REINHOLD HANNING: THE MAN AT THE CENTRE OF ‘THE LAST TRIAL’
Reinhold Hanning stood guard over the destruction of Europe’s last Jewish community. As a former sergeant and squad leader of the 3rd SS Division Totenkopf (the “Death’s Head Division”), Hanning, 94, is charged with 170,000 counts of accessory to murder while stationed at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp from January 1943 to June 1944. Prosecutors say he would have been involved with guarding transports of thousands of Jewish victims, especially the overwhelming influx during the “Hungarian Operation.” While most of European Jewry had already been exterminated by the Nazis, Hungary’s Jews had lived in relative safety thanks to the fascist country’s alliance with Hitler. But after Hungary began hedging its bets by contacting the Allies, Germany invaded in March 1944 and Adolf Eichmann was tasked with bringing the Final Solution to Hungary. In just 56 days, between May 15 and July 9, 1944, half a million Hungarian Jews were deported to Auschwitz, where most were sent to the Birkenau gas chambers within hours of arrival. The strong became slave labourers; everyone else was marched through an assembly line of murder. Under SS supervision, the chosen were locked in “showers” as Zyklon B was released through the vents. After the desperate banging stopped and the screams subsided, the doors would be opened to reveal the tangle of naked bodies frozen in desperation to escape. Their gold tooth fillings were yanked out of their mouths and melted down on the spot to form into bars sent to the Reichsbank; their bones pulverized and used as fertilizer, their hair shorn and used in mattresses.