Soviet prisoners
That same night, at least 24 Soviet prisoners were murdered in the Bullenhuser Damm school building.
These murders were not dealt with in detail in the 1946 Curiohaus Trials in Hamburg, the most important court for trying war crimes in the British Zone between 1945 and 1949.
No significant efforts were undertaken in subsequent decades to establish the identities of the prisoners and the reasons for the murders.
The journalist Günther Schwarberg contacted the Soviet Union on various occasions, and the murder of the Soviet prisoners was taken up again in the second preliminary proceedings against Arnold Strippel.
It is also known that ‘German Democratic Republic’ authorities made various attempts to search for victims of Dr. Heissmeyer׳s “medical” experiments in the Soviet Union.
But their identities have yet to be established.
Schwarberg also invited representatives of the Soviet Union to the annual memorial service at Bullenhuser Damm.
In 1985, a memorial by the Soviet sculptor Anatolij Mossijtschuk was unveiled in the rose garden behind the building in their memory.
In this online lecture, Dr Anna von Villiez presents existing sources on the little-known group from the trial against Kurt Heißmeyer, with the aim of stimulating further research and discussion.