Gustav
Wagner, Deputy Commandant of Sobibor, ordered
the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jews as chief
of the selections. He was sentenced to death in
absentia by the Nuremberg Tribunal, but escaped
with Franz Stangl with the help of the Vatican to
Brazil, where Wagner was admitted as a permanent
resident on April 12, 1950.
He
lived openly in Sao Paulo until his arrest on May 30,
1978, but the Brazilian Supreme Court refused to
extradite him to Germany. According to his attorney
Gustav Wagner comitted suicide in October 1980.
Eleven
of the SS men who had served at Sobibor were brought
to trial, accused of crimes against humanity. The proceedings took place in Hagen, West
Germany, from September 6, 1965, to December 20, 1966.
Kurt Bolender
One of the accused, Kurt Bolender, the former
commander of extermination Camp III, committed suicide.
SS Oberscharfuehrer Karl Frenzel was sentenced to life
imprisonment, five were given sentences ranging from
three to eight years, and four were acquitted.
SS-Unterscharfuehrer
Erich Fuchs had helped in the construction of the gas
chambers at the deathcamps Belzec, Sobibor and
Treblinka. He was convicted for having directed
experimental gassings that killed at least 3,000
Soviet prisoners - he was sentenced to four years in
prison. He died in 1984.
In
a 1962-63 trial in Kiev in the Soviet Union ten of the
Ukrainian guards received death sentences, one was
sentenced to fifteen years in prison. In June 1965,
three other Ukrainian guards were sentenced to death.
Most
of the SS men who served in the Aktion Reinhard death
camps of Sobibor, Belzec, and Treblinka were never
brought to trial.
The
Sobibor camp area was designated by the Polish
government as a national shrine, and a memorial was
erected on the site.