Investigating, Punishing, Agitating. Nazi Perpetrator Trials in the Eastern Bloc

About the anthology

Around 15 years after the end of the war, a second wave of trials against Nazi criminals took place in many Eastern Bloc states, which followed a different logic than the trials immediately after the end of the war. At the height of the Cold War in the 1960s, the trials were on the one hand a commitment to cooperation between East and West, while on the other hand they were determined by the defensive stance towards the respective opponent in the systemic conflict. Within the Eastern Bloc, unity was to be demonstrated through a coordinated approach on the international stage, while at the same time national interests led to individual approaches to criminal prosecution. The essays compiled in this volume are dedicated to the history of criminal trials for National Socialist crimes in Hungary, the GDR, Poland, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union after the “thaw” and ask about the conditions and peculiarities of these proceedings. What rules applied to the trials? What goals did they pursue? And last but not least: What significance did the Holocaust have in the investigation of the crimes?
The volume is published entirely in English.