In new book, Mary Fulbrook notes that while up to a million actively took part in genocide, only a few thousand were ever sentenced to more than 3 years in prison
10 November 2018
Though up to a million people are believed to have actively participated in the extermination of millions of Jewish people during the Holocaust, only around 20,000 were ever found guilty of crimes, and fewer than 600 received heavy sentences, a British Holocaust historian writes in a new book.
In “Reckonings: Legacies of Nazi Persecution and the Quest for Justice,” Mary Fulbrook examines the German justice system’s prosecution of Nazi war crimes following World War II, and the relatively minuscule number of heavy punishments meted out to perpetrators of genocide.
Fulbrook, professor of German History and Dean of the Faculty of Social and Historical Sciences at University College London, notes that “perhaps 200,000 people, and possibly closer to a million, were at one point or another actively involved in killing Jewish civilians. And the ranks of those who made this possible were far wider.”
But while in West Germany and united Germany between 1946 and 2005, cases were brought against 140,000 individuals, only 6,656 were convicted of Nazi crimes. And “the vast majority of sentences — just under five thousand (4,993) — were relatively lenient, with terms of imprisonment of up to two years,” Fulbrook writes.
