The inclusion of the records of the first Frankfurt Auschwitz trial in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register proves their huge significance as part of the heritage of humanity.

In post-war Germany, the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials played a special role in examining the country’s National Socialist past as they paved the way for the whole of society looking critically in the mirror and at the role of Germans as citizens, as active participants, as people who simply toed the line and as perpetrators.

Without courageous figures such as Fritz Bauer, however, this process of dealing with the past would never have happened. The original records from the Auschwitz trials are to this day an important element in the fight against the ongoing denial and relativisation of the crimes of National Socialism.