The perpetrators

Johann Frahm (1901-1946) was trained as a guard at Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1939. The concentration camp served as a so-called training camp for later concentration camp commanders and other surveillance personnel during the National Socialist regime.
From November 1942, Johann Frahm was on duty at Neuengamme concentration camp, from 1944 under Rapportführer Dreimann in the camp typing pool. He was involved in the murder of children and adult prisoners.
In May 1945, he was able to flee to his family in Kleve.
At the end of October 1945, he was arrested by British investigators and sentenced to death for the murders at Bullenhuser Damm in the Curio-Haus trial in 1946. He was executed on October 11.

Kurt Heißmeyer (1905-1967) was a doctor in Hohenlychen and wanted to become a professor. When he was deployed as a camp doctor for "medical" experiments in the Neuengamme concentration camp, he injected the 20 children with tubercle bacilli and operated on the lymph glands under their arms. The children developed high fevers and were in pain. Heißmeyer wanted to use the human experiments to prove that tuberculosis could be combated by artificially producing skin tuberculosis and that "racially inferior" people were more susceptible to tuberculosis. Heißmeyer's first thesis was already known among experts to be scientifically untenable long before the experiments. The second thesis was based solely on the racist and anti-Semitic ideology of the National Socialists.

In 1945, Heißmeyer buried a tin box containing various documents and objects in the garden of the Hohenlychen SS sanatorium, which the Allies were not supposed to find. In addition to private photos, the box contained medical records and photographs of the children on whom he had carried out experiments. He went into hiding in the GDR and was able to practise as a doctor there for another twenty years. After an anonymous letter to the Ministry for State Security, which mentioned his involvement and activity as an SS doctor in Neuengamme, no action was initially ordered. Kurt Heißmeyer was only arrested in 1963 and sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity by the Magdeburg District Court in 1966. Former prisoners of the Neuengamme concentration camp and former prisoner doctors testified against him, and the documents from the box he had buried himself also helped to reconstruct the crimes committed by Heißmeyer. In 1966, he was sentenced to life imprisonment for "crimes against humanity". Kurt Heißmeyer died in prison in 1967.

Ewald Jauch (1902-1946) joined the NSDAP in February 1932 and became a member of the SS two years later. From 1940-1944, Jauch was first employed as a guard and later as a Rapportführer at Neuengamme concentration camp. From December 1944, he was camp leader in the Bullenhuser Damm satellite camp, where he was involved in the murder of the children in April 1945. Ewald Jauch was sentenced to death during the Curio-Haus trial in 1946.

Max Pauly (1907-1946) from Wesselburen in Dithmarschen worked as a retail salesman. He joined the NSDAP in 1930 and became a member of the SS two years later. From August 1942, he was commandant of the Neuengamme concentration camp. He passed on the order to kill the children to Alfred Trzebinski. Max Pauly was sentenced to death on May 3, 1946 and executed in Hamelin on October 8, 1946.

Adolf Speck (1911-1946) came to Neuengamme concentration camp as a guard and in the summer of the same year became the commanding officer in the concentration camp's brick factory. He was considered violent. Speck guarded the Soviet prisoners of war together with Wiehagen on the night of the crime. He stated in the Curio-Haus trial that he had shot one of the prisoners because the prisoners had allegedly thrown salt in his face.
He was sentenced to death in May 1946 and executed in October 1946.

Arnold Strippel (1911-1994) joined the SS in 1934 and subsequently became a guard at Sachsenburg concentration camp. As early as 1938, he became Rapportsführer at Buchenwald concentration camp. Until 1944, Arnold Strippel was deployed in numerous concentration camps, once serving as head of the Ravensbrück satellite camp, Peenemünde-Karlshagen II. Strippel often held leading positions in the National Socialist extermination system. This was also the case in Hamburg, where he was in charge of the SS men who carried out the murders at Bullenhuser Damm.
In 1945, he went into hiding for fear of being punished by British military tribunals and sometimes lived under a false name.

Due to his SS affiliation, he was sent to an internment camp in 1948. As there was not yet enough evidence against him, he was released from detention.
Finally, on June 1, 1949, he was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Frankfurt jury court for the murder of prisoners in the Buchenwald concentration camp. He filed an appeal against the sentence. The sentence was overturned and in 1970 he was only sentenced to 6 years imprisonment for accessory to murder.
He received compensation of 121,500 DM for the over-served prison sentence. He was never sent back to prison after that, although he was sentenced to three years and six months by the Düsseldorf jury court in 1981 for aiding and abetting murder in the Majdanek concentration camp (Poland). He was deemed unfit for imprisonment for health reasons.
In the mid-1960s, the Hamburg public prosecutor's office investigated him for possible involvement in the Bullenhuser Damm murders.
In the Curio-Haus trials, Trzebinski, Dreimann, Jauch and Frahm had accused him of complicity. However, the public prosecutor's office did not feel able to continue the proceedings as they felt there was insufficient evidence.
Following a criminal complaint from relatives of the Bullenhuser Damm victims, the public prosecutor's office resumed the investigation in 1979.
They finally charged him in 1983 with 42 counts of murder of the 20 children, the four prisoner doctors and nurses and the Soviet prisoners of war.
The case was dropped by the Hamburg Regional Court after four years because Strippel was deemed unfit to stand trial for health reasons.
Strippel died in Frankfurt in 1994.

Alfred Trzebinski (1902-1946) joined the SS in 1932 and the NSDAP a year later. He was conscripted into the Wehrmacht in 1939 and after joining the Waffen-SS, he became a camp doctor at Ausschwitz concentration camp in 1941, then at Majdanek concentration camp (Poland). In 1943, Alfred Trzebinski became an SS camp doctor in Neuengamme. He was also involved with the pseudo-medical experiments in the Heißmeyer special unit. Alfred Trzebinski was involved in the murder of the children.
After the end of the war, he went into hiding with his family, but was arrested on February 1, 1946 and sentenced to death in the Curio-Haus trial.