Frankfurt Auschwitz trial
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Richard Baer (b. 1911) was commandant of Auschwitz I from May 11, 1944 and of Auschwitz II (Birkenau) from the end of 1944 until the evacuation of the camp in January 1945. After the war he lived near Hamburg under the assumed name Carl Neumann, working as a forester. He was arrested on December 21, 1960, and soon became the main prosecuted at the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial, then in preparation. Baer however never testified before the court, since he died in his prison cell in June 1963. The cause of death is variously given by historians as “natural causes” or “circulatory ailments,” but the autopsy did not rule out “ingestion of an odorless, non-corrosive poison” (cf. W. Stäglich, Auschwitz: A judge looks at the evidence, pp. 233-5). According to a brief article in the French right-wing newspaper Rivarol Baer had denied any knowledge of homicidal gas chambers during his pre-trial interrogations. A Brief List of the Conveniently Deceased by Thomas Kues

Finally, the account of Mr. Christopherson draws attention to a very curious circumstance. The only defendant who did not appear at the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial in 1963 was Richard Baer, the successor of Rudolf Höss as commandant of Auschwitz. Though in perfect health, he died suddenly in prison before the trial had begun, "in a highly mysterious way" according to the newspaper; Deutsche Wochenzeitung (July 27th, 1973). Baer's sudden demise before giving evidence is especially strange, since the Paris newspaper Rivarol recorded his insistence that "during the whole time in which he governed Auschwitz, he never saw any gas chambers nor believed that such things existed," and from this statement nothing would dissuade him. In short, the Christopherson account adds to a mounting collection of evidence demonstrating that the giant industrial complex of Auschwitz (comprising thirty separate installations and divided by the main Vienna-Cracow railway line) was nothing but a vast war production centre, which, while admittedly employing the compulsory labour of detainees, was certainly not a place of "mass extermination". Did Six Million Really Die? by Richard Harwood

However, that alone is not enough to explain the establishment and entrenchment of the Auschwitz Myth. Not even the segment of our population most familiar with the Dachau "gas chamber" hoax, for example, is immune to the Auschwitz Myth. Anyone who follows the nationalist press knows that even there "Auschwitz" is often used as a synonym for "genocide."22 In part, this implicit endorsement of the Auschwitz Myth may be the result of a thoughtlessness that is in itself unpardonable. But there is also some genuine belief involved, as became clear to me from discussions with editors of those publications. To support their position they usually cited the findings of the first Frankfürt Auschwitz Trial. Indeed, the actual reason for the widespread public acceptance of the Auschwitz Myth may be that the decisions of German courts enjoy the unlimited confidence of the German people. Despite many miscarriages of justice, judicial authority and objectivity are still considered above suspicion. Whether this trust is justified when it comes to such blatantly political trials as the so-called Frankfürt Auschwitz Trial is a question that will arise many times in the course of our investigation. At this point, it should be enough simply to note that it can never be the task of the courts to pronounce the final verdict on historical matters, something that certain groups consider the real purpose of the so-called "Nazi Crimes of Violence Trials" ("NSG-Verfahren"), of which the Auschwitz Trial is the prime example 23 The Auschwitz Myth by Wilhelm Stäglich

As Rassinier has noted, not a single document has been presented, either at the Nuremberg trials or in the concentration camp literature, that substantiates the allegation that "gas chambers" were installed in German concentration camps, on orders from the Reich Government, for the purpose of mass extermination of Jews.57 In this regard, the Auschwitz Trial changed nothing. The Auschwitz Myth by Wilhelm Stäglich