Arnold Strippel

In the fall of 1948, Strippel voluntarily turned himself into U.S. occupation authorities Dachau internment camp. He was released after presenting them with the proper papers. However, in December 1948 a former Buchenwald prisoner recognized Strippel on the street and immediately alerted the authorities. In 1949 a West German court found Strippel guilty of 21 counts of murder, inflicting grievous bodily harm, and violating his duty to provide proper care. He was sentenced to 21 life terms in prison plus 10 years. In 1965 Strippel, who was still in prison, was investigated for supervising the hangings of 20 Jewish children at the Bullenhuser Damm to conceal the fact that they had been used as human test subjects. However, the investigation was halted after the prosecutor concluded that he could not prove Strippel had acted with "base motives", which is required under German law for a murder conviction. He could not prosecute Strippel for manslaughter either, since the statute of limitations had expired. The prosecutor [Helmut Münzberg] also declined to prosecute Strippel for supervising the subsequent executions of 30 Soviet POWs, after concluding that they had been lawfully killed after a trial.^[4]

In 1969 Strippel's murder convictions were reduced to accessory to murder, resulting in his release on 21 April 1969, since he'd already served more time than the maximum sentence. In 1970, Strippel's sentence was formally reduced to six years. He then received approximately 121,500 DM from the West German government for the 14 additional years that he had "unjustly" spent in prison. In 1979, Strippel won a fine against a newspaper accusing him of murdering the Soviet POWs whose executions he'd supervised at Bullenhuser Damm.^[4]

In 1981, Strippel was convicted of 41 counts of being an accessory to murder at the Third Majdanek Trial before the West German Court in Düsseldorf (1975–1981) for his actions at Buchenwald and at the Majdanek concentration camp, where he served as deputy commandant (Case no. 145 & 616 in Frankfurt District Court).^[5] He was implicated in the torture and killing of dozens of people. Strippel received a nominal 3+1⁄2-year sentence for organizing the murders of 21 Soviet POWs, which he did not have to serve due to the "unjust time" he'd already served. In 1983, a West German court ordered the local prosecutor to investigate Strippel for the Bullenhuser Damm murders. However, the case was dropped in 1987, due to Strippel's ill health. Strippel used the money he'd received from the West German government to purchase a condominium on Talstrasse in Frankfurt Kalbach, which he occupied until he died in 1994.^[6][7]

A character inspired by Strippel was featured in the 1989 film The Rose Garden.