Roland Freisler | Biography

Even among the many evils of the Third Reich, the judge Roland Freisler stood out. A former attorney and avid bureaucrat, Freisler rose high in the ranks of the National Socialist bureaucracy. In 1942, he enthusiastically supported the so-called Final Solution, Hitler's plan to eliminate all European Jews. Rewarded for his loyal service, the 49-year old Freisler was made president of the Volksgericht, or People's Court, a tribunal before which appeared many enemies of Nazi ideology. His reputation for sadism in court was unmatched. He screamed at defendants, mocked their physical suffering, and gleefully sent many to painful deaths.

Born in Celle, Germany, on October 30, 1893, Freisler was the son of peasants. Serving in World War I in his early twenties, he was captured and imprisoned in Russia. He lived in a Siberian prison camp for years, where he learned Russian. Escaping to Germany in the 1920s, he studied and later practiced law.

The Nazi Party was almost five years old in 1924 when Freisler joined. His rise through its ranks coincided with the party's rise to power in Germany. In 1932, he was elected a party delegate, and, with Adolf Hitler's appointment as chancellor the next year, Freisler became the head of personnel in the Prussian Ministry of Justice. By 1942, he was a state secretary in the Reich Ministry of Justice and attended the January 20 Wannsee Conference, where the party discussed exterminating Jews.

In August 1942, Freisler's ascent to power was complete. The People's Court, famous for its show trials, needed a new judge. Freisler won the appointment, which merely called for him to sit before those charged with treason and pronounce them guilty. A term of great elasticity in the Third Reich, treason was a common charge. So it was, for example, with the three young University of Munich students who had formed the White Rose Movement that summer. After distributing leaflets condemning German citizens for their passivity and calling for resistance against Nazism, the students were arrested, brought before the ranting Freisler on the morning of February 22, 1943, found guilty after lunch, and hanged by dinner time.

By 1944, Freisler already had a reputation when he began hearing the show trials of the so-called July Plot. These were German military leaders who, as the war situation worsened, had tried to kill Hitler in a failed coup attempt. As recorded on film, Freisler screamed at them from the bench, refused to allow them to keep up their pants with suspenders, and continued ranting as they were sent to their deaths on meat hooks and to be strangled with piano wire. During one such trial, on February 3, 1945, an allied bomb crashed through the roof of the People's Court, toppling a huge column upon the judge, who died instantly.