Obscure Documentary Film of the Third Majdanek Trial

[Janssen]

The third Majdanek trial began in Düsseldorf in November 1975 and ended six years later in June 1981.

Below is a list of the 15 defendants (click to enlarge).

A documentary film of the trial was made by Eberhard Fechner which features interviews with defendants, witnesses, judges, prosecutors, defense councils, historians, criminals, and victims. Filming was not permitted during the 474 days of the six-year trial, so Fechner had to reconstruct the trial.

The film is not readily available but would be worth watching if it can be bought at a reasonable price.

It's available from the website below at a price which can only be described as extortionate.

http://www.jewishfilm.org/Catalogue/films/trial.htm

[wm]

As I understand the price is for non-commercial, non-broadcast, educational public performance rights. They don't sell to the general public there.
But he wrote a book about that trial too , 163 pages long, most likely with a higher informational content than the film anyway.

[Janssen]

The Fechner book is not currently available. Brief transcripts from the filmed interviews Fechner did with Erna Pfannstiel and others are published in the book 'Female SS Guards and Workaday Violence' by Elissa Mailander.

If anybody is thinking of buying the above book, be aware that in the English edition, the faces of the female SS guards have been obscured in all three images in the book. The author claims it was the only way the copyright owners would allow her to use the photos when the book was published in English. There is no problem with the German edition.

[steve248]

Re the Mailänder book, the English version is 405 pages and the German a whopping 521 pages. Apart from clearer photos what else did the German version contain that the English publisher decided against?

Seems - yet again - need a German original for a better view of what the author intended.