Katzenberger Trial - The Aftermath

The Aftermath

Leo Katzenberger was guillotined at Stadelheim Prison in Munich on 2 June 1942. Irene Seiler was found guilty of perjury for denying an affair had taken place and sentenced to two years imprisonment—in accordance with Hitler's wishes, women were not charged under the Racial Protection Law, but could be charged with perjury or obstruction of justice.

Even among some Nazi officials, the tenuous grounds on which Katzenberger had been sentenced to death caused disquiet. Oswald Rothaug was moved to a state attorney's job in Berlin in 1943 because the Justice Minister considered him unfit to be a judge. In 1947 he was placed on trial by the Americans, partly for his role in the Katzenberger trial, and sentenced to life imprisonment. He was released in December 1956, aged 59, and died in Cologne in 1967.

The Katzenberger trial is an extreme case of how anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany distorted the justice system.

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