Sobibor - Holocaust Propaganda And Reality - Unity of Nobility ...

J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR 189
6.5. The Sobibór Trial that Never Took Place
As opposed to the defendants in the Sobibór trials in Berlin, Frankfurt,
or Hagen, who had merely occupied low-level posts during the
war, the man brought to trial in Vienna in 1962 in connection with the
events at Sobibór, Beec, and Treblinka was a real heavyweight. Hermann
Julius Höfle, born in 1911, had been “Referent für Judenangelegenheiten
– Aktion Reinhardt” (counselor for Jewish affairs – Aktion
Reinhardt) in Lublin and deputy of Odilo Globocnik, the chief of SS
and police in Lublin. It was he who reported in a radio message that up
to the end of 1942 1,274,166 persons had been transported to “B.,” “S.”
and “T.” Referring to a meeting with Höfle, Fritz Reuter would write in
March of 1943 that the Jews deported to Beec would be moved on
“across the border and would never return to the General Government.”
542
Hermann Höfle had been taken prisoner by the British in 1945 and
handed over to the Austrian judicial authorities in 1947 but was liberated
soon thereafter. In 1961 he was arrested once again and indicted.
On 20 (other sources make it the 21 st ) August 1962, just prior to the
opening of the trial, he hanged himself in his Vienna prison. 543 This, at
least, is the official version, which is not altogether convincing, though.
After Höfle’s arrest, enough evidence was collected against him to
fill nine volumes, but “the Vienna prosecutor’s office had not managed
by that date [Höfle’s alleged suicide] to extract a formal indictment
from those substantial files.” 544
This clearly indicates that Höfle had never admitted the annihilation
of the Jews that the prosecution intended to lay at his feet. If he had indeed
confessed, it would have been the easiest thing in world for the
prosecution to prepare “a formal indictment from those substantial
files.” This leads one to believe that Höfle, who knew very well what
went on in the camps at Beec, Sobibór, and Treblinka, had stolidly
maintained in the face of the Austrian judiciary that the three camps had
been transit camps and that the alleged annihilations were nothing but
propaganda.
In view of the important part played by Höfle in connection with the
deportations of the Jews, the impending trial would have encountered
542
543
544
Cf. chapter 9, p. 297.
www.deathcamps.org/reinhard/hoefle html
www nachkriegsjustiz.at/prozesse/geschworeneng/rezeption.pdf