the camp, and the prosecution and punishment of the perpetrators of these and other crimes. While the most notorious Nazi war criminals were tried in Nuremberg, and those accused of murdering people in Auschwitz were prosecuted later in separate trials in Poland and Germany, the collection of evidence and prosecution of war crimes had started well before the Soviets liberated Auschwitz.
1. How were crimes committed in Auschwitz investigated?