Bruno Tesch - Arrest, Trial and Execution

Arrest, Trial and Execution

Tesch was first interrogated in Hamburg by British Captain Walter Freud, a chemist and the grandson of Sigmund Freud. Freud was accompanied by Emil Sehm, a former TESTA bookkeeper. Sehm had claimed to see a memorandum concerning correspondence between Tesch and a Wehrmacht officer about the use of Zyklon B to gas humans. He was arrested by the British occupation authorities on September 3, 1945 and released on October 1, 1945 only to be re-arrested a few days later on October 6.

Tesch was tried by a British military tribunal in the Curiohaus in Hamburg March 1–8, 1946. His two codefendants were procurist (registered general representative) Karl Weinbacher and Joachim Drosihn, the firm’s first gassing technician.

The Prosecution case stated that Zyklon B was used for "systematically exterminating human beings to an estimated total of six million, of whom four and a half million were exterminated by the use of Zyklon B in one camp alone, known as Auschwitz/Birkenau."

The charge was "at Hamburg, Germany, between 1st January, 1941, and 31st March, 1945, in violation of the laws and usages of war did supply poison gas used for the extermination of allied nationals interned in concentration camps well knowing that the said gas was to be so used" in violation of Article 46 of the Hague Convention of 1907. One of the witnesses called by the prosecution was SS Rottenfuehrer Perry Broad who had worked in the political department in Auschwitz. Tesch and Weinbacher were condemned to death. Drosihn was acquitted. Tesch was executed by hanging on May 16, 1946, by Albert Pierrepoint in Hamelin Prison.